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Post Virtual Reality Sadness

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Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#61

Post by squeaky-clean »

careersuicide wrote: post #35
Afforess wrote: post #23

I wonder if the author has ever experienced the joy of reading a good book, or the first showing an amazing movie. Finishing an amazing story, you feel a let down afterwords; the characters were not real and you can never interact with them. The realm of fictional worlds are often more engaging, and seem superior to the world you live your day-to-day life in. The actions and experiences in those stories were more ful…

A few years ago I started reading "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan. I had somehow timed it so that the week I finished the thirteenth book "Towers of Midnight" the fourteenth book "A Memory of Light" came out. I blew through the first chunk of the book and then got to a chapter that was over a hundred pages long, maybe even longer, Google says it was over fifty thousand words. It was the last battle, the moment t…

I get like this with my favorite things. I do it less frequently than I did as a child, but I still do. It's silly I guess.

The last book I did this with was "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. There's probably less than an hour's worth of reading left, but I just don't want it to end. This was maybe a year ago and I still haven't touched it since. Eventually I'll probably re-read it from the beginning and actually finish it.

I also do it for bands I really like that are slow to put out albums. I haven't heard the latest GSY!BE (from early 2015) yet, not because I don't want to, but because who knows if they're going to go through another 13 year gap between albums! Maybe in 2020 I'll be having a really bad night and 40 minutes of "new" music from one of my favorite bands is exactly what I'll need.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#62

Post by atemerev »

Back in 1993, I used to hang out in an advanced VR lab of the time, with many options to try. Once I played Descent for 3 hours, with a shitty VFX-1 headgear.

Even then, returning back to reality was painful.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#63

Post by bbctol »

scott_s wrote: post #36
careersuicide wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago I started reading "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan. I had somehow timed it so that the week I finished the thirteenth book "Towers of Midnight" the fourteenth book "A Memory of Light" came out. I blew through the first chunk of the book and then got to a chapter that was over a hundred pages long, maybe even longer, Google says it was over fifty thousand words. It was the last battle, the moment t…

I purposefully read both the last Harry Potter (which I assume everyone knows) and Lev Grossman's "The Magician's Land" (which I assume less people know) slow for that very reason.

Yeah, reading the Magician's Land took me longer than the previous two combined, because as much as I wanted to know what happened next, I also wanted to preserve that feeling of wanting to know what happens next.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#64

Post by Animats »

There's an answer to this in China. VR is becoming big in China, but not for games. For sales pitches. Right now, foreign real estate selling in VR is a real thing. Coming soon, "Alibaba is committed to making VR the premium shopping experience of the future".

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#65

Post by Filligree »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #61
careersuicide wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago I started reading "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan. I had somehow timed it so that the week I finished the thirteenth book "Towers of Midnight" the fourteenth book "A Memory of Light" came out. I blew through the first chunk of the book and then got to a chapter that was over a hundred pages long, maybe even longer, Google says it was over fifty thousand words. It was the last battle, the moment t…

I get like this with my favorite things. I do it less frequently than I did as a child, but I still do. It's silly I guess. The last book I did this with was "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. There's probably less than an hour's worth of reading left, but I just don't want it to end. This was maybe a year ago and I still haven't touched it since. Eventually I'll probably re-read it from the beginning and actually fini…

Egan's becoming a better author over time, though. Permutation City is a relatively early novel... but I hope you'll look at the others as well, if you haven't already.

I think my favorite has to be Schild's Ladder, just for sheer conceptual interestingness. I ended up writing fanfiction for it.

The best one from a literary standpoint is probably the Clockwork Rocket trilogy, though.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#66

Post by lomnakkus »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #37
manachar wrote: post #13

Sometimes I wonder if VR is building Plato's Cave or revealing more of the way out of it. The more we learn about humans the more its clear our narratives and "real world" are at least partial figments of our imagination. We remember narratives that we choose to and ignore evidence to the contrary. VR could help reveal this for people (somewhat the same as is claimed for hallucinogens). It could also allow us to incr…

> It could also allow us to increasingly choose to build fully artificial realities. Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detai…

> [...] predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct.

