Well, it's ok with me and maybe interesting but when he concludes the bouncing duck on his dashboard is a conscious agent because it fits his mathematical model it's a little silly.


PairTheBoard

In the woods there is always someone listening, so be it an insect, so yeah the falling tree is making a sound. Taking off your headphones, nobody listening to the virtual sound? Well, that is trickier!

Yup and that is the question here.

In a VR situation a stimulation (sight, sound, smell or touch) might be very real for the ones immersed in that reality. It may tick the boxes of what makes an experience 'real'.

But is that all that 'real' is defined as?

If one person immersed in VR is seeing and hearing the tree falling in the woods in the middle of a living room while immersed in VR while the 20 other people around him do not, is it 'real'?

NO, not by my definition of 'real'. It is an illusion imo. The sophistication of the illusion does not change that imo.

but I respect that others use a different definition of 'real' and until we settle on one this is more a debate over language than anything else.

Sure you would experience the burn. The body you percieve would be part of the VR and it would burn just like the one you percieve in the VR you might currently be inhabiting.

I agree. Italy beat England. Experience the Burn.

I suspect that the Vatican bought off the refs. They're still ticked at King Henry VIII.

I thought we were talking about existing VR-technology.

But to use another example:

Your smell can influence your taste. Currently I often get an ad for a water that is just water but contains a smell that supposedly makes the water taste like the smell. Assuming that thing actually works:

While it will tickle your sense in a way that lets you think you actually had strawberries with your water. While you might believe you ate something, because the nerves were triggered like they usually are when you eat something. You actually didnt consume any food. And you might not notice it for a day or even a few weeks, but eventually the fact that you didnt actually eat anything, just thought you did will lead to hunger/starvation.

Thats the difference between "real/existing" and "illusion".

I do find discussions like this fascinating but think we are debating semantic differences in language not yet fully defined as this area is emerging.

Language evolves and it evolves by design or just via common usage.

So I think the word 'Real' in this context and in this discussion will need to evolve as the technology evolves.

For instance there are certainly 'real' experiences within VR. We know also doctors can remove part of your skull and stimulate direct areas of your brain ot make you experience smells, tastes, etc. Those are real experiences.

However if you are dying of thirst, and instead of giving you a glass of water i immerse you in a VR world where you have abundant water and your body is then stimulated to not feel thirst pangs and you die from dehydration was that 'real' or an 'illusion'?


I say an illusion. But i also acknowledge illusions can have underlying real elements.

So in my view of the language (today) I would not call what happens in a VR simulation 'real'. I would say it has 'real' elements but to that is different than the experience as a whole (which is what I believe we are referring to when we say is the VR sim real?) being real.

That just means the vr isn't particularly good.

I think, therefore I eat ham.

What we perceive as reality is at least an interpretation of it.

"which we think cause things to happen" This being such a natural framework, makes it highly suspicious. Hume banged on this.. but not sure if he noted why. Ergo suspicious.

Then again accepting this as an easy out is highly suspicious.

I'd say causation is probable. Don't think we would find any logic otherwise.