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Post Virtual Reality Sadness

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Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#31

Post by drzaiusapelord »

guitarbill wrote: post #25
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #12

Day 1 Vive owner here. This sounds pretty uncharacteristic of the experience and I guess this person has some psychological issues or is overplaying the VR experience for ad impressions. I read /r/vive religiously and no one seems to have this issue. Yes there's sometimes a "I wish I was playing now" but I've had that all my life and frankly it was 100x worse when I was playing MMOs or competitive shooters. This feel…

> This sounds pretty uncharacteristic of the experience and I guess this person has some psychological issues or is overplaying the VR experience for ad impressions. > If you're finding yourself addicted then you've got a personal addiction issue. Its not the medium, its you. The author gets many things right, such as the change in perception of distances. I get this from VR, but I also get it from changing from glas…

I clarified my position. This isn't a blame game. My point is to seek out the help because if you're experiencing this on this level, then you have a problem. Its not VR and its not normal.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#32

Post by ethanbond »

MalcolmPF wrote: post #20
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

I don't know that this is VR-specific. I remember feeling like this after: - Playing with MS Paint on Windows 3.1 for hours on end until my eyes burned when i was 8. - Inhaling Lord of the Rings in about a week when i was 10. - Playing Ocarina of Time for 12 hours a day as a young teen. - Playing WoW in 100-hour weeks as an undergrad on summer break.

Exactly. These are the symptoms of a withdrawal from escapism. You could replace "VR" in the article by many other kinds of absorbing experiences. Not to discredit the author's own personal findings, it's probably a healthy thing to be self-aware of these feelings. And there might be something to VR that makes the contrast of detachment more intense.

Well in the author's opinion it's actually not the same. That's why he specifically points out counter examples of non-VR experiences which have similar but notably less intense effects.

It's still an opinion, sure, but the author did address this comparison.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#33

Post by dv_dt »

frankhorrigan wrote: post #27
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…

Yeah, I tend to agree. I think you can probably toss this on the list of lessons that human beings seem completely incapable of learning (myself included). That escapism doesn't really work.

I am more optimistic. Some people may react to those feelings by going and constructing some of that world in reality. Isn't that sort of the link between a whole range of SciFi/Comic books in the 50's and landing on the moon?

And we can not only hope that the Star Trek economics of abundance comes about, but that it is made true through a combination of technology and new economic thought.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#34

Post by ethanbond »

jonahrd wrote: post #9

Can't the same be said about other forms of media? You go to the movies to escape, but on the drive home you feel sad that your life isn't as fantastical as the movies. Similar things can be said about the way we use our smartphones. I'm sure after you have the time to become "normalized" to VR, the real world will seem less depressing. perhaps even refreshing.

According to the author, yes there are similar effects but no they aren't as intense.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#35

Post by careersuicide »

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 the previous four million words had been leading up to. I read a few pages and then set it down. For six months. It was obvious the series was going to end in a way that was bittersweet (as all good stories end) but I just couldn't bear the thought of there being nothing left.

By putting it down I was freezing the moment I had left it in time. When I returned to finish the book I felt that familiar sense of sadness. A period of my life (fourteen months!) was over. I'll probably re-read the books someday, but I know it won't be the same. I often get that feeling when I finish a work of fiction I enjoyed greatly. But there was something about "The Wheel of Time' that made it much more profound.

Any medium that can tell a story that people find intense and immersive will produce that same feeling. Why would VR be any different?

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#36

Post by scott_s »

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 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.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#37

Post by drzaiusapelord »

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 detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears.

    — Nick Bostrom, Are you living in a computer simulation?, 2003

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#38

Post by Afforess »

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…

Finishing "A Memory of Light" and the The Wheel of Time series left me in a funk that lasted a whole week. I sometimes regret finishing the series, I now know how it ends, so I can not go back and re-read the series for a 4th time.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#39

Post by jonstokes »

The few times I've tried VR I've had post-VR sadness, but mine was sadness because it totally failed to live up to the hype. I could see the pixels, for one, so I never forgot I was in VR. And the other thing is, as "magical" as those experiences are, they just don't measure up to real life. I've played virtual instruments and games and visited a VR villa and so on, but none of it was as magical as watching my kids do pretty much anything on a regular basis. I dunno, though, maybe I haven't tried the right thing in VR.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#40

Post by hosh »

Not too much different from people coming down from intense psychedelics or mystical experiences.

Among the spiritual seekers for these kinds of mindblowing experiences, there is a seeking for greater and more intense experiences. What follows is a sort of emptiness or depression. It's touching on dukkha, that is, existential anguish.

The key, as it has always been, to be present in the present moment, whether that means being present during the VR experience, or being present in meatspace. Being present to that emptiness will allow it to bleed out and dissolve.

I'm personally glad to hear about these reports. There is a good possibility that VR and AR is the gateway towards mainstream exploration of consciousness. Up until then, honest discussion about existential anguish has been buried and suppressed, and I don't think that has served our civilization well. Here's a shoutout to all the explorers to come.

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