leechmeem t1_j54gjnd wrote on January 20, 2023 at 9:20 AM

Reply to comment by EnomLee in Instead of escaping to virtual realities, what if we just made our reality as good as any virtual reality could be? by [deleted]

I believe a 'virtual safe space' wouldn't solve any ideological ,religious or political conflict, at all. Those conflicting would know their adversaries' world exist, and because of this awareness, they wouldn't feel content in their personalized landscape, because they know its not the objective reality, they know that whatever idea they try enforcing on the people in their world will not matter. This matter isn't about your fursona, or that you want to be a goddess dragon lord or anime girl or alike. They want a real world to control. They can and will find a way to implement war and violence in a more mental manner. Hijacking one's world to trap them in and give them a personalized hell seems likely to me.

People will always conflict in opinions. We are argumentative in ideas and everything on the internet at this very second, and violent people have found a way to make other people on the internet suffer in their real worlds, all because they don't agree. Why wouldn't this happen in an even more personal experience? In a conceptual future, if everyone has a virtual world, it would become the norm and we would be back to invading each other again, just like how we invade countries.

The sad truth is there will never be paradise, anywhere. Even in your conceived paradise, you most likely won't feel happy and be back to yearning for blissful ignorance once the façade starts disappearing.

OldWorldRevival t1_j55fiap wrote on January 20, 2023 at 3:05 PM

I do think paradise is achievable in the long term, but it is going to involve more paradigm shifts.

EnomLee t1_j56u79p wrote on January 20, 2023 at 8:24 PM

I'm not really seeing it, sorry.

The OP asked us to imagine what an aligned, super intelligent artificial intelligence could give us in FDVR that it couldn't provide in the real world. In a world where such an entity exists, there wouldn't be any space for bad actors to operate anymore. Any attempt to interfere with other people's experiences would just be intercepted before they could ever become a threat.

Now if you want to imagine a scenario in which FDVR is somehow achieved before ASI, then sure. Cyber criminals, terrorists and bad actors could be a problem for BCIs, just like they're a problem for smartphones and PCs today. People who go to sketchy websites and download random .exes without thought put themselves at risk of viruses, but most people remain relatively safe.

Governments may try to pass restrictive laws, but thus far the western world has been pretty permissive towards questionable content in virtual worlds, and everybody else can just pirate the content they can't legally get. Also, I think the political class would have a motive to allow FDVR to flourish unchallenged. People happily living in their own heads would have less motivation to vote against the status quo.

The idea of people invading other people's virtual worlds for the sake of it just sounds cartoonishly evil. It's catastrophizing. People who want violence against other people will join virtual worlds that are designed for that express purpose, just like how people play competitive multiplayer games today. When they are tired of it, they will return to their own private worlds where the only real people they'll ever see are the people that they want to have access, if any.