My random thoughts

[funkervogt]

People commonly pursue things (e.g. - money, a woman, fame) out of the mistaken belief the thing will make them happy once they get it. Once they do, they realize it didn't help as they thought it would. FIVR and more advanced technologies will let you experience realistic simulations of other lifestyles so you can figure out what actually satisfies you. Then, you can pursue that outcome in the real world. It would be a huge time-saver.

[firestar464]

Or you can just keep to the FIVR

[Vakanai]

Or you can just keep to the FIVR

Disagree. This is an extremely dystopian view presented like it's a utopia. Instead of seeking a real, true, deeply meaningful connection with someone who might actually care about you...you choose a program that's designed to act like it. Instead of seeking to accomplish something, you settle for just pretend. Instead of winning an argument based on your own skills and views, you just go against an NPC designed to lose to you. I could keep coming up with examples, but I think the point is made. A world full of people living in VR pods, never interacting with another human being, just living in a video game world. I'm not against FIVR, but I loathe this idea of living in the Matrix, only "better" because you're treated like some god-king and don't need to try and be a somewhat decent human being because you only interact with an AI designed to adore you no matter how sociopathic, selfish, and self centered you become. That's not a future we should be rooting for.

[firestar464]

At least the assholes would be able to do whatever in their pods so that they don't bother the rest of society. Furthermore many of us do want to be challenged, and the inverse of your argument would also be true- one could make it so that the NPC is designed to be a challenge based on one's skills and views.

[Vakanai]

At least the assholes would be able to do whatever in their pods so that they don't bother the rest of society. Furthermore many of us do want to be challenged, and the inverse of your argument would also be true- one could make it so that the NPC is designed to be a challenge based on one's skills and views.

Not if the answer to everything everyone suggests is "stick to the FIVR." That whole train of thought basically ends at there being no society. Just robots or whatever doing all the work making sure we don't die in our pods as we become spoiled children incapable of interacting with other humans in a meaningful way. Need a girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever? Date an NPC in FIVR!

And the argument that some people will ask for the NPCs to be made challenging isn't somehow going to fix that notion. You decide when "people" are allowed to be challenging, allowed to disagree with you, because you don't interact with people anymore, just an AI that simulates what you want. Like if this were some FIVR reality and you decided you had enough of me not agreeing with you know, you could just ask the AI to tone my challenge setting mode down so I'd agree with you. That's not something we should be after, a world where you can't handle coexisting with other human beings because they're not controlled by you, not designed to cater to your whims and wants.

The idea that people, experiences, dreams and goals, true accomplishments can be replaced entirely with VR is highly dystopian. Making it to the top of Mt Everest isn't an accomplishment if it's done in a simulation where you got to pick the difficulty level you were comfortable with every step of the way. It's not really fame if you're singing to a packed stadium when no one there is real and are just programmed to like your singing no matter how much or little or even if you practiced or put forth any effort at all.

Escapism can be a truly, wonder, amazing, healing thing. We all need to escape from reality sometimes. But it has to be temporary, not permanent. If the escape becomes your entire reality, and this is encouraged for humanity as a whole like it's some kind of utopian ideal or ultimate goal, we lose everything. The value of human connection, experience, and growth becomes valueless.

[firestar464]

Ultimately the point is allowing people to choose. People like you and I who like challenges will be able to challenge ourselves and people who like it easy can take it easy (I'd expect at least some to eventually get bored with "easy" mode anyway). Only problem I could forsee is if some sort of apocalyptic event were to force everyone out of FIVR, people would be incapable of dealing with reality. By then it'd be extremely unlikely however; we'd either already be extinct or virtually immune to any event of such magnitude by the time we reach that level of technological progress.

