You can do anything you want...but it's a dream

Not sure this is the right thread for this topic, but here it goes....

Someone invents a machine that taps into your brain. It stimulates the parts of your brain that experiences reality as you know it. You can buy programs for this machine that will let you live out your wildest fantasy and experience it as it it happened. But, its all a dream.

20% of the people that try the machine get hooked. They are living the majority of thier lives hooked up to the machine in a dark room in a comotose state. When they are interviewed they talk about wild adventures (drag racing cars, space missions to Mars, winning the Superbowl, flying like Superman). In fact, the ones that say, wanted to play major league baseball, come out and play way beyond their previous level of play).

In the end, however, its not reality as we know it, and it all takes place in your mind. The experience seems real to those that enter the machine, but we on the outside know, they were lying in a bed the entire time. And, a great deal of them become addicted and spend their life live savings to live out their dreams...knowing they will die much earlier than the rest of the population (due to non activity and lack of real exercise and stimulation). The addicts are okay with this as they say they have lived wild adventures and experienced things you never could in real life.

Would you do it?

reply to post by Ultraman2011


Correct me if I am wrong but, didnt this happen in a part of a movie once?

reply to post by itisortofthetruth


I was thinking of a book I read years ago as a teenager, that invovled a character that was jumping through time. At one point, he came across a society that were living their entire lives hooked up to machines as per my post. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the book...it may have been made into a movie, but his book would have been from the 50's or earlier I think.

Yes, I think I would do that- although I'd probably get hooked and never leave!!

Hell yaa this sounds awesome but theirs no way I couldn't let my physical shape deteriorate

Machine assisted lucid dreaming?

reply to post by Ultraman2011


why not ? Angels do it all the time

Red Dwarf covered this in a show and book. It was great.

I would go into the Red Dwarf universe and die happily in the game.

This world blows right now, wake me if it gets any better.

Sounds like the movie total recall.

I would, just so I could live in a world where I didn't feel so alien, where I could make people more real then they are outside my door, a fair world.

Then I would be evil and share my program with the rest of the living world and make them see what they could be but choose not to.

This really belongs in the Philosophy forum, but will probably get more intelligent discussion here than there.

Me, I wouldn’t sign up for The Chair. What would happen to my body?

I am not a brain in a vat. I am not a disembodied mind or spirit. I am an animal, and my body is as much me as my brain or my mind or my soul.

Vade retro, Satanas

The Matrix machines should have followed this idea of allowing humans to live out their wildest dreams as they chose in a dream like state (or some variant of it).

Maybe then Neo would have just taken the blue pill and remained blissfully enjoying his alternate near perfect reality of doing what he really wanted, instead of selling high tech dope and working a dead end job in a cubicle to make a mediocre living.

how can I believe you if you're just a projection of my mind's subconscious?

nah but for real, we are just conscious mammals, a trillion years in the making. lol

reply to post by Ultraman2011


Explanation: S&F!

Personal Disclosure: I ALREADY AM! I try and tend to LIVE on ATS as much as possible!

How to use neuroscience to become your Avatar! (by OmegaLogos posted on 17-10-2009 @ 03:34 AM) [ATS]

Sure the medium of the machinary used [the www.] is currently very crass and even vulgar. Gotta Start Somewhere!

It's a tempting choice for sure to live out your wildest fantasies in lieu of a shorter actual life-span and my fantasies are really really wild.....I think I"ll go do it coz reality you know just kinda blows but if possible I would get out every now and then to you know exercise and stuff like that to remain fit. I reckon that a few decades of pure awesome is better than a century of suck.In my dream I would be a god.....If you remain without activity for a long period though your body muscle mass would tend waste away regardless of whether your being fed or not and eventually your entire body shall start laying in a fetal position as your body starts to deteriorate and your organs begin failing.Thus the price to pay for such an addiction would be heavy.

However you could just go for a one day ride or something where everything you have ever wanted would come true and then hold on that experience for a lifetime.

Originally posted by Leonardo01

However you could just go for a one day ride or something where everything you have ever wanted would come true and then hold on that experience for a lifetime.

edit on 20-6-2011 by Leonardo01 because: grammar

You could but say you went that one rainy day and had the time of your life and managed to live out an amazing fantasy in that small time you were there and then every time after that you shut your eyes you could see that world but you couldn't reach out and grab it, it wouldn't be the same because it wasn't three dimensional which could lead in the end onto addiction itself.

I would do it. I would hope not to get hooked but I would def take the chance. I used to be an avid DND player and would love to test a few of my Characters out in a live simulation. Also imagine going to the moon or even just climbing K2. There is a million and one things I will never be able to afford to do. With a machine like this you could live a hundred lives. Not just for the sensation of all that is knew. I would imagine your brain would retain Allot of the information. Would have to install a cooldown phase to slowly reintergrate the mind on whats real. As a learning tool it could expand the human mind Learning while you slept, Imagine 8years of learning over the course of a normal 8 hour sleep.

Therian

reply to post by Windows


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Well, it brings me to wonder though if this world that we live in is perhaps nothing more than a simulated reality...It could provide a possible explanation to the fermi paradox.

Regardless, I reckon that your body wasting away is of little consequence here since time is merely subjective and relative to the observer, no?....Mayhap the machine could enhance our perception of time and resolve this little dilemma.

The real and that what is surreal makes no difference though for people go through their lives holding on to what they believe is "right" and "true". That is what they regard as being their "reality". However what we consider as being "right" and "true" are vague ideas, and only perspectives if you will. The reality is merely an illusion because everyone is living out their own assumptions. Wouldn't you agree?..So yes after much thought I would most certainly live out my wildest fantasies 'forever' or as long as my corporeal existence would allow.

The idea kind of reminds me of the concept of the move Strange Days (I think that's the name)

People could record events of their life completely from their perspective through their brain and then anyone could play it back and feel/experience it all just the same as if it had been them.

Sounds a lot like Total Recall. Makes one question exactly what is reality. How would one know if this reality isn't but a complex dream? Inception is one of my favorite movies and it deals with lucid dreaming which is a subject matter that science hasn't really touched upon.