If we have full dive VR would there still be people living in real life? In other words would VR cause human extinction?
Optional question - In your opinion approximately how many people would remain if that would happen? 1 million maybe
Thanks
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Had to move to general because the VR forums arenāt for general chit chat but for solving VR problems 
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Everyone. Because we would need infrastructure to support the majority being in a virtual environment. Otherwise our stay there would be a very short one.
Man you gonna need a virtual toilet too or something. XD
Thereād only be people living in real life. A species which cant procreate dies out.
Internet is a series of tubes already.
holographic ar GIF Hahaha this is what it would be like!
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Average boomers wonāt have enough technical know-how.
For anything.
Ever.
If basics of biological life are taken care of, being in the real world would slowly become considered a scary vulnerable experience, for the risk takers, akin to climbing the everest just or living alone in the wild off-grid.
Why has this idea shown up in various forums recently? The idea isnāt new, was there something in the news that I missed. Or is this also you? Would VR cause human extinction?
Iād expect the population density would increase, I see no reason why we couldnāt have billions of people inside the VR world. In astrophysics there is a concept called a matrioshka brain, which is a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox. The theory goes that species who are advanced enough to digitize themselves or large parts of their lives, will turn inwards instead of outward.
I think youād have to decide what you call human. In a thousand years, our ancestors will likely still be here, but be genetically very different from us, and may not be fleshy at all. Itās easy to extrapolate to that point. As VR becomes more and more common, more and more of our lives will be inside of it. Children wonāt have to physically travel to school. Work can be mostly remote, even manual labor jobs can be done remotely by just controlling robotics. Children growing up in that world will not know anything else, so being inside will be their lives, you only go outside to eat, sleep, sexā¦ The virtual world would just be an extension of our āinsideā home. Eventually, perhaps a hundred years, perhaps a thousand, weāll have machines powerful enough to simulate a human mind inside, which will be an attractive prospect. Body has cancer? No problem, you donāt need your body, upload your mind and discard it, live inside the virtual world. Immortality in the form of a digital afterlife. Thatāll eventually become the majority of the human population, as fleshy bodies continue to get old and die and more and more people become transhuman simulations. Because manual labor has been connecting the VR to robotics for centuries, there is no reason a simulated mind canāt just move into one and live as a robot. In the future, our meaty human part will just be considered our early life cycle before we mature after a century or so, then transform into our adult, mechanized form.
Just imagine the perpetual motion sickness!
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VR neither is practical, nor comfortable at current state, for any prolong time. I consider is as gimmick for minorities, which can be fun but not for too long. Some industrial applications may be potentially good. I tested some few years back. But to be honest, they did not introduce better workflow, understanding, or problem solving, than doing same thing on the flat screen.
Brain is such sophisticated device, that after short period of time, you forgot you are actually in VR. So all excitement is gone. Same applies to 3D films. You only remember few unit scenes, which were 3D. But rest of the film is just donāt matter, if is 3D or 2D. You would describe experience more less in same way.
For me, if you want VR to be seriously considered for masses, it need to be like matrix. Plug your brain directly.
360degree made films (I forgot tech name) will probably have more luck to it.
Extra cash for pharmaceutical industry 
suppose to be good thing, boosting economy ā¦
I think there will be a portion of the population who escape into VR and never come out. How large a portion will depend on the ability of others to handle the escapeeās basic needs like food and shelter (whether through their family or through government doll). There has always been a portion of the population that escaped into books, video games, hobbies, drugs, alcohol, or other places, with a section of that portion doing it in an unhealthy way.
An article I recently read might give a view of how this is already happening even without VR:
Young Men Are Playing Video Games Instead of Getting Jobs. Thatās OK. (For Now.)
My wild speculation:
For the vast majority of humanity to live in Matrix pods, weād need a very high level of automation to perform all maintenance, manufacturing, delivery etc. It is also difficult to imagine an economy based on virtually no one doing any actual work, and raising the economic status of people in the developing world to a level where they would have access to such technology on an equal footing to more developed countries. Nearly a billion people still donāt have access to electricity, and half the worldās population lacks internet access. So we have a long way to go before pretty much everyone is plugged in.
Iād also think everyone in their matrix pods would make governments highly susceptible to takeover, and the population then extremely easy to control.
I think the most likely scenario for the bulk of humanity living like this would be a major disaster which dramatically reduces the human population and makes the surface of the earth uninhabitable. The resulting underground society gets really into virtual living as a means of escaping their cramped underground environment, eventually resulting after many generations in a society which stays in their pods all the time.
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If lots of people are plugging into the matrix for lengthy periods of time, Iām stealing all their stuff.
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People bring up this idea every year or so, sometimes as fiction, sometimes as genuine speculation. Itās basically the same thing as all those people who say āyoung people these days only look at their phonesā
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If āfull diveā VR ever existed, I think it would present a big problem. Itās pretty clear that weāre already straining our mental capacity to operate in highly artificial environments. If you take the (pretty well established) hypothesis that stress and anxiety is produced in large amounts by avoidance behaviour, well full dive VR is the ultimate form that it could take. Iām not too sure what would be the result of going to the end of that spectrum.
In all my experience so far, Iāve been led to the conclusion that human beings, for all intents and purposes, cannot bootstrap their way into psychological resilience and growth. They must test themselves against things outside of their control, what you might call the ānatural orderā of things (which includes civilization as well of course). To a good extent, itās necessary to not have a choice, to not be able to set the terms of your own existence, to be completely fulfilled in life. Because itās only after you let go of part of your ego that you can realize why something is meaningful.
On a positive note, I think āfull diveā VR has the potential to provide a setting for accelerated personal and character growth - itās just that people wonāt be interested in using it for non-gratifying things.
Would there still be people living in reality? Yes, at least those people who consider that the universe and reality still have things to teach and offer.
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VR porn will be a huge industry
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To be honest, I have hard time to imagine, how that suppose to work at pleasure level, without extra suits, gloves or other devices. Otherwise price and awkwardness well keep idea in deep shadow, of very niche market.
If you believe yourself what you are saying, you would be on the hype train already. Surely should be more successful than some VR FPS?
Or I am missing something?