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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

"I work from home full time, I think the biggest downside are the missing meaningful interactions with other people. I think VR has huge potential to bridge that gap."

VR also has the potential to be way more addictive than current forms of online interaction and entertainment.

I'm reminded of I think it was a Larry Niven story (maybe Ringworld) in which the protagonist has an electrical wire put in to the pleasure center of his brain and he just sits home and pushes the button that activates it for weeks on end.

Technology is getting closer and closer to that.

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Computer games are bad enough now. When I first heard about a certain factory building game (I won't name it to prevent anyone else becoming addicted), for two weeks straight I played pretty much every waking hour when I wasn't working. I ate things that were easy to make and didn't need much attention like pasta - I'd just set it to cook and come back when the timer went off, eat, then back to the game.

You stopped to eat instead of playing through meals? That's impressive. Were you able to sleep at all?

We don't need technology, we have drugs, it won't necessarily be a new problem when we can do it with technology too.

It reminds me more of Ready Player One, a book in which society has deteriorated to the point where the only escape is a VR world.

The book briefly explores the implications of this, including how the hierarchy of human needs is met in a VR-centric society.

Yup, Larry Niven's "The Ringworld Engineers". The main protagonist uses a "droud" (as the implant is called in the book) to directly stimulate the brain with electrical impulses.

He only disconects the droud because he knows he will die from starvation, dehydration and atrophy if the doesn't go through the motions daily. But every moment without the droud is existential dread.

Don't most droud users indeed kill themselves through neglect in that story? Louis Wu the protagonist is extraordinary in that he gave up the droud.

I don't know about other users wasting away, but I remember Chmeee (of the tiger-like species) destroying the droud when they were travelling to the Ringworld, so Louis Wu was without an option on quitting it.

Same concept in more detail in Permutation City by Greg Egan.

that sounds like the snooze button on my alarm clock

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