Wuhan Coronavirus - COVID-19 Analysis & Summary - This is not just fucking pneumonia. It is everything but the kitchen sink. Lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, brain, blood vessels, testes. It affects them all.

You mean physically? Pfft, no. Of course not. That's ridiculous. With lucid-dreaming-level VR, maybe I'd give it a try, just for fun, but I'd also want to try plenty of other things first and foremost, like whatever the newest version of Halo or M&B is by that point in time.

I do have an HTC Vive, by the way, but it's just not the same. Wouldn't it be cool if you could ditch the controllers and the goggles entirely and go full fucking Sword Art Online or The Matrix on that shit? I wanna be the fucking Master Chief. I wanna feel that Sangheili's energy shield crushed into nonexistence beneath my mailed fist. I want to nail that perfect reload by manually moving my hands, feeling the mag go into the MA5's well, and racking the charging handle myself.

Admit it. So do you.
What good would having any of that do if you can't stand up for five minutes without being out of breath? They could invent full-body haptic feedback and a full VR experience but that's not going to do someone any good if they'll black out 30 seconds into E1M1.
 
What good would having any of that do if you can't stand up for five minutes without being out of breath? They could invent full-body haptic feedback and a full VR experience but that's not going to do someone any good if they'll black out 30 seconds into E1M1.

I'm talking about actual sense-jacking here. As in, someone could be almost entirely stationary the entire time, while still internally experiencing movement and full-body haptic feedback. Hence the comparisons to SAO and The Matrix, of course.


Sooner or later, this is the only way anyone's going to be able to experience anything interesting at all. The wealthy will have a total monopoly on actual experiences.

You want to live on a yacht in the Bahamas? Sure thing, champ. Here you go. Just buy the Yacht in the Bahamas DLC pack for your holodeck, and you're all set.

That's the future we're headed towards.
 
I saw "Total Recall," too. Nothing about it made me wish that technology were real.

It's inevitable.

Think about it. Declining space for everyone, depleted natural resources, overpopulation, rising property prices, and so on and so on.

You want a life? Too bad. You're priced out of the market. The only life they'll let you have is Second Life.

This is your house, circa 2050. A fucking concrete culvert. After a few years of living in something like that, you'll be begging for VR just to stay sane.
 
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Massive overpopulation or civilization-ending plague? Pick one and stick with it. You're even failing as a doomer sperg.

I never said it would end civilization. Not even once. Even the worst-case projections put us at 90 million dead. In absolute terms, that's nothing. Maybe a couple years of slightly negative or break-even population growth. That's not enough to stop humanity, but it is plenty enough to make things very hard for the next ten or twenty years, or maybe even kick off WWIII. That's the real concern, if we don't get this under control.
 
It's inevitable.

Think about it. Declining space for everyone, depleted natural resources, overpopulation, rising property prices, and so on and so on.

You want a life? Too bad. You're priced out of the market. The only life they'll let you have is Second Life.
Geez. Is your life just some non-stop doomer Depression Quest? If it weren't the coronavirus, I'm sure you'd be sperging right now, just as hard, over some other calamity.
 
I think it's one of those things where he sees what an absolute wreck his life is, but rather than take responsibility for his failures and maybe improve things, he tells himself that everyone is equally poorly off.

Sour grapes is easier than self improvement. He could just as easily be part of the incel crowd, or an antifag.
 
Geez. Is your life just some non-stop doomer Depression Quest? If it weren't the coronavirus, I'm sure you'd be sperging right now, just as hard, over some other calamity.

It's hard not to. Everyone's laser-focused on global warming as an issue, and the worst-case projections put us at daytime equatorial temps of 170 degrees fahrenheit by the mid-to-late 2100s. That's bad, but it's not even the most pressing issue here. You know what's even worse? Desertification.



An area of twelve million hectares, equal to the area of North Korea, is turned into desert each year by our species' agricultural practices. We're running out of farmland. It's turning into sand. Our need for food is not decreasing. It's increasing rapidly. Agricultural irrigation is also depleting groundwater aquifers at faster than recharge rate, not to mention disgusting practices like fracking that contaminate clean aquifers with toxic fracking fluid.


There's only one way out that I can see. We need a strong indoor farming infrastructure and we need fusion power, and we need them right now. Indoor farming is not particularly economical, because you need lots of grow lamps and those take a great deal of electrical power. However, you can recycle the water used for vertical farming. Also, it's a controlled, pest-free environment that is not dependent on the seasons. Theoretically, you could grow some really kickass plants that way.


I think it's one of those things where he sees what an absolute wreck his life is, but rather than take responsibility for his failures and maybe improve things, he tells himself that everyone is equally poorly off.

Sour grapes is easier than self improvement. He could just as easily be part of the incel crowd, or an antifag.

It's more a matter of me seeing how useless so much everyday human activity is, given our technology level, and getting really depressed from that.

Stop and think about this for a second. Why do white-collar workers need this huge support network of services, like dog-washers and shoe-shiners and bus drivers and pizza deliverymen? Why do office buildings even exist? Why don't people just telecommute and do their work from home? This pandemic showed it can be done. It showed that you don't have to actually be physically present at work to get work done. So why do it?

