Virtual Worlds

Personal Thoughts

Bridging the real and the virtual

No matter how hard we try, our virtual selves will inevitably be tethered to our physical selves. Interface with these virtual worlds through looking at our screens, typing on our keyboards, etc. even with a pseudonymous-web that is not supposedly tied to anything in the physical realm.

Related to: digital-commons

VR

Physical bodies perceive the senses that are input from the VR machine. Brain in a vat experiment? question of representation and whether we need embedded systems

LGBT community – exploring gender identity. Super easy to express this online, and flexibility to do this more safely in an online space.

Reality privilege:

Crypto

Still needs to be converted to fiat? Can we have a fully crypto economy?

Physical Touch

“One concern, though, is that some social skills may not develop as effectively when so many interactions exist online. We learn how we are and aren’t supposed to act by observing others and then having opportunities to act out our observations ourselves.”

“On the internet, you can pull the plug and walk away. There’s no forcing mechanism that makes us have to learn” -> how do we keep people digitally accountable ?

Dunbar and his colleagues demonstrated that very light touch triggers a cascade of endorphins that, in turn, are important for creating personal relationships. Can this be replicated virtually?

Descartes

First Meditation → skeptical doubts

Dream Argument

The God argument

Nozick

Experience machine

  1. If “how things seem to be” is the only thing that matters to us, we have no reason to refuse this offer

  2. we are hesitant to take up this offer (we have reasons to refuse it)

    1. “We want to docertain things, and not just have the experience of doing them.” (43)
    2. “… we want to be a certain way, to be a certain sort of person.” (43)
    3. We want to leave ourselves open to contact with a deeper reality.
    • what if we made machines to tackle all of this reasons? e.g. a transformation machine, result machine, etc.
    • these machines are disturbing because they are living our lives for us
  3. therefore, experiences aren’t the only thing that matter to us


Welcome weary traveler of the web, it looks like you've stumbled upon part of my web of thoughts and other things! Feel free to poke around but don't expect anything here to be remotely polished, accurate, or well-linked. This is mostly an internal thought dump that I've decided to publish in the hopes that something in here inspires someone or something. You can find a rough index here.