Would you spend the rest of your life in your own virtual reality?

Yikes, sounds like hell to me.

negative.

Sounds like madness to me.

negatory, seargant.

Hells yes.

No parent in the world is going to agree to this, it means you wouln’t actually be able to see your kid(s) grow up, just a simulation, and that’s not good enough.

I prefer reality to even the most sugarcoated fantasy.

No thank you.

Not me.

Matrix style? Yes!! The real world sucks! My virtual reality would have no bills and I could essentially do nothing for twenty years. Sign me up!

I mean one hundred years… even better.

lol@ madcapper. no way jose, no way in hell!

I don’t know, would there still be fluther?

lol @ loser ;D

You mean like in Abre los Ojos?

…one of my favorite movies of all time! I want to say more (about how it’s almost exactly like this question) but I don’t want to give anything away. Watch the movie!!!

Personally, I’m not sure, if it would mean missing out on what’s going on in the real world, then no.

Seems to me you could make an exact replica of this world but give yourself superpowers. :D

I’m in.

@La_chica_gomela: We watched that movie in Spanish in college. One of my favorite professors to this day, one of my favorite movies to this day. It is awesome!

Also: if you’ve seen Vanilla Sky, it is a less good remake of this film.

Isn’t that called “Second Life”?

I wouldn’t even spend the rest of my day there!

lol @scamp

Matrix -level? Hell yeah.

Who’d care about a rotting cadaver somewhere in the real world.

Or in Morpheus’ words:

…if real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain…

@TaoSan, but would you really want to just live a fake life, even if it’s all peaches ‘n’ cream? That wouldn’t really be living.

why would it be fake.

To be alive really is just a “culmination” of your senses, isn’t it?

My life is what I see, hear, feel, taste and smell. So yeah, why not.

I’d be a master of the Universe :) (if only my own)...

Turn the question around, if you had the power to shape the entire world to your liking, would you turn it down?

You have a point….

> if you had the power to shape the entire world to your liking, would you turn it down?

I think if we got everything our own way, we wouldn’t like it.

I have a horrible feeling that that’s actually something my mother told me when I was young and manifested, shall we say, another opinion.

Not a chance. I’d be tempted for about a minute…but in the end, I’ll take the real world, lumps and all.

lets see here…in this reality that I can create and manipulate any way I see…I could do any of the following…

-drive super sports cars all day if I wanted
-own a mansion
-rule the world
-have super powers like flying
-date super models
-not have to work for anything
-literally do anything I want to.

Yeah, I’d have to jump on that. I would keep everything the same as I know it now, with the exception of my self and my super powers, super wealth, and ability to attract super models. I would have friends in there with me too…I mean come on, I think it’d be awesome.

@steelmarket What happens after 100 years perceived time? and I’ve aged 20 years real time? Back to normal again? That would be the only downside really if it were the case.

And if I did live a 100 years perceived time…think of all the knowledge I could have learned inside there for 20 actual years. I’d be a genius…100 years of what could be learning compressed into only 20 years. I could learn countless languages, learn how to operate pretty much any set of equipment out there, Practice Law, Medicine, and the list just goes on…I really don’t see any draw back assuming family could join you while you were there.

I think one of the reasons we don’t all just kill ourselves is that there’s a hope for something different, something unexpected (however small or convoluted it may be) in each new day.

In life, it’s the pursuit of something that keeps you alive, not the attainment of that which you were seeking. If we were all just given what we wanted there would be no striving for it and thus it would be meaningless.

I say no, I wouldn’t want to live in the aforementioned hypothetical world. It might be nice to try for a few hours but that’s about it.

I think that if I was given exactly what I wanted I would go insane. There would be no unknown variables in life…just thinking about this is kind of tripping me out.

Also, I wouldn’t want what’s available for me to experience to be limited to what I can think up. I want unimaginable things to happen in the world.

However, I wouldn’t mind having a vacation spot like that, an ideal place to retreat to a few times a year. Could we make a deal?

I certainly would. Of course I would create it not in a blunt “now I got it all” – manner, but I’d integrate a lot of “variation” and achievement.

Something that is given for free has no value, so of course I’d still “create” an environment where all these notions would be addressed. Let’s put it that way, I’d make the unachievable achievable to me, and built in a couple of windfalls and revelations that would point me in the right direction.

And first and foremost, I’d make myself forget it’s virtual of course.

Let’s see how “unreal” you’ll perceive those spendable lottery millions once you don’t know they’re virtual.

HA THERE U HAVE IT ;)

Not for nothing did Cypher ask Agent Smith to remember nothing after reinsertion.

@random – to answer your question and expand the scenario, at the end of 20 years realtime, you die. Your meat body can only be sustained for 20 years.

The government will pay for your 20 years. But you lose all your govt benefits, SS, medicare, etc. You can go in any time after the age of 55. Many choose to go in after the age of 70+, consider it the ultimate retirement. Others go in earlier if they have a bad disease, injuries, etc.

that makes it interesting…I guess if one were to look at it like a retirement home, it’d be nice not to have to suffer for the elderly who have diseases, or something of the sort. I would still do it. I’d just have to wait until after I get really really old to say good bye to all my family.

I’ve been reading some SF books lately (Stross, Doctorow, Schroeder) that deal with possible futures where VR rules. Thought that I’d run a VR-inspired idea past this little virtual community and see what they said.

Ahhh, the ‘retirement’ angle changes things. Going in after age 70 might be a viable alternative, depending on how my life and ‘meat body’ were doing at that point in my life.

Now if I could wait until I was on my deathbed, sure I’d do it then.

@steelmarket lol great question

I’d want to test drive it for a few weeks first.

Just a thought…what if we were living in a VR right now. Only exceptions being that we’ve already pre-configured it to be a specific way. Interesting to think about just a bit. We could already be living in a fake world we’ve already thought up and paid for. How would you be able to know?

And now we dovetail nicely with this one.

If it was actually created on MY terms….I have to say I’d be pretty tempted. ;) For one thing, I’ve always wanted to fly…....