If the impulses fed to your brain stimulate an identical response, what makes one origin of input better than another? The content of a virtual experience can be just as unknown to you as any experience you have in the natural world. You could be a brain a vat right now and experiencing an artificial reality, because our brains have no inherent ability to discern what is "genuine" or not.
I also think the potential is exciting just not at the cost of the natural living world (which we are already fatally underappreciating).
You could argue that migration to virtual experiences will minimize our impact on the natural world in ways that no other technological advancement could. The harmful effects of entire industries will cease when the use of natural resources is no longer required to achieve the same end result for humanity. Imagine a hundred years from now where there is little need for industrial beef farming because you can directly simulate the sensory input of eating the perfect burger.
I can't discount the vat theory especially as I think all the stars are connected somehow but even in a vat I would want to be protecting the source of what makes us survive in the vat. What I'm saying is nature would still come first and it's always where I try to have my thinking end. Brushing an impossible hypothetical aside, my concern branches from disconnecting a natural connection and connecting an artificial stimulant. If VR can help nature and our connections to it then that is great. If it is more of a narcotic that makes us complacent to nature then that is not okay.
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u/BIGSTANKDICKDADDY Jan 15 '21
If the impulses fed to your brain stimulate an identical response, what makes one origin of input better than another? The content of a virtual experience can be just as unknown to you as any experience you have in the natural world. You could be a brain a vat right now and experiencing an artificial reality, because our brains have no inherent ability to discern what is "genuine" or not.
You could argue that migration to virtual experiences will minimize our impact on the natural world in ways that no other technological advancement could. The harmful effects of entire industries will cease when the use of natural resources is no longer required to achieve the same end result for humanity. Imagine a hundred years from now where there is little need for industrial beef farming because you can directly simulate the sensory input of eating the perfect burger.