This bit is seems little bit strange to me in that it's actually not necessary at all[1]... a simulation runs on its "own timescale", i.e. it doesn't actually matter how fast/slowly the simulator runs -- the simulation still experiences time advancing at the proverbial dt/dt. This paragraph just seems to be scaremongering to the effect of "it'll happen soon because new processors!"

Regardless: If we're living in a simulation of such fidelity it doesn't really matter if it's "really real" or a simulation; our lives will still start and end inside the simulation. (And I daresay this whole thing is just a trivial rehashing of solipsism with an added tinge of technophilia. I really wish physicists had more interaction with philosophers.)

[1] I could imagine an argument for positing that e.g. Quantum Computing would be necessary, but the "enormous amounts of computing power" phrasing is incredibly vague, so who knows what the actual premise is?

EDIT: Trim pointless "who said what" bit.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#67

Post by 794CD01 »

greggman wrote: post #55
nugget wrote: post #18

People talk a lot about futuristic sex robots but what about VR experiences that are not only physical but deeply emotional - wherein you experience seduction and actually fall in love? Think about riding in a weeks long 18 hour a day RPG crusade with a Milla Jovovich lookalike Joan of Arc who, in between battles, is irreparably infatuated with you. The tech needed to achieve this level of total immersion may yet be…

Putting 3d models of people in VR is easy. Getting them to do anything interesting and not just be a few scripted things is much harder and very far from a solved problem. Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe all you need is the character to look you in the eyes. But I suspect most people would need more. Someone you can actually talk to. Not just pick multiple choice responses

So part of the product can involve hiring a random human to play the part of the love interest, with the VR putting an attractive face and voice on their actions. Heck, that person can even be another customer getting the exact same thing out of you, chosen because your google/facebook profile suggests your personalities are sufficiently compatible.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#68

Post by joering2 »

nugget wrote: post #18

People talk a lot about futuristic sex robots but what about VR experiences that are not only physical but deeply emotional - wherein you experience seduction and actually fall in love? Think about riding in a weeks long 18 hour a day RPG crusade with a Milla Jovovich lookalike Joan of Arc who, in between battles, is irreparably infatuated with you. The tech needed to achieve this level of total immersion may yet be…

If you like what you wrote (I do) in terms of people falling for robots, then watch if you haven't: Ex-Machina and Her (2013).

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#69

Post by scbrg »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #61
careersuicide wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago I started reading "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan. I had somehow timed it so that the week I finished the thirteenth book "Towers of Midnight" the fourteenth book "A Memory of Light" came out. I blew through the first chunk of the book and then got to a chapter that was over a hundred pages long, maybe even longer, Google says it was over fifty thousand words. It was the last battle, the moment t…

I get like this with my favorite things. I do it less frequently than I did as a child, but I still do. It's silly I guess. The last book I did this with was "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. There's probably less than an hour's worth of reading left, but I just don't want it to end. This was maybe a year ago and I still haven't touched it since. Eventually I'll probably re-read it from the beginning and actually fini…

For what its worth, Egan has written a few works that follow up on, and expand, the ideas presented in Permutation City. Most notably Diaspora and Schild's Ladder. So there's more to enjoy after you finish it :-)

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#70

Post by pipio21 »

Afforess wrote: post #23

I wonder if the author has ever experienced the joy of reading a good book, or the first showing an amazing movie. Finishing an amazing story, you feel a let down afterwords; the characters were not real and you can never interact with them. The realm of fictional worlds are often more engaging, and seem superior to the world you live your day-to-day life in. The actions and experiences in those stories were more ful…

When I was in Congo and experienced talking to the women that had been raped, the tortures, the children that had killed their parents or raped their sister at gunpoint and even being involved in a shooting, with bullets whistling over your head I entered into a psychological shock.

I could not stop thinking: This can't be real, this can't be reality BUT IT IS reality. You start realizing really what the people experienced in WWII and how reality surpasses fiction, how terrible and how amazing life could be.

I was an avid reader but it is one thing to read on the safety on your house and a completely different thing experiencing it in reality. I can't stand reading war novels now like War and peace because it really hurts me after experiencing some of it.

And then you have this "living dangerous" thing in which you want more and more of this war experience, like going deeper in the jungle and talk with people in arms even when you are risking your life and a mistake means death.

You watch things you don't want to remember but you want more and more for some stupid reason.

VR will be a great tool for people learning but it could be dangerous with some things too.

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