[Vakanai]

Ultimately the point is allowing people to choose. People like you and I who like challenges will be able to challenge ourselves and people who like it easy can take it easy (I'd expect at least some to eventually get bored with "easy" mode anyway). Only problem I could forsee is if some sort of apocalyptic event were to force everyone out of FIVR, people would be incapable of dealing with reality. By then it'd be extremely unlikely however; we'd either already be extinct or virtually immune to any event of such magnitude by the time we reach that level of technological progress.

I believe in choice, I'm just against this "just keep to the FIVR" attitude. I believe people can and should do whatever they want, but whenever anyone expresses interest in using VR to do anything as just planning or prepping for real life, we shouldn't immediately respond by telling them why bother with the RL and encourage them to just stay in the VR. You can still maintain the choice and freedom without the active encouragement of FIVR over real life or the dismissal of real life. It's more that attitude and assumption that makes me prickly than anything else.

Of course I also don't believe most people will choose to live "in the Matrix" aka most of their time in FIVR. As much as certain types of individuals in VR and futurist spaces assume that, I think they're really just blinded by what they want and think that will become the majority. I think the truth is that FIVR will be like where videogames are now - wildly popular with people spending a lot of time with it, but almost no one actually chooses to ignore real life forever just for gaming.

[firestar464]

I mean, by then we'd probably make the virtual world real life, in that we are able to share a virtual space. Given that such a virtual space would be able to accurately simulate the real world and more, it makes sense that we'd do most our stuff there while robots expand out into the rest of the universe in the real world for the purposes of building datacenters and stuff

[Vakanai]

I mean, by then we'd probably make the virtual world real life, in that we are able to share a virtual space. Given that such a virtual space would be able to accurately simulate the real world and more, it makes sense that we'd do most our stuff there while robots expand out into the rest of the universe in the real world for the purposes of building datacenters and stuff

Why would we do most our stuff there instead of in the real world? Your argument is that if VR can emulate the real world, we should all move to VR cause?

So our place is to play videogames and let robots do all the work of getting to go out and see the cosmos.

Eh, meh. Maybe, but I hope for a more interesting future than that. I want to merge human and machine - expand human minds with BCI and nanobots, giving us superhuman intelligence, of giving AI synthetic brain cells and emotional intelligence, of mixing both together to the point no one is sure if they're technically human or AI and it doesn't matter. That we change forms and bodies at a whim, going from biological to technological to back again as needed or as felt like. Where we get to go out into space and explore distant galaxies, and extend our lifetimes into the billions, perhaps trillions of years. I imagine myself living as part of a Dyson sphere around one of the last red dwarves in the universe before entropy leaves everything cold and lifeless to the void. Even if VR could emulate that, it wouldn't be the same.

[firestar464]

Agree that merging good. Also the idea of a singular body/POV may be pointless anyway; one can simultaneously chill in a virtual environment while mind controlling and perceiving the universe through a probe

[Vakanai]

Agree that merging good. Also the idea of a singular body/POV may be pointless anyway; one can simultaneously chill in a virtual environment while mind controlling and perceiving the universe through a probe

Agreed that a singular body POV will be pointless, but unless we find some way around the hard speed limit of light we won't really be able to control such distant flung drones in real time. Heck we can't control drones on Mars in real time. Admittedly a superior AGI/ASI enhanced hybrid intelligence would be able to control such drones with a bit more ease than we currently do, if only because it can plan, decide, and respond faster than a team of human scientists and specialists, but it will never get around that delay without some sort of breakthrough in wormholes or similar high concept physics technology.

Of course you don't need to control something light years away to control something in real time - a digital or whatever clone of you could control it. Have two way communications so your two "brains" will update what the other knows, least what the other knew however many centuries it took for the signal to reach, and even if there is drift between the minds so they no loner are perfect clones, they're still keeping in touch and keeping an old yest still evolving baseline.

[funkervogt]

After a large building burned down in Tennessee, the Amish community came together and rebuilt it in eight days.
https://mainstreetmediatn.com/articles/ ... ight-days/

This will become common in the future once robot workers are everywhere.

