towaway15463

We’re still very far off from that and trending away from using more land in developed countries.

Tyranny generally results in stagnation. It’s a bottleneck. All the power and decisions reduced to a single individual or group of individuals leaves no room for experimentation and growth. Progress becomes single threaded instead of parallel.

Technically it’s possible in any environment except those that kill 100% of the population. Whatever survives, survives and reproduces.

Not really. As sentimental and time limited beings we don’t want to see things go extinct since we won’t be able to experience them again or be around to see what comes next. But in the larger picture we’re actually quite tame when it comes to extinction events. At least we are making an effort to limit the damage we’re doing. Space rocks and chemistry can’t do that. In the long run other species will evolve and maybe with luck we’ll have a hand in steering that evolution.

That’s odd because I have the opposite feeling. I almost never play regular computer games anymore because I see it as a time sink. I also avoid watching things by myself for the same reason. Playing a VR game or spending time with others in VR feels much more rewarding because I’m using my body instead of sitting in a chair and I feel more engaged with the people I talk to when they are embodied in an avatar and we are present in a space together vs just hearing their voice through headphones.

Wealth transfer isn’t going to improve anyone’s well being. Making a better lifestyle more affordable by increasing productivity will though.

Why should there be a limit on human productivity? After all it means we are getting more efficient at the things we are doing, doing more with less, is that not a laudable goal? Any time we have approached a limit we have found a way to cheat it, that’s cause for celebration.

This sounds like an argument against TV or movies or the internet. Those things are also substitutes for real life experiences and yet people still spend huge amounts of time with them. VR doesn’t have to preclude the rest of the world. It’s an addition to it. When you don’t have the money or the time or the energy to go out it’s nice to be able to jump into something like VR and have fun with others from the comfort of your home.

Well, I do watch movies with others in VR on a fairly regular basis and it’s great. Could be better, headsets need to be more comfortable and pass through has room for improvement but both of those things are on the very near horizon.

Look at the cambria demos, they’re already doing mixed reality by blending the room with the experience. No reason that can’t be used to put your couch, coffee table and SO in the virtual theatre. You also have to consider that a lot of the younger people using these won’t have dogs or kids to worry about.

Both the other commenters make good points. Meta is uniquely positioned to build the first metaverse. It may not be the only metaverse and it may not come out on top in the end but it will likely prove a lot of the technology and patterns that will continue to be used. That’s why I don’t think they’re mismatched, you might be right about them being too early. They’ll have to build a lot of it themselves and try to stay competitive in the market at the same time. Difficult, but other companies have done this. They’re off to a good start as well since their hardware currently dominates the market.

Except it will have no games, cost $4k and will probably be difficult to port anything to. Great for Apple’s current mbpro market but ignored by everyone else.

Personally, I think that both TV and movies are going to be driving VR adoption. The Netflix of VR movies could be huge if they were able to offer the right content. A fully virtual theatre that gets new releases could also be big. The edge that VR had in these areas is that it essentially gives you a private theatre that you can enjoy with your friends and family. Leveraging a social network so that you can deliver notifications like “X is currently watching Y. Click to join” would be big. People already kind of do this with watch parties and discord.

Those numbers are easily found but you also have to ask the same questions about waste produced by manufacturing renewables.

I’d like to see a cost estimate in both dollars and land area for pumped hydro.

Here’s an enlightening calculation to do: total volume of fuel used by nuclear power plants over 100 years providing enough energy for the world vs total volume of turbine blades doing the same. Feel free to be generous with your lifetime estimates for turbines, the results will still be shocking. You can also repeat the calculation for any other fuel source or power generation method and be equally impressed.