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by avdempsey 1344 days ago
The meat and meatspace “replacements” are bridge technologies that reduce the suffering of animals and people respectively. Sometimes a vegan just wants a burger. Sometimes an exec just needs a little help to let go.

Sure these bridges have plenty of problems today, and maybe they’ll go to nowhere. But maybe in the far future they’ll lead us to cruelty free, healthy designer tissues that taste better than anything an animal makes, and Bret Victor’s dynamic medium.
1 comments
chaostheory 1344 days ago
This is just like early smart phones, early PCs, and the internet before the 2000s. Yes, there are many flaws, but can’t people see the future potential?
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ryan_lane 1344 days ago
People can't see the future potential because the people actively working on it aren't showing us any future potential. Everything they're showing is worse versions of what we currently have, but "in VR!".
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chaostheory 1344 days ago
That’s not true. The main reason you’ve written this is simply because you have yet to try a VR system that wasn’t the equivalent to Google cardboard
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ryan_lane 1343 days ago
I used one of the newer oculus recently. It was fun for a short period of time. It wasn't so great that I'd spend a considerably amount of time wearing it, because it's so much effort to use.

The discussion is in terms of using it for meetings and such, and in that case, there's nothing they've shown us that isn't "attend a meeting in person, remote", which I can do in zoom, without needing to wear a heavy, uncomfortable thing on my entire face, for most of a day. A number of things about it are actively worse. This is why I'm saying they're just showing us the same thing, in VR. There's nothing to be excited about.

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chaostheory 1343 days ago
Zoom is terrible for presence, as in feeling like both of you are in the same place which VR achieves quite easily even with terrible graphics. That is very hard to demo. You have to experience it yourself for more than one 5 minute session. I strongly doubt that you’ve even used a Quest just based on your comments. It has many problems and flaws, but “too much effort to use” isn’t one of them.
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ryan_lane 1339 days ago
Putting something on that requires full immersion requires you to be able to fully block out time, and have physical space available, with all of the necessary equipment is effort. That physical space also needs to be a trusted space, since you're unable to know what's going on around you. For zoom, I can join on my cell phone, from basically anywhere.

That's too much effort to use.

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