[staticshock]

There's a subgenre of dystopian sci-fi where the premise is that reality in general is destined to be eclipsed by matrix-like hyper-realities, and that people will vastly prefer those and cede reality to whoever's left.

I guess the way this could work itself out is that if you prefer a hyper-reality, your genes do not pass on, and someone else's do, and within some number of generations we bounce back in response to evolutionary pressure.

I learned a fun fact in a recent interview of David Reich (by Dwarkesh):

> Every mutation that can occur does occur. There are eight billion people in the world. There are maybe 30 new mutations every generation, so that’s 240 billion new point mutations every generation. There are only three billion DNA bases in the genome, so every mutation that can occur does occur about 100 times every generation. We’re not mutation-limited anymore.

https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/david-reich-2

[fragmede]

However, medical care isn't evenly distributed, neither is education, and there's tons of cultural differences as well. The mutations happen, but if the next Einstein or Ramanujan dies in a war-torn ghetto, did the mutation really happen?

[ileonichwiesz]

A point mutation is very unlikely to produce “the next Einstein”, it’ll just produce someone with one slightly different protein in their gut.

[fragmede]

yeah but that's no fun. Verve-102 and PCKS9 is a fascinating story in that area, of what we know and what we can do, but we need more money funding medical research in order to maker progress.

[initramfs]

Interesting. It hadn't occurred to me that The Matrix would become more ubiquitous, but it seems there are plenty of mechanisms from avoiding that. People read novels 200 years ago, and i imagine that was a bit of blue pilling.