Why spend so much energy heating and air-conditioning and lighting an office building? Why waste fuel and risk your life driving on the road, possibly getting in a wreck and crunching your spine?

We have a thing that lets us be anywhere we want. It's called a computer and the internet.

Imagine a city with no commercial space, with nothing but residential space instead, with no pollution and no traffic. Imagine how many kilowatt-hours we'd save. Why, it'd be enough to make global warming a non-issue.

Instead, people are literally subjected to psychological torture taking part in a rat race that has no reason to exist.
 
Imagine a city with no commercial space, with nothing but residential space instead, with no pollution and no traffic. Imagine how many kilowatt-hours we'd save. Why, it'd be enough to make global warming a non-issue.

Instead, people are literally subjected to psychological torture taking part in a rat race that has no reason to exist.
Because some people aren't 400lbs and actually enjoy going outside.
 
Because some people aren't 400lbs and actually enjoy going outside.

Yeah, exactly. People like going outside and breathing fresh, clean air. Not breathing car exhaust and being assaulted by noise.

Urban living is a joke. You're expected to pay a fortune for what amounts to mental torture.



Many of us accept that it can be hard to find peace and quiet in a city, whether it’s sirens, construction, or aircraft noise. But research shows such sounds can be more than annoying— long-term environmental noise above a certain level can have a negative influence on your health. One study, for example, found “strong noise annoyance is associated with a twofold higher prevalence of depression and anxiety in the general population.”

Likewise, the “bright lights” of a city can sometimes do more harm than good. People in urban areas are exposed to nighttime lights that are three to six times more intense than people living in small towns, which can impact our sleep and make us feel stressed and anxious.


“The second psychological liability of city life comes from being in constant contact with strangers,” Ellard says. “This state of affairs can lead to feelings of social isolation and loneliness, and then of course have mental health consequences.”

On the surface, this may seem paradoxical: Cities are full of people—an antidote to loneliness. But living anonymously alongside millions of others can actually leave us isolated. Case in point: London is the loneliest place in the UK, according to a survey by ComRes.

Imagine a cleanly and quiet city, with sizable gardens and wide open parkland, and architectural edifices that nurture the soul rather than stifling it.

Why would people choose to live in squalor, surrounded by noise, pollution, diseased throngs, and boring architecture, when a better alternative exists?
 
Yeah, exactly. People like going outside and breathing fresh, clean air. Not breathing car exhaust and being assaulted by noise.

Urban living is a joke. You're expected to pay a fortune for what amounts to mental torture.





Imagine a cleanly and quiet city, with sizable gardens and wide open parkland, and architectural edifices that nurture the soul rather than stifling it.

Why would people choose to live in squalor, surrounded by noise, pollution, diseased throngs, and boring architecture, when a better alternative exists?
Why haven't you moved out of the city then-- Wait nevermind, I don't want to imagine what horrors you would inflict on your new rural neighbors; Better to keep you in your urban containment zone.
 
Yeah, exactly. People like going outside and breathing fresh, clean air. Not breathing car exhaust and being assaulted by noise.

Urban living is a joke. You're expected to pay a fortune for what amounts to mental torture.





Imagine a cleanly and quiet city, with sizable gardens and wide open parkland, and architectural edifices that nurture the soul rather than stifling it.

Why would people choose to live in squalor, surrounded by noise, pollution, diseased throngs, and boring architecture, when a better alternative exists?

You must be a riot at parties.

I cannot imagine how bad your sperging and "well awkswelly" bullshit is in real social situations. Just killing any conversation in the air with wikipedia-read-smugness.

Christ.
 
Why haven't you moved out of the city then-- Wait nevermind, I don't want to imagine what horrors you would inflict on your new rural neighbors; Better to keep you in your urban containment zone.

I don't live in the city, myself. I don't think I could stand it for even a moment, and the rent is frankly insane.


Who in the hell wants to blow half their paycheck on a dingy apartment, step outside their front door, trip over a sleeping homeless person and fall face-first in their shit and piss, and then stand up and find used heroin needles sticking out of their arms?



Literally fucking Mumbai-tier, for like $2000+ a month. No thanks.
 
It's hard not to.
No it's not. Just turn off the computer and go outside and be part of the world for a bit. It's not all doom and gloom!

Stop and think about this for a second. Why do white-collar workers need this huge support network of services, like dog-washers and shoe-shiners and bus drivers and pizza deliverymen?
How divorced from reality are you?

Why do office buildings even exist? Why don't people just telecommute and do their work from home? This pandemic showed it can be done. It showed that you don't have to actually be physically present at work to get work done. So why do it?
It'll be interesting to see what the productivity figures are everywhere once this thing winds down. But based on my own anecdotal data (sample size N=1), not a whole lot of work's getting done at home, and telecommuting for conference calls is often a crapshoot.

Why spend so much energy heating and air-conditioning and lighting an office building? Why waste fuel and risk your life driving on the road, possibly getting in a wreck and crunching your spine?
Yeah, you're right! Why spend all that energy heating and air-conditioning and lighting an office building for 100 people, when you can spend like 100 times that energy heating/air-conditioning/lighting 100 home offices instead? 🙄
 
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