>made our reality as good as any virtual reality could be?

The goal of utopian philosophers since the beginning of time.

Fine, it would actually be possible if you didn't have to then populate it with real humans who will destroy it in minutes.

Sadly, before you can have a perfect reality, you have to have perfect humans. And, after watching todays news, it seems there aren't many around..

Sounds more like the emptiness that Wittgenstein was alluding to when he more or less said that religion giving life after death doesn't actually solve the problem.

> but it just keeps jumping closer to the present.

Connor Leahy described this as a "pro gamer move"

> "If you see a probability distribution only ever update in one direction, just do the whole update instead of waiting for the predictable evidence to come, just update all the way bro."

Kinda looks like Kurzweil's "Law of Accelerating Returns"

The fact of your utility is fake in VR.

Think about the contextual picture, not just the outcome.

This goes the heart of what humans seek? Do they seek knowledge, beauty, tranquility, leisure or pleasure? The history of humanity shows that humans have always sought leisure and pleasure as the ultimate goals in their application of time and effort. Yes, there are others who seek knowledge or innovation. But that is a tiny fraction of humanity. So, yes, VR is the ultimate enabler of pleasure and leisure.

there are kids suffering with first-world problems in first world, while third-world kids would just be extremely happy with a full meal. Everyone wants to change there environment instead of themselves. It's just human tendency to think that the grass always greener on the other side

I'm doubtfully that politics will enable star trek space travel. No doubt that changing politics would improve things but never to the extent of vr.

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Augmented Reality is the near future. We won’t be pushed towards leaving our reality behind for a long while. Tech will move towards enhancing our normal reality dramatically over and over.

OpenAI isn't the only company working on AGI... There are other companies and governments working on this especially China

This. Pretty much!

Exercise can also be a form of entertainment.

Nice. Like the part where it nudged a few of you to meet.

!Remind me 4 years

While VR might be able to one day feel as real as the real world, the problem will still be that the VR is not tethered to the real world like our bodies are. If we decide to spend major amounts of time in VR, we risk alienating our consciousness from our body.

We could decide to augment our DNA or upload our consciousness entirely, but that would cease to be VR and would become an entirely new mode of existence.

No way icedrift and techno-skeptics cannot be wrong on anything ever, AGI in 2150 at EARLIEST and you're delusional if you think otherwise cuz I say so lmao

Heh!

But do understand that the username came from a personal vision I've had forever, dreaming about AI and an age of abundance making it so that we are able to build amazing, beautiful monolithic structures, and live in harmony with nature, but with none of the drawbacks and disease!

Lately, I've also been noticing that there's a sort of "juiciness" to fantasy, and a lot of people seek it out in literature, and I've been trying to probe more fundamentally what that's about.

I think the mere fact of us being human with ancient roots stretching back billions of years is actually amazing. William Shatner's experience of grief looking at the earth from space also hit me. I used to be a huge space nerd, but I've started to really deeply love the earth.

There is so much beauty in nature, but we've contextualized it in this scientific rationalist way, so even when we're in nature, we're seeing atoms and things.

Basically, there should be an attempt to return a sort of magic to nature - the magic we now seek out in fantasy. This is an aesthetic movement, but for me it's also a spiritual one. But, I came up with the idea as an atheist, so it's totally compatible with secularism. Heh.

Probably but suit yourself, square. Basically if it ever comes down to it even in a sorta utopia there is only so much you can experience. Especially as in reality you are still mortal. Even if you had a cortical stack getting resurrected from backup is probably unpleasant.

In VR your body can be in a very safe place, constantly tended by AI robotics who do medical procedures you won't be able to feel as needed - including lots of preventative surgery - and you can experience a lot of things, many of which would be very hazardous to experience in reality.

That group also consists of a disproportionate number of researchers who have actually studied AGI broadly.

The world has never seen anything like AI progress. AI capability has been advancing at nearly an order of magnitude improvement each year. It's completely unprecedented in human history. I think it's much more absurd to have such confidence AI progress will cease for no particular reason, which is what will have to happen if the post-2050 predictions are correct.

This is a solid answer.

I hope we can make the real world so good that VR, while it will have more variety, will not be able to fundamentally exceed real life when all things are considered.

I already addressed this in my post! Heh.

We don't know - and moreover, we don't even know that there is a physical reality outside of us in the first place. All external things may be virtual, and reality itself may be only made up of consciousness.

Just a fun little flip for you.

That said, we certainly need not assume that we're in a sort of matrix. Or, if we are, wouldn't it be better to use AI to jailbreak our own matrix?

> In VR everyone can be the king.

I support the right for people to make this choice, but I also do not endorse it as a choice in the way that I actually support widespread drug legalization, but I don't condone the use of hard drugs.

I believe it is psychologically unhealthy, and moreover, separating oneself from one's human form is going to carry a great many epistemological risks.

We can do both. In fact, if things go well, we will.

I imagine a future in which some people will stay in the physical and modify their bodies, their genes, their cognition to thrive in their environment. Some will become master engineers who dismantle and terraform worlds. But another branch of humanity will sublimate itself to other realities of modes of being. I think that's OK too; we should be free to evolve as we please.

>:)

:)