Australian science fiction writer John Birmingham has an interesting discussion of the possibility that we might all end up living in a holodeck forever (HT: Instapundit). If advancing technology ever allows us to create a virtual reality environment that truly felt "real" (as Star Trek's fictional Holodeck does), it would be easy to program experiences that are far more stimulating and pleasurable than anything we could get in the material world. Would the vast majority of humanity then choose to spend all their time in the holodeck? I don't know. But it's an interesting possibility.
The issue is not a new one. Political philosopher Robert Nozick raised a similar question back in 1974, when he considered the possibility of an "experience machine" - effectively the same thing as the holodeck, except that the participants might not know that they weren't in the "real" world. Nozick argued that living your life in an experience machine would be undesirable. But I suspect that a lot of people won't be deterred by his and other arguments against it.
The issue is not immediately urgent. Despite the eager hopes of Trekkies and others, we don't yet have a working holodeck. But advances in virtual reality technology make it a more pressing concern than it was back when Nozick wrote about it. On balance, I tend to think that there is enough diversity of preferences that we won't ever have Birmingham's nightmare scenario under which we all "end up Matrixing ourselves in very short order." Some people would stay out because they are achievement-oriented, and others for ethical or religious reasons. But it's hard to say for sure.
o Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7 (Subject termination advised)
If we enter a VR world, eventually we'll be turned off by whoever or whatever remains outside.
There is a really good book call Altered Carbon that is only a few years old where people's consciousness is captured in a little shunt in your spine and bodies become "sleeves". One interesting twist on this was when you are sentenced to prison they just take your shunt and you live in a virtual prison for your term. The extra sucky part was you didn’t get your body back when your time was served. I can't remember what the rules were but you could go in one race and age and come out in an entirely different body. Made for some difficult family situations. Of course the rich lived forever in perfectly young healthy cloned sleeves.
The story line is great though and the main character is good. Ex UN soldier where rather than send ships to colonies to bust up revolts they would train people (like the main character) in adapting to new bodies and situations and then digitally shoot them to the revolting planets into new sleeves (combat sleeves sometimes). They would adapt quickly and infiltrate the planet in various ways to stop rebellions. Very cool book.
In order to make the experience authentic, wouldn't you have to remove the ability of the person inside of the machine to know that it was all fake? While there are a host of human experiences that can be simulated - Mr. Birmingham mentions the five senses - there are many that cannot be replicated, such as human interaction, mental stimulation (query whether it can ever be feigned), love, compassion, and, not to sound like a Lifetime movie, the strength of character that comes from facing adversity. In order to develop those feelings, the VR machine would have to (paradoxically) make the person inside suffer, or experience something akin to suffering... which kind of defeats the purpose of a happy, feel-good machine.
I suspect, incidentally, that Christians would never go for this. (The list of people who wouldn't submit to such an existence likely extends beyond Christians, but I mentioned them because I cannot imagine that a group of people who believe that the height of human happiness is a loving relationship with their Creator would voluntarily submit themselves to an existence that cuts themselves off from such a relationship.)
I don't know about the "vast majority", but permit me to familiarize you with certain insidious Holodeck Simulators known as "World of Warcraft" and "Second Life".
(And Everquest before them, and Ultima Online before that..)
My recollection is that it was more like wall-sized television than virtual reality. There may have been some interactivity, but the viewer was essentially passive.
I'm not sure why you assume that multiplayer VR would be more popular than single-player, assuming the "NPCs" in a single-player scenario were sufficiently lifelike. Multiplayer VR would quickly turn into something resembling the real social order--albeit one in which people can fly, cast spells, whatever. But there would certainly be social hierarchy and unequal distribution of wealth. Plenty of people might prefer the single-player version with a world full of adoring-- and pliable-- simulacra.
No but they'd regulate it anyway.
Short version: it didn't work out. Quality books, IMO.
In the year 5555
Your arms hangin limp at your sides
Your legs got nothin' to do
Some machine's doin' that for you
And authentic animals that end up eating the kids. The classic twist of "be careful what you wish for."
Can't find the name of the story on google, sorry.
Most of the objections raised in this thread are pretty silly.
Why wouldn't the people outside switch us off? Umm, for the same reason criminals don't kill you. They have nothing to gain and much to lose and you pose no harm or threat to them.
