> Because, barring the insane, living in VR,
>however convincing, will always be understood to
>be "make believe" on some level. Never mind
>anything about the "sacrament" of marriage --
>just examine the reasons why people get married
>at all, whoever the two people are, and then tell
>me that those same reasons will motivate someone
>to be contend to be married within VR and never
>have contact in real life. I'm pretty sure you
>can't do that.

My point is, *if* the experience of the VR world is in every way as convincing as the experience of the real world, then the idea of VR being "make believe" and meatspace being "real" is blurred considerably. To many people, (and I contend these people would not have to be "insane", either) it simply wouldn't exist anymore. Having to "jack out" to take a crap or eat a rice cake would be nothing more than an inconvenience, the same as having to take a crap in the real world often interrupts what I'd rather be doing at the moment. And to speak to your assumption below about not having to jack out to crap or eat, in fact the article DOES at one point mention being able to eat a protien bar IRL and have it seem like a five course meal in the metaverse, so it does speak to that assumption at least in an off-hand manner.

I look at it this way. If a person has a choice of being a fat, un-attractive, pimply no-talent geek 24/7, or being that for only 8 hours a day and being a muscular, attractive, athletic, gifted ubermench the other 16 hours, which do you think a lot of people would choose, given that both are equally realistic to them? And given that you know that the woman you met in the VR world, who is of course sexy, fun to be with, shares your interests, and gives stupendous virtual... uh... "bleep", might actually be a 700 pound monstrosity with bedsores and a beard (or, in fact, a MAN), would it really be that insane to decide to never find out? Certainly you can argue that it'd be much LESS insane to never get into a situation like that, or that no "sane" person would get into such a dilemma. But again, I say that if the virtual world is every bit as convincing as the real world, there would be people who just wouldn't care. The experience of the virtual world would be enough.

> So that leaves us with coming up for new motives
>for why people would get married in VR. Are
>there any at all which do not involve reinventing
>the term "marriage" to mean something another
>previously established term isn't already fit to
>describe? I can think of one: role-playing,
>which, in a sane mind, is not going to result in
>a legitimate serious relationship unless it
>evolved into one over time, at which point I
>contend the desire to extend that lifestyle into
>reality would immediately crop up.

Again, I think you're tacitly assuming that the VR world isn't every bit as real to the person experiencing it as the "real" world is. The assumption has to be that it *is* every bit as real. If so, then I say that being at work eight hours out of the day, then coming home to your wife for the remainder is no different than being in meatspace for eight hours working your job, then "coming home" to your wife in the metaverse for the remainder of the day.

-- Dave