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Would you choose VirtualReality over reality?


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Would you choose Virtual Reality over physical reality?  

34 members have voted

  1. 1. Would you choose Virtual Reality over physical reality?

    • Yes
      9
    • No
      25


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No it seems like it wouldn't be quite right to live like that. I would also think it would be incredibly boring. It seems like I would miss out on so much if I did that.

But, isn't everyone missing out on so much because there are obstacles like "money", "weather", body malfunctions, etc... ?

So transferring to a virtual reality would mean you could delete these obstacles as much as you'd like ... meaning, missing out on something would not be a given.

Edited by Render
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I prefer not knowing what is around the next corner of life. So, no; I would not prefer virtual reality.

If I could extend my longevity via biological engineering, I would absolutely do so, however (I know that this thread is not about engineering). I think it would be fascinating to live for an eternity in the same state as I am now, to see how the world changes... to see what becomes of our planet, to see what technological progress we make. Ah, a man can dream... *Sigh*

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The sad truth is most of you have already traded reality for hyperreality.

Case in point: a backyard is not "part of nature", it is a hyperreality representation of nature.

Your online friend is not a real friend but a hyperreality version of a friend.

So fake you cannot admit it.

Hyperreality is used in semiotics and postmodern philosophy to describe an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced post-modern societies. Hyperreality is a way of characterizing what our consciousness defines as "real" in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter an original event or experience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality

And if you press the like button, you didn't really like this, it was a hyperreality version of like.

<3

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I would always choose the real thing- reality. Even though it is not perfect, still it is one of the most precious and important things that can happen to me or to anyone.

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The sad truth is most of you have already traded reality for hyperreality.

Case in point: a backyard is not "part of nature", it is a hyperreality representation of nature.

So what is a backyard trying to simulate?
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While I'd choose reality now (at my current age) I can forsee a time in the future when being elderly probably won't be all that great. At that point I'd be willing to entertain the notion of going into virtual reality.

  • Like 1
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So what is a backyard trying to simulate?

Nature especially if it has a garden. But going into a backyard garden is not going into nature at all.

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Nature especially if it has a garden. But going into a backyard garden is not going into nature at all.

I think you're confusing reality with natural.
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Nature especially if it has a garden. But going into a backyard garden is not going into nature at all.

Yet a garden IS an aspect of nature, you have real plants, real veggies that can be eaten by real people and real soil and real garden pests.

Just because one has a small plot for rhubarb and another for radishes doesn't mean it isn't a part of nature.

For many all they have IS a garden and don't have access to parks..oh wait, that isn't nature either is it?

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I think you're confusing reality with natural.

I don't think you understand what hyperreality means. It does not mean reality.

Yet a garden IS an aspect of nature, you have real plants, real veggies that can be eaten by real people and real soil and real garden pests.

Just because one has a small plot for rhubarb and another for radishes doesn't mean it isn't a part of nature.

For many all they have IS a garden and don't have access to parks..oh wait, that isn't nature either is it?

And you might not understand what nature truly is or perhaps where the line begins and ends between nature, true wilderness, and our manufactured versions of it. Read on and see if you believe the following treatments done to this rock resemble those we do with our yards.

A stack of craggy red Conway granite ledges, sculpted by frost heaves and glacial retreat, overlooks Profile Lake in New Hampshire's White Mountains. If you stand in just the right place, the rock formation conjures the image of a regal-looking man with a sharp nose and pointed beard.

Each year, five to six million visitors gaze at the rock face. The image ripples throughout the state and the virtual world. It appears on license plates, tourist brochures, Web sites, in a story by Hawthorne, in a poem by Daniel Webster, and in a painting by regional artist Isaac Sprague. A museum collects Old Man of the Mountain kitsch, displays its history, and sells memorabilia.

There's only one problem. The rock formation is no more natural than the faces of presidents at Mt. Rushmore. As early as 1915, preservationists adjusted cables and turnbuckles to keep slabs from slipping and distorting the Old Man's profile. Later, they sprayed bleach on his blemishes caused by lichen growth; filled unsightly "skin" cracks with epoxy, wire, and fiberglass; and studied upcoming needs for future facials by measuring what frost, gravity, and acid rain have done to his nose, forehead, and chin.

The Old Man joins peculiarly modern phenomena like the badlands of Disneyland or the duplicate of the Lascaux caves, where faked nature is as meaningful as nature itself. Scratch a Disney badland, and the chicken wire and plaster infrastructure reveals itself. Eviscerate a Disney hippo and it's all plastic, gears, and wire.

http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/2104/article/122/wilderness.and.the.hyperreal

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I don't think you understand what hyperreality means. It does not mean reality.

