What a bunch of hucky-pucky!

dreadnut

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I looked up the definition of "virtual: "Not, in fact."

 

GAD

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That article is trash like every other article on the Guardian. What exactly is your “Please, no…” in regards to?
 

GAD

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You’ve changed the title, so what about the article is “Hucky Pucky”?

Have you ever used VR?
 

fronobulax

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While it is true that "virtual reality" is oxymoronic let me say from personal experience that being the person who takes a strict literal interpretation of language and then finds something not to like about people who disagree with or don't care is not the way to make friends.
 

dreadnut

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You’ve changed the title, so what about the article is “Hucky Pucky”?

Have you ever used VR?
First of all, the title: "Virtual reality is actual reality." Why, because this writer declares it to be so? Bullsh*t.
 

GGJaguar

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Experiencing virtual reality is fun, but I wouldn't want to live there.
 
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GAD

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First of all, the title: "Virtual reality is actual reality." Why, because this writer declares it to be so? Bullsh*t.
Reality is what the mind perceives it to be. I’ve seen first hand where people have fallen over because they tried to lean on something in VR that wasn’t there in the physical room with them. To them it was real enough that they tried to use it for support.

VR is getting better and better and can be absolutely mind blowing. People are addicted to social media now. It’s going to get much much worse.

You can argue what “real” means all day long, but dismissing something outright is always a dangerous game. LTG isn’t “real”. It’s nothing more than electrical impulses in a certain order and I can push a button and make it all go away in a heartbeat. There is nothing tangible about it, yet here we are.

Most of the money we all “use” every day isn’t real. Much of our lives are virtual. Many would be shocked at how much is already just an idea of something that used to be real.
 

dreadnut

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I'm not dismissing VR, I'm just saying it ain't actual reality. Never will be.

It's like "truth." BY definition, there can't be your truth and my truth, only the truth.
 

FNG

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Reality is what the mind perceives it to be. I’ve seen first hand where people have fallen over because they tried to lean on something in VR that wasn’t there in the physical room with them. To them it was real enough that they tried to use it for support.

VR is getting better and better and can be absolutely mind blowing. People are addicted to social media now. It’s going to get much much worse.

You can argue what “real” means all day long, but dismissing something outright is always a dangerous game. LTG isn’t “real”. It’s nothing more than electrical impulses in a certain order and I can push a button and make it all go away in a heartbeat. There is nothing tangible about it, yet here we are.

Most of the money we all “use” every day isn’t real. Much of our lives are virtual. Many would be shocked at how much is already just an idea of something that used to be real.
If virtual reality was real, then they wouldn't have fallen over. Their perception of reality was tricked.

As far as LTG, you are confusing the medium with the message.
 

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My son has VR. At his encouragement I did the initial training just to see what it was like. It was very impressive, especially when the whale swam past above me, and just as in "real life" I had to look up to see it. I think I said, "Wwwooowww". The dance part was fun. All in all I liked it.
 

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It might not be reality, but the the possibilities are endless when you involve a multitude of senses. It's more than just visual. Imagine if you could include 360 sound field, temp, wind, weather, gravity, smell etc.

This, I find fascinating, albeit already very dated compared to what a major film studio's cgi gurus could come up with.


Several years ago, I bought this greeting card I came across on a whim. It was a heavy paper "pop up" VR viewer w/ a slot you slid your smart phone into...and it gave a link to a few cheesy vids. I was hanging w/ a few buds one night at my community beach. Had a fire pit going, sipping Bourbon. I went to my truck and got this pop up viewer. My friend went on YouTube and did a VR video search. Next thing you know, I'm riding that rollercoaster on the top if that tower in Las Vegas. I got wobbly and about fell to my knees. It was intense. I can only imagine if strapped to a device that mimicked that same gravitational pull. That could be amazing. You could walk on the moon. You could step off the edge of the Grand Canyon wearing a glider suit, or base jumping off Angel Falls, or climbing the final stage of Everest. Never mind the endless possibilities of the fictional.

And like w/ most video tech advancements in the last 40 years, hate to say it, but the adult entertainment business has been at the forefront of most of it. :unsure: :whistle:

Gotta say, it beats the living heck out of the coin operated race horse I used to ride in front of the A&P Grocery Store when I was a wee lad. :cool:(y)
 
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By definition because we to qualify the phrase with "virtual" it is not reality. Just like some mental patients think there are people out there that they are having an argument with, when in fact, they are not. Their reality is messed up by some disorder. They may perceive something , but that doesn't make it real either. Are the courts going to arrest you for that dude you just killed in a first person shooter game? Nope. It wasn't real. So, no matter what some lame writer in England with a college degree types about VR, and gets it published doesn't make it a fact.

I think I can fix the article title. " Internet idiocy is real idiocy. "
 

dreadnut

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A wise friend once told me "You need to understand that perception, in the mind of the beholder, is every bit as real as reality."
 

fronobulax

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Since there are people who insist on the literal understanding of the term, what words should we use?

Before electronics people would read books and "get lost" in their imagination. Sometimes those imaginary experiences were such that their breathing and heartrate would be affected. "real" because an external observer could see and measure something happening or "not real" because of the involvement of imagination?
 

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This is getting philosophical fast.

Here's my take. There is physical reality, and there is perception. You form a mental model of reality through perception. This is what people are trying to say when they say everyone has their own reality. I think that's a bad and misleading way to put it, because it implies that perception and reality are the same thing.

For example: a given physical object may have a given physical attribute, let's say color. Now, color is notoriously subjective. You might see green one way, I see it another, someone who's colorblind sees it as gray, a dog or a bee or a bird will all see it differently. The physical characteristics and events that make the object "green," however, are fixed and external to perception: it absorbs certain frequencies of the radiation we call visible light, and reflects the frequencies we classify as green. These are attributes of the object. When we perceive those attributes, we call it green; but green to me or gray to you, the object itself isn't different. The object and its attributes are in physical reality; your perceptions are your interpretation or understanding of that physical reality. That understanding is necessarily incomplete and imperfect, because your senses are limited and your brain is finite.

I think elevating different imperfect perceptions of reality to the status of independent realities of their own is the height of hubris. We don't create a new reality just by seeing the external one incompletely, any more than taking a photo of a fish in the lake creates a new rectangular lake that's mostly a fish. Read Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The shadows on the wall are perceptions of reality, but they're only shadows; they're not a separate reality in their own right.
 
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