How would we pay for it or keep the electricity on? Well, we could work inside the holodeck just as easily as outside it. Likely what would be valued are things like new content, works of art, and other things that can be produced in a virtual reality as easily as in the real one. It's unlikely that maintaining such a system would be any more expensive in real terms than playing WoW is today.
Who would maintain/watch it? Who maintains your computer now or watches you when you play WoW? If it broke, you could buy a new one or have it fixed. A few minutes or hours in reality would be no worse than having your television break.
As for whether people would want to live inside it and spend all of most of their time there, I think that would largely depend on the state of the outside world. If we can easily travel among the planets and have our own real paradises, then why stay in VR? If not, and the planet is crowded and polluted, then why leave?
Humans could go either way. Check back in a few thousand years.
"The Veldt." In the collection "The Illustrated Man."
David Schwartz:
There are already people around the world called "gold farmers" (mostly in China, apparently), who spend hour upon hour in World of Warcraft doing really tedious mining, fishing, and the like, who get paid a pittance (but enough to live on). It's a very small step from that to putting someone in a full-immersion rig and leting them be the equivalent of Cast Members at Disney World...
Some post-human civilizations are "solipsistic" in that they spend all their time with conjured-up experiences rather than interacting with the real world. This doesn't spoil anything much, but they end up in pretty bad trouble when a real-world threat arises that just may turn them all into paste...and the civilizations that looked outward do better.
First, it's kind of amusing to see people whose primary work output is strings of symbols and intellectual argument taking the position that if people's consciousness moved into a virtual reality, they'd cease to live productive lives and would become irrelevant to the Real World. There's no reason to believe that they would be more limited in their perceptions than those who weren't "wired," no reason to believe that the same technologies that allowed reality simulation wouldn't support telepresence, with much greater mobility through the net than would be possible for those lacking VR interfaces. The argument that those off-line would take control and starve those on-line makes no more inherent sense than the argument that today's farmers would decide to stop growing food and starve the non-farm population.
Second, we are facing a serious energy crisis. We can't keep generating carbon dioxide at this rate, and it will be difficult to find alternative energy sources. As telepresence improves, more people will be able to work as effectively at home as they do in an office. They may be able to do so without the social isolation that can occur with today's modest systems. If that happens, the amount of energy we need to spend on transportation will drop. If VR improves, the amount of real leisure goods people need/want may drop.
What exactly is meant by the 'real world?' Holodecks are basically artificial worlds designed for entertainment. How are holodecks different in theory (not in effectiveness) from:
rock concerts
football games
tv
movies
books
daydreams
malls
computer games
anything else that is used for entertainment?
I don't think there is a theoretical difference between reading a book (and pretending to be an orphan in Dickensian England) or sitting on a holodeck, and pretending to be an orphan in Dickensian England.
And once you remove everything that is entertainment from our lives, and sleep time, and everything that is simple life maintenance (eating, going to the bathroom, bathing, etc). How much is left?
Its basically work, and interactions with human beings. And if could choose between 8 hours in a holodeck, and 8 hours in a cube farm, it would be an easy choice.
Thus, as far as I can tell, the 'real world' is 'other human beings.' And being in a holodeck, absent human contact, may be unhealthy, but no more unhealthy than being a perpetual reader, or tv watcher, or computer game player.
Sk
Karl Schroeder Lady of Mazes
Also the background details in Schroeder's Sun of Suns
Surgeries would happen in the holodeck, as the doctor would have as many clean utensils as needed. The patient would stay in a Holodeck until they were healed, as the "stitches" the doctor left inside their body aren't real, anyway (never have to take them out, just turn off the holodeck when you're done).
Manufacturing? Done. No need to "tool up" the assembly line, just load the right one from memory and fire up the holodeck.
One person once said, "When we make holdoecks, the only job left will be squigeeing the floor of the holodeck" (he was making sexual implications), but of course, the holodeck could create a janitor to do that.
And, once we've got them, there's no reason I've ever heard to not put them EVERYWHERE - hallways, bedrooms, kitchens, etc.
Everyone can have all the servants they want. Assuming you have some level of redundancy, the holodeck can create technicians to maintain themselves (all they would need is raw material).
