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Comment by brightstep | Hacker News Reader

This sounds awful. I already feel disconnected from the world around me, my community, nature, fresh air. Why would anyone want this for themselves? To be productive? If this is the next step in productivity, we need to start looking at how to be less productive.

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Some of us don't work in such a privileged place as you with a community and nature. Some of us work in cramped apartments, with roommates and partners clicking and typing nearby. With noise and light pollution to add to the distraction. It's overwhelming and we can't focus but we can't afford to go anywhere else. Sitting in the Oculus opening lobby is like a dream.

If you live in a polluted dystopian hive, alienated from those around you, tuning it all out by strapping a facebook appliance to your head sounds maladaptive even in the immediate short term.

I don't think setups like I described warrant "a polluted dystopian hive, alienated from those around you". I'm a human being. Not sure how to respond in a way that moves the conversation forward though. A VR workspace can be a huge relief from distractions. Perhaps a more relatable setting is an open office, surrounded by colleagues, and being able to instead flip a switch and be in a remote work setting in VR.

If you go back and read what you described and don’t see the dystopia, your standards are probably too low.

This starts to sound a lot like The Matrix.

If in the matrix you could only look at food, or listen to the wind.

I see it more as the wfh version of going to the office; when the headset comes off, I went home.

Actually there is a forest scene with sounds of fresh air. Now you can be more productive and more connected to nature at the same time.

I can’t even tell who is joking in this thread anymore.

It's not forced on you. It's for those who can make themselves better by the use of it. A tool.

This is an article on HN specifically because it's a new application of technology, another alternative working style.

Go outside, talk to a stranger (through a mask), walk in the park. These options aren't removed by the addition of this technology to the world.

> These options aren't removed by the addition of this technology to the world

The willingness of the strangers to engage may be though.

Either way, I find talking to strangers about as engaging and meaningless as talking to people online.

I find that it's all about how much of yourself you inject into the interaction.

I'm a misanthrope from way back, but I've found (over the many years grinding my way out of misanthropy) that the more I open myself up in a conversation, the more meaningful the interaction overall; the more it encourages the other person to do the same.

I don't mean this personally critically, but:

> I find talking to strangers about as engaging and meaningless as talking to people online

Says more about you than it does anything else.

Fortunately, I’m married and no longer need to date, but everything I read about dating today suggest that online/app-mediated dating has become so dominant that old style “meet in a bar” scenarios are essentially no longer much of a thing. If true, this would be an example of technology removing previous non-technology options, even though nobody is mandating it.

I wonder, if VR ever gets good enough, is there a future like the dystopian sci-fi stories where everyone stays strapped to their Facebook-mediated realities and nobody goes outside to walk in the park anymore? How good does VR have to get?

Even before the pandemic our local playgrounds were empty (kids are all staying home playing Roblox and Minecraft).

I think that's that panacea type thinking that a metaverse will help solve. If you're unhappy with your meatspace version of you, create the you that makes you happy in metaverse.

I've consumed too much sci-fi to actually think that'll be what actually happens.

tristran harris spoke about this on a podcast recently.... the meatspace is what holds up the metaverse. With the declining mental health of our youth nowadays, with social media etc... how will the 'metaverse' be this utopia in the 2030s,2040s?

A more concentrated version of the distillation the internet enabled: idea-driven anxieties rather than physical ones.

Which, pre-Internet, ideas versus physicalities could sound somewhat utopian, except we now know that crazy and outrage-inducing ideas dominate the discourse, and the metaverse does not and cannot offer anything to stem that tide and is likely to 'deepen the rut'.

> I already feel disconnected from the world around me, my community

By all means, I see your point and agree in general. But VR is not different from sitting at a desk.

I think we already live in some, not so healthy, virtual realities: online echo chambers, search engine/filter bubbles, ideologies perceived as normality.

In more extreme cases, anti-science and anti-intellectualist movements and so on.

But this is not a tech problem.

> nature

You can still go out for a hike. VR is not different from being inside a building.

> fresh air

No snark intended: you can open a window or have a heat exchanger with filters that is better for your health, comfort and energy usage.

It seems different to me. To be completely visually (and maybe auditorally) detached from your physical surroundings for hours each day? That's a step beyond working at a desk, even one in a drab office building. Though point taken, being stuck at a cubicle isn't much better than being strapped into a headset.

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