Simulated Reality: The last invention by man? - Why go out when you can plug in?

[Grinrow]

What if that was the plan by scummy assholes running the show all along: make the real world so shitty that people would retreat into VR - a realm where they can be easily completely controlled?

Knowing Silicon Valley I wouldn't be surprised. All I want from Vr is to be able to come home from work chill out with my boys on vr and fuck my vr girlfriend. But those fucking belt weight pansies had to fuckin ruin it.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Can you really be completely controlled though?

If tech can fool your senses into thinking you're eating lobster instead of crap (Matrix), who knows what else it can do? Not to mention the manipulation of the media to give you a filtered worldview, like via all this censorship and social engineering.

 

[Dom Cruise]

If tech can fool your senses into thinking you're eating lobster instead of gruel, who knows what else it can do?

But all it would take is a few Good Samaritans to release some hacks and suddenly your average person can have literally godlike powers within this virtual universe.

But anyway, to be honest reality is already dead as a concept, look at the transgender thing, do you think they care about reality? Does mass media care about reality when it comes to Trump?

We've already laid the groundwork for reality taking a holiday, why not go the next step?

 

[Varg Did Nothing Wrong]

Can you really be completely controlled though?

Yes. If your brain is being interfaced with to such a degree that you experience what's being shown to you as if it were real, it will be trivial to implant subconscious ideas into your head, steer your thoughts in a specific direction, and make you think all the while that you're coming to those thoughts of your own free will.

They're doing it now with predictive algorithms and advertising. The past 60 years has been nothing but a study of human behavior and how to affect it.

 

[L50LasPak]

You are late to this, one of the most spectacular and chilling sci-fi stories ever told in just a few panels by a dumb jokey webcomic has already beat you to this:

Spoiler: FULL RES WARNING

Comic is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by the way. I don't have the link offhand, I actually saved this one to my computer because I found it so profound.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Yes. If your brain is being interfaced with to such a degree that you experience what's being shown to you as if it were real, it will be trivial to implant subconscious ideas into your head, steer your thoughts in a specific direction, and make you think all the while that you're coming to those thoughts of your own free will.

They're doing it now with predictive algorithms and advertising. The past 60 years has been nothing but a study of human behavior and how to affect it.

I suppose, but I'm thinking of a VR metaverse as just an extension of our modern internet and while for sure there's many attempts to try to control it, it's still pretty free at the same time.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

We've already laid the groundwork for reality taking a holiday, why not go the next step?

The past 60 years has been nothing but a study of human behavior and how to affect it.

When I was a little kid, I thought the future would be like the Jetsons and 2001: A Space Odyssey IRL - flying cars and moon colonies. Instead we get a Clown World of shit with none of that, but instead increasing control through excessive invasive tech.

Also I doubt "Good Samaritans" could make any hacks not approved by people in power widely available, at least not for very long.

 

[Dom Cruise]

When I was a little kid, I thought the future would be like the Jetsons and 2001: A Space Odyssey IRL - flying cars and moon colonies. Instead we get a Clown World of shit with none of that, but instead increasing control through excessive invasive tech.

Also I doubt "Good Samaritans" could make any hacks not approved by people in power widely available, at least not for very long.

Back To The Future 2 is always what I hoped the future would be like as a kid.

 

[Unyielding Stupidity]

Giving tech companies even more power over individuals seems like an incredibly bad idea. You'd just end up getting your brain fried by your SR tech because you didn't eat the bugs or whatever current viewpoint the tech companies have at that point.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

If we're making a simulated reality that "replaces reality," the best way to do so would be a decentralized thing where you don't have to be connected to others all the time - and a thing you can easily unplug from, rather than going with cybernetic implants.

 

[Emperor Julian]

Our species has desired to escape this world for millenia, we rejected the philosophies that embraced life and instead held the ones which embrace some hypothetical fantasy world where you're not fuck ugly and you're not scared all the time. Plato's cave springs to mind-imagine being so limited in scope that you think of the world as a shitty cave and the people in it as cretins?

Hopefully they'll be some luddites with the wisdom to survive us and reject such a deadly trap when it occurs. Assuming a AI doesnt take the job they'll probably get the honor of being the true heirs of our post-human society as the rest of us cum in increasingly bizarre and esoteric ways.