Except we don't even know if we are living in "actual reality". We could already be living in a reality simulation.
(Sorry for the overused argument, but I think it fits here. If we cannot ever decipher our constructed virtual reality from our current reality, why would we prefer one to another? Furthermore, there is no point to our current "reality", so how would a virtual world be different?)
Also any other version of visualization other than a perfect and indistinguishable (that makes it perfect in the definition of mirroring reality) constructed virtual reality is pointless to argue about. In your other reply, you mention issues with isolationism and being able to see the physical world. When the virtual reality is equivalent to the physical world, is this connection to physical reality necessary?
>Except we don't even know if we are living in "actual reality". We could already be living in a reality simulation.
No, we know damn well that our current reality works based on fixed physical laws. You can't change something's color in reality by altering its texture-map, and you know that everything in reality which looks like an object is an object, while everything that looks like a person is a person.
>When the virtual reality is equivalent to the physical world, is this connection to physical reality necessary?
... Yes. In the exact same way that it is sometimes necessary to unplug your laptop, leave your cubicle, and go outdoors. For one thing, however much you might like your cubicle (read: "virtual reality"), it is ontologically dependent on outdoors (read: real life).
Or you could be walking along in virtual reality one day, enjoying the nice simulated weather from your upgraded Navier-Stokes package, when you neatly wink out of existence because a squirrel back in real life chewed the wrong cable.
Nope, reality's still not mutable to the sheer extent that a solipsist virtual existence would be.
Honestly, if you want to not make everyone want to kill themselves rather than climb into your bizarre Matrix replica, you're going to have to enforce a few rules:
1) You can always get out, back to physical reality, or at least see physical reality.
2) Any other living things one may encounter are properly, independently alive. If they're people, then they're actually conscious with their own, independent minds.
3) Law of conservation of personal identity: people cannot be copied or altered, both to prevent fork-bombing and to preserve basic sanity.
Otherwise, the so-called virtual dreamlands are actually psychological torture chambers. People simply don't stay sane if you stick them in total isolation and then unhinge them from any causality independent of their own thoughts.
Yeah, isolation sucks, digital or not. Are you saying that putting multiple brains together in one computer would be like making them into a single entity, which would then suffer from isolation even though it started as multiple people?
It's not that hard to turn your arm blue. Just paint it.
Just because Greg Egan wrote a book about it doesn't mean it's a good idea.