Show me where I said it was.

As a backyard is part of reality, perhaps you didn't read the definition you posted?

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Show me where I said it was.

As a backyard is part of reality, perhaps you didn't read the definition you posted?

You are still not demonstrating any understanding of what hyperreality is. A manicured lawn is hyperreal, it is not the wilds, it is not nature, and that is not reality if we consider it as part of nature. It is not that difficult to understand,

I am unsure what your point even is but if you think a lawn is reality because it is there but you don't understand how it is actually hyperreal and not real at all then you simply don't understand what hyperreality is.

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And to make it really simpe for you:

uncultivated wilds = real (nature)

manicured lawn = hyperreal (nature)

It cannot be made more simple than that for you.

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You are still not demonstrating any understanding of what hyperreality is. A manicured lawn is hyperreal, it is not the wilds, it is not nature, and that is not reality if we consider it as part of nature. It is not that difficult to understand,

I am unsure what your point even is but if you think a lawn is reality because it is there but you don't understand how it is actually hyperreal and not real at all then you simply don't understand what hyperreality is.

You don't get to redefine words, reality is not defined as nature only. According to your link on hyperreality, it is the "inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality". A lawn or backyard is not a simulation.
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And to make it really simpe for you:

uncultivated wilds = real (nature)

manicured lawn = hyperreal (nature)

It cannot be made more simple than that for you.

No matter how simple you try to make it, it is wrong. Your own link refutes you, as does the dictionary. Edited by Rlyeh
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No matter how simple you try to make it, it is wrong. Your own link refutes you, as does the dictionary.

If you actually clicked the link you would have seen a variation of the same because it is on the same page:

A well manicured garden (nature as hyperreal).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality

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If you actually clicked the link you would have seen a variation of the same because it is on the same page:

Some of the examples are questionable and contradictory with the original definition.
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It would be very easy for me to just say "no" here... but I'm not going to. I just feel as though the question is a bit more nuanced than a simple "yes-or-no" answer.

The concept of augmented or mixed reality is, fundamentally, the idea of mixing between "real" and "virtual" realities. If virtual reality technologies developed sufficiently that its quality and resolution became equal to (or, *gasp*, exceed) "real" reality, in every aspect (sound, sight, physics, smells, tastes... a "Matrix-like" scenario, basically), would it really be meaningful at all to distinguish between "real" and "virtual" in the first place? Sure, in our current time, the difference is very clear. But that might not be the case for very much longer.

Take the idea of a "Matrix" or simulated reality: it is utterly indistinguishable from "real" reality (it's also noteworthy that, though the idea wasn't much explored in the Matrix films, what if the reality experienced in the Matrix, one indistinguishable from our reality, was, in fact, of far poorer quality than the outside "real" reality?). For example, if I out and said "no", I would not accept virtual reality, because I'm biased towards things that are "real" and not imaginary, I would still, quintessentially, be leaving out a large portion of the puzzle. Given it is a genuine possibility that our "real" reality is, in fact, "virtual" in nature, if virtual reality were designed which rivaled or surpassed our own "real" reality in quality, then what difference would there really be between me playing billiards in "real" life or in a "virtual" life? At what point does one go from saying "that universe is only simulated; it's imaginary" to "that is a universe created by a computer"? Given we are not terribly far from being capable of doing such things, I think that views such as the polarized "real-or-virtual" model will gradually become more and more blurred.

Effectively, my answer to the question of this thread is neither "yes" nor "no'; rather, it might be more accurately expressed as a sort of: "when the time comes, will there even be a difference?".

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You don't get to redefine words, reality is not defined as nature only. According to your link on hyperreality, it is the "inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality". A lawn or backyard is not a simulation.

And you have demonstrated this working definition because you yourself are seemingly unable to tell where reality ends and hyperreality begins when it comes to the modern backyard.

Simulation is but one criteria of hyperreality. Furthermore simulation itself is virtual reality.

Hyperreality on the other hand is both the inability to distinguish between virtual reality and reality but also augmenting normal reality or suspending it to bring a desired product that is not real at all. Thus because it is related to the topic of virtual reality did I even bring up hyperreality but hyperreality extends beyond the domain of virtual reality.

Also initially you were insinuating my understanding of the article was incorrect and when that failed you are now finding fault with the whole article itself. I believe the fault is with your original disputation.

