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"Something for Bell"

An article about what we were discussing a couple of weeks ago with Baudrillard "Simulation and Simulacra" and the notions of reality and alternate realities:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3135247.stm

A bloke making a living selling items for a non-existent, online world.
Does this count as an "alternate reality"

Light wrote:
> As opposed to the perfectly sensible attitude that you're absolutely
> right, and no theory other than your own can possibly have any grain
> of truth in it?

Maybe I just don't understand the debate, but what we call "virtual" isn't actually "virtual" at all, since it's all real, we can all see it, we just can't pick it up and throw it about. Therefore, trying to argue that some things we do in a "virtual world" don't exist is a bit stupid, because it does, otherwise we couldn't do them.

Insane Bartender wrote:
> I don;t see the difference between buying a "cloak of the fetid
> wind +7" or buying Windows XP - Home edition.


thats because......THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE.

Life IS escapism.

Watch TV, go on holiday, read magazines and books, have sex. It's all just ways to pass the time. Some better than others.

Insane Bartender wrote:
> It's the daft attitude that nothing can have a simple answer that
> makes these discussions so needlessly long.


As opposed to the perfectly sensible attitude that you're absolutely right, and no theory other than your own can possibly have any grain of truth in it?

Here was me thinking that these boards were for discussion. Tcha, what a fool I must be, eh?

Until the day you can trade phsyical items, and have them magically beamed to you Star Trek stylee, it will always be escapism. Part of the appeal is that you can make instant changes to your little imaginary world with no impact on your actual existance. But then it's all imaginary and of no consequence towards anything. So why do it? Well, why get up in the morning? Muuuuuh, I'm fed up with this now, it's going nowhere.

Aw bless
*pats IB on the angry, bald head*

It's the daft attitude that nothing can have a simple answer that makes these discussions so needlessly long.

Items are composed of code which requires the use of physical memory to store. Items are therefore real. Items are therefore no different to any other piece of merchandise.

*shrug*

I'm obviously wrong, and our perceived reality is really incredibly complex, whereby anything that you can't touch belongs to a virtual limbo where the ordinary rules of physics do not apply, and where the human mind is made to become a piece of non-real uber-flesh.

Woah. I'm like, talking to someone, but... not talking to someone... This must mean that you're not real, and I'm consuming time speaking to non-entities from limbo which will confuse me into thinking that they have value in "the real world" and make me into a virtual nothing.

Yeah.

~Reads thread~


So...Bell and Goaty in pretty much full agreement, and both of them respond to IB point's without being mocking.

Then...IB steals Bell's old trick of making out that his opinion is definitive truth and anyone disagreeing with him is a fool.

~scratches head~

Did somebody turn the world upside down when I wasn't looking?





Actually, I wish I had more of an opinion of virtual vs reality; this is rather an entertaining read.

Uh huh.
Well thanks for clearing that up so finally. What was I thinking?
Cheers!

My point is that it's real. It's ALL real. If you percieve it as anything else, just because despite final ownership, you do not completely control it, you're just foolish.