The Illusion Is Real To Me

This post began with some musings at Wagner James "Hamlet" Au's blog, New World Notes. Au has also covered the utopians and skeptics of virtual reality in a piece at Wired, "VR Will Make Life Better--Or Just Be an Opiate For the Masses." Some proponents of the Occulus Rift 3D viewer are claiming that a virtual world good enough is as good at the life we lead without goggles and a fast internet connection.

Since this issue involves both of my blogs, I hope readers will excuse the cross-postings. I have also been thinking about how Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is very much invested in Occulus tech and why the picture of him, striding among a crowd wearing Rifts, chills me to the bone.

Here was my reply at New World Notes.

Even a happy virtual life would neglect the agons of a happy real one.

Yesterday I labored a few hours on a farm tractor I'm selling, checking for issues and eliminating possibilities in the electric system. I used a lot of stored knowledge in the wetware of my brain to trouble-shoot. I was in a place without reliable wireless, so double-checking hunches with the phone was not possible.

Then I went to work on the fuel system, turning wrenches and skinning knuckles until I had the likely culprit. At night I went online, into a flat virtual community, to check my assumptions. This weekend I'll clean out the fuel tank, blow compressed air through all the fittings, and restart the old diesel.

Simulating all that with an Occulus might eventually be possible. Doing so might even feed me if my virtual farm supplied RL income. But you know what?

Virtual is still FAKE. Always will be until someone really does achieve the Singularity. Hence my consideration of SL and more advanced forms of virtual worlds as just something nice for entertainment, like a novel or film but more immersive.

As for the possibility that our RL world is a Matrix? Let me quote a famous fake person, Conan the Barbarian. I only slay groundhogs and cold beers, but the rest is apt:

"I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

GUEST POST: In Spite o' Cheapskate Linden Rascals, Why I Still Loves Me Some SL

Lokashum: Drunk

Now ol' Hamhock Au done commenced to a-fussin' and a-hollerin' (which am fun) about how them Linden Lab go-rillas am horrible cheapos who won't pay you nuffin' for writing them a blob. It am a reg'lar catty-wumpus of a fight over why them San-Fran rich tech-weenies won't pay us poor fat nekkid men in trailers and basements nuffin' to write down a blob for them.

Well sir, Iggy am cheap and a rascal, too, but he do let me and my rotten horrible family squat on his land in the fake world o' Second Life. Keeps us from killin' folks on the highway, though we do still beat 'em up and take their fake money.

So why in the Sam Hill do any real natural-born human-being person stay in this fake world, after them Linden go-rillas am always screwing stuff up?

Now I will tell you, I still enjoys the hell out o' Second Life. It am the most fun you kin have as a hillbilly hellion.

Cornsider my fake life. I done me time in jail...with my horrible rotten sister who beat me senseless wif a 2x4 wif nails in it.

And that were when she were happy wif me. We done won in fake court, of course. I gots me the best fake lawyer in Second Life and his legal assistant, a two-head prim baby I done rescued from a prim-baby graveyard.

Them Lindens am awful...they even dumped a love-child of ol' King Philip in that graveyard and more. So I opened me a prim-baby adoption agency.

But despite that-there horror, I ain't never gived up on Second Life.

I done tried to open me a business as a breedable animal when that were big. I did not have me much luck, even when I lowered down that-there price.

 

My last antic were to be a hot-hot-hottie male model for the Alphaville Herald. It were last year, for Valentine's Day. My male model career ain't gone nowhere yet, but I ain't done foolin' folks or writin' blobs, neither. So don't let them Linden cheapskates ruin your fake life.

Git out there and have you some fun. Tell 'em Pappy done sent you (and run fast).

Thank you and mighty obliged, Iggy. I'll put out the fire on your fake land now.

I works mostly as a male model now, and am one