In another related issue many seem to think virtual reality is all about living in a computer or something. A phone conversation on an old school land line itself is a form of virutal reality. The fact is we are already living in virtual reality to some degree but definitely living in hyperreality. We have been living in hyperreality since the agricultural era began, rows and rows of corn is not real nature, it too is hyperreal.

The dangers of hyperreality are many and already all around us. If one looks they can begin to see the lines.

Virtuality and Simulation

Imagine that you participated in a world where all the objects and all the people seemed real enough to touch but you knew--somewhere in your mind--that what you were experiencing was both constructed, and mediated by technology. The telephone, for example. You're pretty sure you're having a conversation with your friend as if he were in the room with you, and it's easy to feel that he's right there. When you think about it, though, you realize he's not in the room, and the only way you can hear his voice is over the phone connection. You're in virtual reality.

http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/vr.htm

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Hyperreality on the other hand is both the inability to distinguish between virtual reality and reality but also augmenting normal reality or suspending it to bring a desired product that is not real at all. Thus because it is related to the topic of virtual reality did I even bring up hyperreality but hyperreality extends beyond the domain of virtual reality.
Also initially you were insinuating my understanding of the article was incorrect and when that failed you are now finding fault with the whole article itself. I believe the fault is with your original disputation.
Actually my problem was your refusal to use the definition of "reality". Which you still continue to ignore.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/reality

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Actually my problem was your refusal to use the definition of "reality". Which you still continue to ignore.

http://dictionary.re.../browse/reality

How cute, the dictionary defintion of reality. I think we all can agree on what reality is according to that.

The issue seems to be that some do not understand that when coupled with the notion of hyperreality that reality itself is no longer clearly demarcated. What reality is and isn't begins to breakdown once and only once hyperreality is introduced as a concept. The definition for reality then begins to get fuzzy.

Before that everything seems real!!! But the lines are actually blurry. Even your hamburger and hamburger bun from the local fast food place seem real until you realize much of it is not beef (patty) or flour (bun) at all but highfrutcose corn syrup. So it is a very "real" product. You can hold the hamburger in your hand. But you seem to get lost when understanding that it then becomes "hyperreal" when we consider is is mostly HFC and not authentic beef or flour so in this context the hamburger is no longer "real" as you would claim.

So I agree that a lawn is "real" according to your definition but you seem unable to understand how it no longer becomes real and becomes hyperreal instead once we add in a garden, hedgerows, plant a few trees to replace the ones we torn down before, and once a few birds return and insects we claim is is part of nature but nevermind that we destroyed the original habitat of the original birds and insects that belonged when we tore down all those trees and destroyed actual nature to make our existence.

Here is another simple example to illustrate because you seem to be having heaps of trouble:

You theoretically buy a copy of the video game Second Life. They send you the CD installer. It is real, the CD is real, the computer in front of you that will run the program is real, but the game itself is virtural reality. Now let us take it just one step further. Making a business and turning a profit, converting simoleans to real world dollar bills, becomes hyperreality when you are then spending time in the game world and fielding questions or complaints from your clients.

And an even more complex definition if you are up to it:

reality, hyperreality (1)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines reality foremost as "the quality of being real or having an actual existence" and supplements this with a definition of real as "having objective existence," and finally to exist as having "place in the domain of reality." These conventional definitions of reality represent a larger problem in the attempt to locate the real on the most basic level, for they are wholly circular, a set of signifiers reflecting back at each other lacking the grounding necessary to render meaning. This problem is not unique to the word ‘reality,’ indeed almost all words and signs are only able to refer back towards the internal exchange of other signs in order to produce a theoretical anchor. The slippage of reality, its elusiveness encountered even in a basic search for a definition, is an element of the hyperreal – a condition in which the distinction between the ‘real’ and the imaginary implodes. There is no static definition of hyperreality, and the interpretations employed by theorists vary on some of the most essential terms.

http://csmt.uchicago...yperreality.htm

I bolded parts myself to emphasize.

Edited by Chasingtherabbit
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Well done, you've resolved the problem, hyperreality is ambiguous and dependent on perception.

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Well done, you've resolved the problem, hyperreality is ambiguous and dependent on perception.

It is but not to the degree that you are imagining where you have a license to simply claim a lawn is not an example of hyperreality.

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It is but not to the degree that you are imagining where you have a license to simply claim a lawn is not an example of hyperreality.

Sure I can. Just as you can claim it isn't real or it is a simulation.
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