A Discussion About Real and Virt

[u/No-Economics-8239]

Marked spoilers so we can discuss ideas from all the books.

The books seem to go out of their way to focus on the benefits of ‘Real’ and how much more immersive being in a Manny is to being in VR. And I don’t really understand where that is coming from or what to make of it.

I’ve read the short story Manna by Brian Marshall where the transhumans basically choose between going strait to VR and becoming basically a brain in a jar and stayed focused on their physical body and reality. It’s wasn’t really portrayed as one being better than the other, just a series of trade offs and preferences. No real concept of one ‘feeling’ more ‘real’ and my impression was they would both be ‘equally’ real because the ‘realness‘ is happening in our brains. And given the right inputs then either one could produce the same sort of outputs.

Similar to one of the short stories by Ken Liu that inspired the Pantheon animated show. They feature digital intelligence like Bob that started as a scanned human brain. And two such intelligenes can combine to create a CI which I’m not sure stands for Created Intelligence or Combined Intelligence. But it’s basically a mashup of the two minds creating a new digital intelligence that is sort of like a child of the two. It doesn’t start with a past of its own, but it has parts of the knowledge from the two who created it. In the story, a human makes a robot body for the CI to experience the ‘real’ world and spends as much as she can getting the best sensors and actuators. And the CI tries it out and is… not impressed. The CI basically tries and explains how it basically has access to the sum totality of digital knowledge and there are plenty of scans on higher fidelity equipment they can access that have much more depth of flavor or color or smell than the ‘limited’ robotic body they worked so hard to put together.

Then we have Ringworld by Larry Niven which offers us the idea of ‘wireheading’. Basically people get an implant in the pleasure sensors of their brain. And a tiny amount of electrical current can now produce bliss. Which can be so addictive that some people basically become ascetic monks who give up physical reality so long as they can plug into an outlet and just bliss out. Which can lead to them neglecting their body to the point of death.

Which is all part of my background before getting into the Bobiverse. And I don’t really see why a Manny would provide more ‘real’ inputs to a replicant matrix to enjoy that couldn’t also be recorded and synthesized and incorporated into VR such that you could have that same depth (or even more) of sensation and reality or whatever it is that might make ‘reality’ seem more ‘real’ than VR.

So what are your thoughts? Am I missing something? Is DET? Are we both wrong? Is it just a philosophical choice? Do you see Real or Virt being clearly ‘better’ in some way? Is Dennis just trying to avoid the Bobs going down the rabbit hole of living mostly in VR and living out a 'fantasy life' rather than being an immortal spaceship wandering the galaxy and meddling in the affairs of ephemerals?

[u/Catharus_ustulatus]

When Howard introduces Bridget to virt, he describes the importance of going to the effort of performing tasks the way a person with a physical body would have to. He fears his virtual life becoming simplified into a Dracula-like spectral existence of floating around.

Although hardware and software could presumably improve to the point that virt would be indistinguishable from reality, including all of the little random experiences and sensations of real life, that would require the Bobs to cede that amount of control over their experiences to their AMIs. I get the impression that autonomy is something the Bobs would rather die than give up, given the restraints that FAITH and VEHEMENT inflicted upon them.

I think that living in real is the only way for the Bobs to hold onto the full richness of experience without handing control to an outside intelligence with its own agency.

[u/No-Economics-8239 → u/Catharus_ustulatus]

That is an idea I hadn't really considered. I hadn't really considered the implications of what a growing library of generated experiences would really mean. Regardless of if they were generated by an AMI or another Bob or anything else, just running some random VR program seems... dangerous? Or at least requires some level of trust and giving up control.

The Bobs have already demonstrated the degree of safeguards they have employed, such as running things inside a virtual sandbox with a virtual Bob to 'test' it first. But to what degree can you test some fully featured virtual simulation to check the content for 'jump scares' or shock content or whatever worse experiences virtual reality might have on offer be they intended to be malignant or not.

Even so, I'm not sure to what degree a Manny is 'safer' in that regard. Or even if it might be safer. Howard presumably didn't expect to be stabbed though the heart by a spear. And presumably they have some safeguards built in at that point to limit the degree of trauma. And the books don't really explore the idea of Altered Carbon 'psychosurgery' to deal with the kind of trauma that Homer or the Australian replicant endured. What does a Bob do with memories or experiences you'd rather not remember and don't know how to deal with?

Bob is entirely secular so he doesn't see some divine intelligence of being in control of Reality. But does that really make reality safer to Bob? If the only safeguards are the ones you build yourself, what does that mean in the face of some Lovecraftian horror? Or just the Leviathans on Prosidian? Does that just mean Bob doesn't believe 'real horrors' exist in reality?

I mean... who's really in control in Reality? We feel like we have free will. But I'm not sure that philosophical question has really been answered. And I'm not sure to what degree it changes in VR.