Would Full Dive VR cause human extinction?

[Teleros]

Why would humans need to exist if we can upload our conciousness to immortal machines...?

Leaving aside my above post... because we want to do things that are real, not virtual? Even if they feel realistic, the knowledge that they are not would be sufficient for many people.

Course, then there are the would-be Evil Overlords who view 3/4 of humanity plugging themselves into the Matrix as the perfect opportunity to take over the world :P .

[Belize]

Leaving aside my above post... because we want to do things that are real, not virtual? Even if they feel realistic, the knowledge that they are not would be sufficient for many people.

Course, then there are the would-be Evil Overlords who view 3/4 of humanity plugging themselves into the Matrix as the perfect opportunity to take over the world :P .

The trick is being part of the Evil Overlords.

[Zaktar]

This is a foolish question on a number of levels. For one, the infrastructure, content, and maintenance of those systems would need to be seen to, and I realize you specify that you dont count those people but the problem there is that as long as those people exist they will require OTHER people to do things like produce their food, their clothes, the materials that come together to form new systems, etc. And once you have that number of people you then need law enforcement, fire services, health care.

I mean do you seriously think that if people reorient on a new paradigm that human society will stop working? Yeah we have saline drips and all that stuff for keeping your body hydrated and fed and shit, but you'll note that most coma patients are in TERRIBLE health without constant maintenance such as nurses massaging muscle groups etc, and even WITH that they still visibly waste away. A quick check shows that 26 to 34 months is the average life expectancy of your average coma patient, because believe it or not IV's and things aren't very effective at keeping a human being 'fed'. Most of the current technology on that front is just desperately keeping an unconscious person alive long enough to hopefully wake up.

Another point is that you cant just say 'oh we could probably make money inside the VR' because thats not actually how money works. Yeah people make money off of real life video games, but only a VERY SMALL portion of them. Certainly not a sizeable enough chunk of the population to reasonably expect larges swathes of people to disappear into VR and never come back. They'd have to pay for their VR units. And the homes they go in. And the IV's they use or food or whatever that keeps them alive.

Really, separating out all the stuff you do as 'not counting against the argument' is basically the same as starting a conversation with 'do you think if all the air was gone we'd stop being able to breath?' you're just arbitrarily deciding conditions ahead of time that make your point work without really thinking about the reality of things.

Even if it were logistically possible, not everyone uses a given technology. It couldn't cause "extinction" because there would be people choosing not to participate, who would be the ones to breed and move society forward. Really the question is would that population be willing to support the population of people who wanted to opt out of reality and require full time care.

[Shadowferal]

pfft...the people having actual children aren't going to want to support a population that has regressed into children.