[Forbes] Legal Heroin/Is Virtual Reality our next hard drug?

At least the next hard drug without medical side effects.
Kind of true, with VR those people shouldn't be bored anylonger.
The fear of a society drifting into VR might be well-founded.
I had that advanced thinking for myself already.

But that would be only the case if we one day might get implanted neural interfaces on our peripheral nerves.
Although this would be very awkward , why not?
Real world served us as a physical example to fullfill all our dreams.
Bye,bye, real world, hello virtual paradise.

"Videogames are drugs". Same old shit.

A bunch of people getting high in a safe and legal way? Sounds great for business.

"cybereality" wrote:
A bunch of people getting high in a safe and legal way? Sounds great for business.

Many things that are safe if used in an appropriate manner are still made illegal. There always seems to be this group that loves to control what other people are doing which has zero impact on anyone but the individual. Such is life.

I actually think this can be a problem, movies like Surrogates for example, I think that might be what we're heading towards.

Let's think about the sex industry. There is a decrease in population in Japan, why is that? That is because people get their satisfaction elsewhere where you don't have to do all these social etiquettes before having sex but just buy toys, virtual girlfriends etc etc (Good 13m Vice Doc on that). This is what Oculus could provide with augmented reality and all this 3D porn etc.

Maybe I am heading towards the wrong subject, but overall VR is a way to escape reality. Like being addicted to any MMORPG i.e. I played that when I was younger because there I mattered, I felt good there, and that wasn't even a reality. With VR I think that problem might even grow bigger.

Well I sure don't hope so, but while I don't think you can call this a drug such as you can call any video game a drug, addiction might become a huge issue here.

And exactly what is wrong with all that? Like 18 century people's shit like "railroads are unnatural, they stink and they make the transported products degenerate". Even if it does leads to degeneration, so what? Over the Earth lifetime, so many species have completely extincted it puts human destroyed civilisations count to shame.

Assume the progress.

The only reason we've used mind altering drugs for millennia is to perceive virtual realities.
Oculus has provided many of us with our first taste of a drugless VR. Like an addictive substance, prolonged use of VR weakens the effect forcing us to look for bigger and better experiences. Very soon virtual reality will be readily available to an eager world, ignorant of potential consequences. What happens then?

"vizionvr" wrote:
The only reason we've used mind altering drugs for millennia is to perceive virtual realities.
Oculus has provided many of us with our first taste of a drugless VR. Like an addictive substance, prolonged use of VR weakens the effect forcing us to look for bigger and better experiences. Very soon virtual reality will be readily available to an eager world, ignorant of potential consequences. What happens then?

Probably taking drugs then donning your HMD - "try landing the A380 on the M25, it's so cool while off yer head".

I'm sure there'll be much more mind-bending experiences, but yeah, playing them while high will probably be one goal for many people.

"vizionvr" wrote:
The only reason we've used mind altering drugs for millennia is to perceive virtual realities.

I’d call them alternate realities - alternate illusions even better. We haven’t been lusting all these years for mere virtual experience. The logical end result of tech ‘virtual reality’ is actual experience.

What is real anyway?