> What gave it away? Was it explicitly saying so
>two paragraphs further down? And noting that
>such an assumption would change my opinion on
>this matter? ;-P

Well, hell, that changes everything. It at least explains your reaction to the article (which, again, must be understood to be as much a *joke* as anything else.)

Anyway, I don't necessarily think it'd take even "perfect" VR for some people to completely abandon meatspace. But such people would be the basically disfunctional people in life anyway, so it could still be argued that "sane" people would not do so.

> I didn't think we were working with that
>assumption. If so, ok, but in that case I'll
>quibble with the prediction that we'll ever get
>that far. The human brain is SO keyed into the
>nuances of reality, but we never notice because
>we only notice things like that when they're
>wrong.

You can't argue with assumptions! That's why they're called assumptions, because we agree to ASSUME them as a given so we can have a debate! ;-)

I don't know that we'll ever get their, either. Certainly not within my lifetime, I feel, barring some miracle advances in technology and understanding of the brain. But to think it impossible seems to me to be underestimating human abilities. A lot of people think human intelligence equivalent AI is impossible, too, but I still think eventually it'll be done. Hell, some people STILL think it's impossible to put men on the moon, and deny we ever did it. They're wrong, of course, but that doesn't stop them.

Arguing that it's so far off as to be not worth considering is certainly valid, but hell, where's the fun in that? :-)

-- Dave