Most people when they try to explain what life is, from a more expanded point of view and are looking to compare it to something tangible, something people can relate to, they tend to reference VR headsets and the fact they present an illusionary world to the user that can be so real at times people appear to forget they are wearing a headset, that it’s all fake. There is no depth to what you are seeing, except for which you perceive, there is nothing solid in front of you to feel unless you’ve got special gloves or a body suit with sensors that can make that illusion appear as tactile.
However, knowing all this, which EVERYONE knows concretely just before placing the headset over their eyes, BUT YET! all this concrete knowledge of what it is you’re actually doing and where you are goes out the window. I’ve experienced it myself, so I can attest to this, Darth Vader was standing next to me, about 7 feet tall, threatening me, this totally got my back to seize up like you wouldn’t believe. Unbelievable how one can forget the fact you are on earth wearing a headset so quickly, like in seconds!! and be completely immersed into that which you are seeing in the headset. If you haven’t tried it, it’s certainly worth trying out at least once, I don’t recommend it for continued use as the imagery you focus on will over time damage your eyes. However, my first impression was one of amazement, I remember looking down at my hands as the first thing you’ll have to do is grip the controllers and seeing the hands of someone / some other extra-terrestrial being with blue hands in the exact spot where my actual hands were, mimicking every action I did with my real hands, was a moment I’ll never forget.
My next thought was a little more tinfoil-hattish as some might describe, which was… How can we go from nothing to this type of technology available to the public at reasonable prices in such a short period of time? I’ll let you ponder that for yourself.
Another thing you may want to ponder is how can we go from a plastic Nokia mobile phone like the one I bought in Germany in 1993, the Nokia 1011, there’s no need for me to post a link like I do below for the iPhone 14 Pro Max features page, as here are the features, ooops the feature excuse me… drum roll please… holds 99 phone numbers, that’s it! Didn’t even have custom ringtones, you had to wait another 2 years for that model. So that means it had One, Eins, Uno feature, it held 99 numbers. Now 30 years later what do we have? nothing short of a supercomputer. Calling it a “phone”, I think we can all agree might be the silliest name ever! As the phoning feature (I chuckle at even calling it a feature) is potentially, I would say most likely the least used feature.
As an example, the iPhone 14 Pro Max, does 17,000,000,000,000 calculations a second (bit of perspective on that number as most aren’t really able to perceive the magnitude of such a number at all. If you could count to 100 in 25 seconds, so 4 numbers per second it would take you approximately 134,777 years to count to 17 trillion.
Here are the specs for the iPhone 14 Pro Max if you’re interested Link to iPhone 14 Pro Max Features List, I just dug it up and laughed at the list of features> I started to keep an eye out for the line where it said it could make my dinner and/or clean my house for me, didn’t find it though.
From a Nokia to this iPhone in such a relatively short time period 30 years, the iPhone doesn’t really have a lot of operating system bugs, except for the intentional bricking if your phone is getting older and you keep updating your iOS software. Then expect a snail phone/brick to be your object of frustration on a daily basis. So, let’s look at something technological in comparison to keep it more in the realm of an apple-to-apple comparison (pardon the pun) like any printer I’ve ever had, even super modern ones, anyone out there ever feel inclined to do what the guys in the movie “Office Space” did and take their office printer out to the field and beat it to a pulp like a bunch of mobsters? Maybe I’m just very unlucky with printers, and should talk to it with more loving words, don’t know maybe that’s my issue, however in my experience they work well for about two months and then they start jamming, have software problems, can’t use thicker paper, produce lines, run out of ink even if I haven’t used it in ages and the very last thing I did before with respect to the printer is replace the cartridges with company made cartridges of course as the new ones won’t except those refill jobs? Anyone feeling that type of vibe on printers? They’ve been around longer than 30 years for sure. By the way anyone know what “PC Load Letter” means like mentioned in the movie “Office Space”?, still wondering.
Now, back to the subject I started with as this is supposed to be a relatable way of looking at the entire life experience not just from an individual’s life experience on earth, like that which relates well to the VR headset example given above. Don’t get me wrong, I think the VR experience has merit, however, I feel it has SEVERE limitations when you try to use this as an example to broaden your understanding of the structure of our reality.
I’m not suggesting at all that I know everything there is to know about how our reality is structured, I certainly am not, that would be dilutional. I am trying to come at this from an angle where the MAJORITY of people would be able to understand the bigger picture, be able to conceptualize a lot of those difficult concepts most have a hard time grasping, and like I stated above, things can be very complicated but that doesn’t mean it cannot be explained in such a way that it can be understood by most, and more importantly in a way that they can relate to and ultimately start to care about the subject matter at hand. So, that’s what I am here to try to do.
To be continued, in chapter 1B, I already have it written up, however, like everything except for perhaps my automatic writings it needs some editing, but it’ll follow in short order. On the next one, we’ll get into the good stuff I promise.
I am by no means suggesting anyone should resort to using it in substitution for life, however, I see the adoption of such things as a worrying direction for humanity, and the pushing of it and the quality of the set itself is noteworthy. The best VR game is the one we are currently in I completely agree, however the fact that I was truly immersed in something completely substandard to “real” life was shocking
I have gladly never resorted to virtual reality headsets. Thanks for explaining the experience. 'Real' life is good enough for me.