Blurring the lines of Reality: Getting lost in a virtual World

Using a virtual pendulum and its real-world counterpart, scientists at the University of Illinois have created the first mixed reality state in a physical system. Through bi-directional instantaneous coupling, each pendulum “sensed” the other, their motions became correlated, and the two began swinging as one.

“In a mixed reality state there is no clear boundary between the real system and the virtual system,” said U. of I. physicist Alfred Hubler. “The line blurs between what’s real and what isn’t.”

From flight simulators to video games, virtual worlds are becoming more and more accurate depictions of the real world. There could come a point, a phase transition, where the boundary between reality and virtual reality disappears, Hubler said. And that could present problems.

For example, no longer able to determine what is real and what is not, an individual might become defensive in the real world because of a threat perceived in a virtual world.

www.scientificblogging.com...

Are we coming to an age where humaity could lose itself in a virtual world. Is the human mind capable of a transient exsistance. How far into the virtual can the mind go before its overwhelmed or becomes something not quite human.

Imagine having a discussion with Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein on the nature of the universe, where their 3-D, life-sized representations looked you in the eye, examined your body language, considered voice nuances and phraseology of your questions, then answered you in a way that is so real you would swear the images were alive.

This was an opening scene from an episode of the TV show "Star Trek" almost a decade and a half ago. A new research project between the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Central Florida in Orlando may soon make such imaginary conversations a reality.

www.scientificblogging.com...

Of course this philisophical implications of technology like this is staggering. Where does one draw the line when melding mind with machine. Is the destiny of humanity to become vessels for virtual worlds. Can one even call such a society human. Is someone who murders in a virtual world as real as our own any less a criminal than a murderer in the real world.

If this is the future of technology what does it say for the future of humanity? Why live a real life with obstacles and trials when one can escape into a virtual paradise?

Virtualization, in principle, has the potentiality of either erasing or heightening or situated presence in the world. Jaron Lanier, a pioneer of VR technology, laments the fact that the majority of work on VR is moving in the direction of VR1. Being an artist as well as a computer scientist, Lanier’s original intent and hope for VR was for it to become a new form of cultural expression, allowing an individual, or even groups of people, to project their own imagination into a collective space. What we might term "VR2," would empower the average individual to be an artist in virtual reality. The consciousness-raising potential of VR2 could facilitate the emergence of a new cultural aesthetic that would result in the rebirth of the collective imagination. VR2 would foster a collective inquiry into the processes by which we construct and call the world (and self) into being.

Ideally, VR2 would facilitate a mode of conscious virtualization, as we learn to how to become more proprioceptively aware of how thought and imagination construct a world. Whereas VR1 is a con-fusion of fancy with the real, VR2 is a jazz-fusion of participation with imagination. It allows the user to consciously participate, and experience in real-time, what it means to invent and co-construct a reality with others. The architecture and software design assumptions of VR2 are epistemologically aligned with the philosophy of radical constructivism.

online.sfsu.edu...

When one no longer needs human interaction does one cease to be truley human? Could moral values and cultural fabric survive in a world where no one cared about anything real? Should we even care, Should we cast off our bonds to this reality in favor of one where we not concern ourselves with the welfare of anyone but our selves?

What do you think?



[edit on 19-11-2008 by constantwonder]

This is another part of worlds within worlds. Who's to say it hasn't happened before and will happen again. It's the whole Matrix theory.

I read somewhere that 95% of probable realities where virtual and 5% where "real". So that's a 19/20 chance of this being a virtual world as well.

With are current tech in the next half a decade or so we will have virtual intelligence equal too or greater then our own. Ultimately virtual or not sentient beings are all on an equal field weather virtual, biological, silicon, or energy based.

Yes the mathematical probabilty of the matrix theory being correct id actually staggering

it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.

You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.

what i want to know is what the scientific minded think about the philisophical implications of us creating our own "matrix"

reply to post by Dinoking


Don't do that to my brain! Lets all get off the computer and go fishing or something. Our minds will thank us.

The primary question is the same as if we find a planet with intelligent life on it.

To interfere or to let nature take its course?

So far the most life like computer simulations are those where we set up some basic fundamentals and see what happens. The main one I remember are evolution scenarios where you set a food source and lifespan for insect level intelligent programs and see which ones live and what is and is not beneficial.

Of course its all up to personal choice whether to interfere with the experiment by adding predators or other adversities.

I made a post about some of these issues:

“Reality” vs. Technology (Technology: good, bad, neutral?)

www.abovetopsecret.com...

This one is a lot better than mine. Had trouble “typing” out how I feel about this issue.

I think with every advantage we gain from progress in the fields of technology and science we also gain a disadvantage. For every “cure” we create we create something that can easily kill millions, that’s a high price to pay for our advancements in those fields.

One of the prices we pay is giving others the ability to change our perception in ways we never imagined, while we gain the opportunity to perceive the world in ways some never imagined.


[edit on 19-11-2008 by rapinbatsisaltherage]

I read a book once, and I have been desperately searching for the name, I believe it was by ray Kurzweil, and it chronicled the authors belief in a fictional setting that all humans are on an inexorable march towards a merging with technology.

The book detailed out several scenarios as we gradually merged with computers. On the one hand, humans were more together and more of a community than ever before because they were literally all connected on the Internet. On the other hand, it was really sad - no one EVER went out any more. they just stayed at home doing everything online.

In short, I believe civilization would most certainly degrade if we tale the steps listed in the article.

We're halfway there already. Without even stepping into the VR world, people are pulling more and more away from society and the common good. People are just in it for whatever benefits them, and no one else. This is not the way to live - this is the way to destroy humanity.

I can deal with living in a matrix system where I still have a soul and can contoll it or play in it as I want but the idea that we are nothing more that computor programs is freaky.What exactly is tryin to be said here Im confused .I would love some answers becuase like i said in my thread which contains this material ,this is very disturbing.The possibility that you could have no purpose in life and be nothing more than a game like that you play in Xbox.Ahhhh.My head feels like its about to explode