[noneparticular]

May I ask what makes you think this way?

In this society someone like me that is solitary for the most part can contribute to others, and be compensated for my contributions without having the issue of having to deal with other people directly.

It's not appealing to everyone, but having the option is helpful to those averse to direct interaction. I don't see much downside in having it open.

[Barrin92]

>I don't see much downside in having it open.

The downside is that unlike in a society where that isn't an option people aren't forced to socialize and then they adapt. Having everything catered to shut-ins normalizes pathologies, something common across a lot of modern internet subcultures.

It enables a sort of Peter Pan like existence in which people stay perpetual kids without ever having to take on the obligations of adulthood. And it's becoming so common that in countries like SK who are at the front of this people have replaced starting families and having sex with adopting dogs and cats. In an entire society like this who takes care of them and delivers their packages when they're all 60 years old is a frightening question. (and a very real one in the near future)

If it was an odd-ball thing it wouldn't matter, but social isolation and delaying or ignoring responsibilities of adult social life are now mainstream issues.

[noneparticular]

That does assume thought that adaptation is the only outcome though. But requires at least two conditions to be met; that the individual in question can adapt, and that society would accept them. What happens when one or both conditions are unfulfilled?

On the obligation of adulthood, do you mean to say that starting a family is an obligation? If so then I wonder if perhaps people choosing not to do so may not be a bad thing. My parents married because that's what you're supposed to do as an adult, and it was something I know my mother regretted later in life. Some people start families and rise to the challenge but it's tragically common that they utterly fail as well.

600,000. That's the number of unique cases the various Child Protective Agencies in the US contends with each year. The US CDC estimates that 1 in 3 women will experience violence committed to them by an intimate partner, and 1 in 7 men will experience the same. Unhappy partnerships aren't exactly rare.

I suppose that does beg the question if it's better to have fewer families with a higher portion that are stable, or more families in general even if it means a higher proportion of them will be broken or unstable.

[Dalewyn]

Agreed. I've seen enough miserable and dysfunctional families (which by far are the majority of families) for me to just clock out from the notion of marriage.

Life is short and I've got shit to do and places to be, I ain't got no time for that concentrated bullshit.

[freilanzer]

> are forced to socialize and then they adapt.

Do they? Or are they just suffering silently?

[lee-rhapsody]

>"Having the option is helpful to those averse to direct interaction"

Perhaps it's more worth your while to examine why you're so opposed to interacting with other people. It is undeniably unhealthy to isolate one to such a degree as you're describing perpetually. (And this is coming from a deeply introverted person—I scored in the 5th percentile for extraversion when I took the Big 5/OCEAN assessment. But even I feel the effects of isolation before too long.)

[noneparticular]

For me?

Part of it is just finding interaction with other's to be exhausting. My parents forced to go out and about rather often in my youth, usually under threat of violence. Even after they stopped have any real power over my I was dragging myself to outings that I utterly loathed doing. To this day I cannot look at a golf course without my stomach becoming unsettled.

Some of it is irrational fear but all emotion is irrational. Some of it is lingering anger from the agency I lacked for so long.

Whether it's unhealthy or not, ultimately I think matters little. At the end of the day I'm the only that it affects. And I think the tradeoff of having my silence is worth that cost, and I find no real impetus to change that.

[johnnyanmac]

>I don't see much downside in having it open.

on the contrary, that feels like the step right before the good ol' dystopian VR reality that many sci-fi literature dive into . I don't see much upside to that happening.

[noneparticular]

I can't foresee something like Ready Player One happening on a large scale though.

My preference for not interaction with anyone is the exception, not the norm. For what you fear to come to pass, the the opposite would have to become true. Why would people in general shift their preference towards isolationism?

[johnnyanmac]

>Why would people in general shift their preference towards isolationism?

Because it's convinient. It's always because it's convinient. We've had so many issues in society happen because the alternative is more convinient.

And yes, isolation is convinient. No worries about interpersonal insecurities, no worries about troublesome encounters, entertainment can be tailored to your tastes instead of as a compromise of the group, and minimum social pressure to do what you are not comfortable with.

I can ask the contrary, why wouldn't people shift towards isolationism if they otherwise had their own automomy and comfortable living.

[noneparticular]

I would surmise that the answer would lie in just how comfortable people can make themselves without any other sort of interaction. My first instinct would be to say that there are many that wouldn't, if the migration into large and expensive metropolis's such as New York, London, Paris, or Tokyo are of any indication.

For the ambitious, it's quite unlikely for one to strike greatness without support from others. Anyone is capable of anything, but no one is capable of everything. That ability to connect and network with others so that their skills and resources can be utilized to achieve feats that would otherwise be impossible alone. And I doubt that those without any sort of ambition are the majority.

Plus we saw major advances towards that sort of reality during the Pandemic, and yet those changes haven't had quite the staying power in society as some had predicted. More and more people are congregating again in various ways.

Hence why I say that I doubt that we'd see some dystopian reality where people are going to be plugged into VR all the time.

[Timwi]

Slippery slope fallacy. Shall we ban TV and radio as well because they replace real-life interactions?

[johnnyanmac]

No, there is such thing as social TV and radio. Just check out bars.

The VR future tailoring to your imagination is where things really start to go dystopian. It's not exactly a slippery slope since that's what the GP mentioned.

[flir]

Because eventually, the machine stops.

[48864w6ui]

To the last 3 words, you should probably add a link, or at least author and year ;)

[flir]

Thanks ;)