[funkervogt]

In The Matrix, the Agents could take over the bodies of people inside the simulation, against their will. In a future where humans commonly have cybernetic brain implants and androids are everywhere, something very similar could become possible. Malevolent AGIs could hack the minds of those humans and androids and temporarily take them over.

[funkervogt]

There are two futures for me:

1) I'm dead, in which case I've got nothing to worry about.

2) I live long enough to live forever. In which case, I keep blinking out of the concocted digital reality because I realize it's fake.

[funkervogt]

Before the old FutureTimeline forum content was deleted because we switched to a new server, I copied and pasted many of the threads into a .txt file. Reading the ones from 2020 is eerie. Most of the predictions we had about things like the future capabilities of LLMs were spot on or too conservative.

[funkervogt]

Our species arose 200,000 years ago. During the first 190,000 years of that (95%), humans lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. No one had the freedom to choose a profession--you either hunted, gathered, or stayed in the village cooking.

Around 10,000 years ago, agriculture was invented, and most of the human population turned into farmers. Among them, there was almost no freedom to choose a profession. If you were male, you would almost certainly copy whatever profession your father had, which in most cases was small farmer. In other cases, you would follow him into a trade like blacksmithing, the bureaucracy, or royal leadership. In rare cases (especially if you were born into a richer family), you would be able to choose your profession, but the available options were few in number. Women had no freedom of choice at all and were consigned to motherhood and household duties.

This condition persisted, with only painfully slow and small improvement, until about 250 years ago. In other words, it spanned 4.875% of the human race's existence.

The Industrial Revolution ended that era and started a new one where average people had more control over their destiny in some ways, but less in others. The abundance provided by factory output and new technologies freed huge numbers of people from the hand-to-mouth existence so they could indulge in new things. Population transfers to the cities also concentrated people, providing everyone with more avenues for stimulation and experience. However, factory work was in many ways more soul-crushing than farming and independent trade work. Opportunities for a good life and for real control over one's destiny were still rare.

It wasn't until about 120 years ago when large numbers of humans started gaining comfort and control over their lives due to the rise of the middle class, progressive government reforms, and mass education. We are still living in this era, which represents a pitiful 0.06% of the time our species has existed. Unlike our distant ancestors, we have many options for work and study, can control our own fate to a large degree, and can have a real impact on the world if we devote ourselves to it and have the talent.

But our current era will probably end this century thanks to the rise of AI and robots. Once human labor is obsolete, possibilities for gainful work will vanish, and any studies you undertake will be meaningless since an average machine will be a million times smarter than you. In one sense, humans living in the next era will be more freedom since lack of jobs will leave them with more personal time and technology will provide them with infinite options for recreation. However, whatever you choose to do will have no impact on the world and little or none on anyone else.

We're living in a historical eyeblink that represents the peak of human agency and freedom to do impactful things with our lives.

[firestar464]

And yet people want to artificially prop up the institution of work

[funkervogt]

I forgot to mention something: because nearly all members of our species spent the first 99.875% of our existence without the freedom to choose studies and careers, we didn't have time to evolve inborn instincts or effective social institutions for matching ourselves with whatever we are best suited for. Therefore, it's unsurprising that people at age 18 in Western cultures usually have no idea what they want to do for a living, or if they do have an idea, they end up changing it later. Nor is it surprising that so many adults "fall into" jobs that they have little passion for and look back with regret at not choosing something different earlier in life. Having choice over the direction of our lives is, from an evolutionary standpoint, a completely new condition that we remain unprepared for.

Technology will let each person find his passion and calling in life, but the bitter irony is that by the time technology can do this, the fruits of the person's labor will be worthless thanks to automation.

[funkervogt]

If AI does everything better than humans can, then it will improve the charity sector. You'll be able to know exactly which charity creates the most benefit per dollar donated, and exactly how much you'll need to give and to whom to save a human life.

[firestar464]

Not only save but improve.