Well, there’s no reason to think you’d be completely isolated from top level reality.
Hmm. I hadn’t thought very much about blends of reality and virtual reality like that. I’ve encountered that idea but hadn’t really thought about it.
you might be a sociopath.
You took one example way too far. That wasn’t intended as an essay on my views of friendship. The words “one of the things that creates bonds” should have been a big hint that I think there’s more to friendship than that. Why did you suddenly start wondering if I’m a sociopath? That seems paranoid, or it suggests that I did something unexpected.
Rationality is about maximizing your values.
Okay, but the reason why rationality has a special ability to help you get more of what you want is because it puts you in touch with reality. Only when you’re in touch with reality can you understand it enough to make reality do things you want. In a simulation, you don’t need to know the rules of reality, or how to tell the difference between true and false. You can just press a button and make the sun revolve around the earth, turn off laws of physics like gravity, or cause all the calculators to do 1+1 = 3.
In a virtual world where you can get whatever you want by pressing a button, what value would rationality have?
Additionally, reality and virtual reality can get a lot fuzzier than that. If AR glasses become popular, and a protocol exists to swap information between them to allow more seamless AR content integration, you could grab all the feeds coming in from a given location, reconstruct them into a virtual environment, and insert yourself into that environment, which would update with the real world in real time. People wearing glasses could see you as though you were there, and vice versa. If you rented a telepresence robot, it would prevent people from walking through you, and allow you to manipulate objects, shake hands, that sort of thing. The robot would simply be replaced by a rendering of you in the glasses. Furthermore, you could step from that real environment seamlessly into an entirely artificial environment, and back again, and overlay virtual content onto the real world. I suspect that in the next twenty years, the line between reality and virtual reality is going to get really fuzzy, even for non-uploads.
In a simulation, you don’t need to know the rules of reality, or how to tell the difference between true and false. You can just press a button and make the sun revolve around the earth, turn off laws of physics like gravity, or cause all the calculators to do 1+1 = 3.
Try doing that in World of Warcraft, and you’ll find your account canceled.
The words “one of the things that creates bonds” should have been a big hint that I think there’s more to friendship than that. Why did you suddenly start wondering if I’m a sociopath? That seems paranoid, or it suggests that I did something unexpected.
Well, then there’s your answer to the question ‘what is friendship good for’ - whatever other value you place on friendship that makes you neurotypical. I was just trying to point out that that line of reasoning was silly.
Okay, but the reason why rationality has a special ability to help you get more of what you want is because it puts you in touch with reality. Only when you’re in touch with reality can you understand it enough to make reality do things you want. In a simulation, you don’t need to know the rules of reality, or how to tell the difference between true and false. You can just press a button and make the sun revolve around the earth, turn off laws of physics like gravity, or cause all the calculators to do 1+1 = 3. In a virtual world where you can get whatever you want by pressing a button, what value would rationality have?
Well, you have to get to that point, for starters. And, yes, you do need some level of involvement with top-level reality. To pay for your server space, if nothing else. Virtual environments permit a big subset of life (play, communication, learning, etc. much more efficiently than real life), with a few of the really horrifying sharp edges rounded off, and some additional possibilities added.
There are still challenges to that sort of living, both those imposed by yourself, and those imposed by ideas you encounter and by your interactions with other people. Rationality still has value, for overcoming these sorts of obstacles, even if you’re not in imminent danger of dying all the time.
Hmm. I hadn’t thought very much about blends of reality and virtual reality like that. I’ve encountered that idea but hadn’t really thought about it.
You took one example way too far. That wasn’t intended as an essay on my views of friendship. The words “one of the things that creates bonds” should have been a big hint that I think there’s more to friendship than that. Why did you suddenly start wondering if I’m a sociopath? That seems paranoid, or it suggests that I did something unexpected.
Okay, but the reason why rationality has a special ability to help you get more of what you want is because it puts you in touch with reality. Only when you’re in touch with reality can you understand it enough to make reality do things you want. In a simulation, you don’t need to know the rules of reality, or how to tell the difference between true and false. You can just press a button and make the sun revolve around the earth, turn off laws of physics like gravity, or cause all the calculators to do 1+1 = 3.
In a virtual world where you can get whatever you want by pressing a button, what value would rationality have?
You still need to figure out what you want.
Unless the virtual world is capable of figuring out what you want itself at least as well as you can. In which case bravo, press the button, you win.
Additionally, reality and virtual reality can get a lot fuzzier than that. If AR glasses become popular, and a protocol exists to swap information between them to allow more seamless AR content integration, you could grab all the feeds coming in from a given location, reconstruct them into a virtual environment, and insert yourself into that environment, which would update with the real world in real time. People wearing glasses could see you as though you were there, and vice versa. If you rented a telepresence robot, it would prevent people from walking through you, and allow you to manipulate objects, shake hands, that sort of thing. The robot would simply be replaced by a rendering of you in the glasses. Furthermore, you could step from that real environment seamlessly into an entirely artificial environment, and back again, and overlay virtual content onto the real world. I suspect that in the next twenty years, the line between reality and virtual reality is going to get really fuzzy, even for non-uploads.
Try doing that in World of Warcraft, and you’ll find your account canceled.
Well, then there’s your answer to the question ‘what is friendship good for’ - whatever other value you place on friendship that makes you neurotypical. I was just trying to point out that that line of reasoning was silly.
Well, you have to get to that point, for starters. And, yes, you do need some level of involvement with top-level reality. To pay for your server space, if nothing else. Virtual environments permit a big subset of life (play, communication, learning, etc. much more efficiently than real life), with a few of the really horrifying sharp edges rounded off, and some additional possibilities added.
There are still challenges to that sort of living, both those imposed by yourself, and those imposed by ideas you encounter and by your interactions with other people. Rationality still has value, for overcoming these sorts of obstacles, even if you’re not in imminent danger of dying all the time.