And all of this assuming that "holodecks" have to be enclosed - if there were ever a way to take them anywhere you went, there would essentially be no productive activity that would not be replaced by "holo-workers".
Think people wouldn't use it? Well, the Amish wouldn't. And there would be newer versions of the Amish... but that would be an insignificant part of the population.
Now, as to entertainment, "matrixing" ourselves, etc... that's a harder question, but my best guess is that the vast majority of humanity will be "semi-matrixed" (interacting with the real world only through their version of "the matrix") in 3 generations.
Why? Because there's no need to come out of it to interact with the world - it does the translating for you. Children who grow up with it likely won't even know how to live without it.
Emergencies happen. Your building might catch fire (advanced tech can probably help here), or a hurricane might come (not so much). Your power might go out in a storm. Someone might come up and cut your power source/hack your holodeck/whatever as a prelude to killing you, raping you, whatever. Or the same thing might be happening to your neighbor, and you need to go help.
Let's assume that your holodeck-activities leave you in pretty good physical shape. That still doesn't mean that you'll know what to do back in reality (and, of course, you'll need some tools that will work without your holodeck working.) Attitude mismatches can get you in trouble - if you're playing military simulators all day and you've been shot 50 times in the last two hours, then you go out to confront a burglar, it's going to be hard to keep in mind that said burglar can actually kill you with that gun of his!
(Though in some ways, some of the above arguments are just silly. Global warming problem? Please - think about the kind of technology that you'd have to have to make this work. The brain-in-a-jar, Matrix-y variants don't take as much sophistication, but they have other problems...)
—- it's quite plausible you already 'exist' as a HoloDeck-type entity ... you just don't realize it.
The joys of metaphysics.
________
"Our perceived reality is perhaps just a fiction playing itself out in a box on someone's table"
— Capt Jean-Luc Picard (STNG: "Ship in a Bottle")
It's already happened with music, drama, and the printed page. People still seek real experiences, but not every day.
Of course that's not the only factor. It's entirely possible we're here for someone else's amusement, not our own.
Think soma of "Brave New World" or the treatment of the assassins in Arabic literature.
As for me, give me "I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew"
Exactly, we're already brains-in-a-vat, but refuse to accept the awful reality.
What? Its happening right now. Every time a teenager turns his computer on and plays Halo or Doom, he is choosing an alternative reality that is better than the real world-otherwise, he wouldn't do it: he'd do something in the real world instead (whatever the 'real world' is).
It may be that its not good enough to reject the real world for all time, but it is definitely rejecting the real world for a segment of time (an hour, or 4, or 8). The same applies to someone reading a book,or watching a movie, or any of the other entertainment venues I mentioned.
You are mistaken. You are looking at the low tech part, screens and speakers and goggles and such, rather than the high tech--the human imagination.
Currently something over a hundred million people worldwide spend time in massively multiplayer online roleplaying games. World of Warcraft, the best known one in the U.S., claims about ten million customers. Current estimates are that over a hundred thousand people make their living by earning assets online and selling them for realspace money.
As Castronovo argues in Synthetic Worlds--see my review in Liberty not long ago--such online virtual reality is a serious competitor to realspace for human attention. For a longer discussion, take a look at the chapter on VR in the webbed draft of my Future Imperfect.
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Future_Imperfect.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifehouse_%28album%29
That's kinda the point. WoW does not in fact create a world that is "far more stimulating and pleasurable than anything we could get in the material world."
It may create a world that is more exciting than whatever else a certain person was likely to do sitting at home that particular evening. It may be easier to access than various exciting real-world experiences. It doesn't categorically exceed the real world in any significant aspect. Beating an enemy in WoW is not more exciting than a real-life sparring match against a real person. Easier perhaps, more accessible perhaps, and there's an entirely different set of externalities, but it's hard to argue that it's more stimulating.
It is true that some people immerse themselves as completely as possible in WoW today. But it is a small minority, even among people who play the game regularly.
The same is true of other activities. Sports are arguably real and arguably artificial. Many people devote a considerable amount of time and energy to sports, sometimes as a participant but more frequently just as an observer. But very few people actually play a sport to the exclusion of all other activities.
People spend a lot of time in virtual worlds today. As VR technology improves, I expect that trend to continue. But that's a far cry from suggesting that VR will surpass reality (whatever it is) or imagination as the primary driver of human experience.