Funny you should say that. On my post regarding climate change and singularity, I got into a lengthy discussion with someone who claimed that having a true metaverse, a simulated reality people could secede into where they could act as a God and experience whatever they want, would solve the climate crisis. That the ultimate fantasy IS the solution. presumably the thought was that if this happens, enough people would opt into it that we’d be able to save enough resources to stop climate change.

So shallow. No acknowledgment that this would just be offering an extremely pleasurable form of suicide to the masses. No acknowledgement that the people most likely to take such an option would be the least materially well off, and thus the people causing the problem the least. No mention that this wouldn’t affect any existing power structure and so even if it was Jeff Bezos himself that chose to digitally castrate himself into experiencing only a simulation of reality, someone else would just take his place.

I think many people on this sub are just technological optimists unable to reckon with the heightening crises of industrialized society, and anxiously awaiting a savior. Maybe there will be a technological singularity before climate change makes that next to impossible, but the idea the result of that will just be a fantasy VR machine is absurd and shallow.