OMG WTF

[number1son]

Oh my droogy droogs.  What tales I have to tell of places far away and creatures that defy description.

That would be fun writing about Second Life like that.  But I'm frankly incapable.  In fact, I defy anyone to describe the place in terms other than their personal experience.  Intrigued by jigsawpig's comments, I signed up on a trial basis the other

Comments

[jigsawpig]

I think that mixing them up is actually the most logical, and the most sensible, approach. When you think about it, the distinction between what we conventionally regard as 'real' and what we think of as 'virtual' is purely an evolutionary accident. We happen, for example, and for reasons of historical convenience, to come pre-equipped with sensors that detect electromagnetic radiation within a narrow band, and air pressure waves with frequencies ranging from tens of cycles per second to a few kilocycles. These detectors were presumably the ones most useful to us in terms of finding small animals to eat, and avoiding being eaten ourselves by larger animals, during our long period of climbing up the Darwinian tree.

Our brains, quite understandably, have over the millenia migrated the routine pre-processing of raw signals from these sensors into hard-wired 'application-specific' electro-chemical subsystems, and present our conscious minds with the high-level scene descriptions, or event notifications, more suited to decision-making. For some reason, we have decided to call this quite restricted, and mostly derived or inferred, picture of our environment 'reality'.

As technology develops to provide us with additional sensory inputs so as to be able to monitor and react to events not detectable by our biological senses, so too we will inevitably have to broaden our definition of 'reality'. For example, most people now view telephone conversations as 'real', and a natural extension of their ability to speak, and to hear. I see very little difference between that, and extending our view of reality to include our perceptions, and our interactions, in the additional environments to which we are now starting to gain access. These are now the 'senses' relevant to the way we live, because the environment we are in is no longer just us and our pack starving in a cave, with saber-tooth tigers prowling outside.

We have never ever had even the slightest connection with 'real' Reality, whatever that might be, what we have had is a rather limited set of parametric sensors providing crude feeds sufficient to drive the basic inference engines which dictate our behaviour. As our needs change, so too will we adjust our front-end processors to ensure that they continue to capture, analyse and present, as best they are able, those aspects of reality relevant to our survival, or our social functioning.

[number1son]

I can sense quantum mechanics just around the corner. If it pokes its nose out, I shall run away.

Actually, despite your using up four months' quota of long words on me, I can see what you're saying. I'm a little riddled by the idea that my reality is essentially false (smells like religion) but what you are saying about the limited capability of our sensors makes a lot of sense. Especially as we commonly use various equipments to extend our own sensory range a little further.. who is to say what the limit is and what we'll see?

Here I must confess that whilst in SL, I find it faintly ridiculous to be reacting with a bunch of animated pixels. I even found myself, quite involuntarily, expressing pleasure at a virtual hug!

Similarly, why am I shy at initiating a conversation with a beautiful avatar? This bears investigation. For the moment, much more compelling than figuring out how to build a house...