Virtual Embodiment Article

Are We Already Living in Virtual Reality?

"For a few minutes, I sat enjoying my strange surroundings. Then, without warning, my point of view began to move. I was pulling backward, out of myself. First, I saw the back of my head, and then my body from behind. I began drifting toward the ceiling. From there, I looked down at my body in its chair, surrounded by swirling spheres. In my mind, silence reigned. No thoughts were equal to the experience. I didn’t feel that I had left my body; I felt that my body had left me. When I took off the headset, Slater and Bourdin were watching me. “How was it?” Slater asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“How do you feel?” Bourdin asked.
“Weird,” I said.
“Some people have really strong experiences,” Bourdin said. “There’s shouting. They grab the chair.” He paused. “I think it gives you the implicit idea that you can separate your body from your soul. It’s about the fear of death.”
I nodded, cradling the headset in my hands."

I am always happy reading about research that seems to shake at the foundation of mainstream science and our current materilistic worldview. But then I stumble over articles like this and am being pulled back to earth and depression. Mainstream science just seems to be much more logical and fitting regarding my "life experience" than anything else. Maybe I misunderstood the text as I am no native speaker of English, but in my current understanding it reinforces materialism once again.

Curious to read what others more versed in science think of it.

Are We Already Living in Virtual Reality?

"For a few minutes, I sat enjoying my strange surroundings. Then, without warning, my point of view began to move. I was pulling backward, out of myself. First, I saw the back of my head, and then my body from behind. I began drifting toward the ceiling. From there, I looked down at my body in its chair, surrounded by swirling spheres. In my mind, silence reigned. No thoughts were equal to the experience. I didn’t feel that I had left my body; I felt that my body had left me. When I took off the headset, Slater and Bourdin were watching me. “How was it?” Slater asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“How do you feel?” Bourdin asked.
“Weird,” I said.
“Some people have really strong experiences,” Bourdin said. “There’s shouting. They grab the chair.” He paused. “I think it gives you the implicit idea that you can separate your body from your soul. It’s about the fear of death.”
I nodded, cradling the headset in my hands."

Excellent find, berkelon. Essential reading for everybody on this forum.

Excellent find

Any article which references Susan Blackmore is hardly going to be excellent. Mediocre perhaps.  Must try harder, perhaps. A good starting point is to consider not what is included in the article, but what is omitted.

If it's really true that you get one life and that's it, then the only logical course of action is probably suicidal hedonism. Because why waste any time doing anything you don't want to do when you and everything else is just gonna die and be forgotten anyways? Making it so you and everything you did effectively never happened. Might as well go out there and kill everyone who annoys you, steal whatever you feel like, and then shoot yourself the moment any consequences look like they might come your way. It's not like you'll get anything for getting a job or having kids, it's not like you'll get anything for being a law abiding citizen or giving to the poor or making some grand scientific discovery. Even if that discovery was how to not age or transfer your consciousness to a robot or whatever. Eventually, something will go wrong, and you'll die anyways. So it still doesn't matter. It's all just gonna be gone, so why care about the long term? There is no long term when you're just gonna die anyways. There is only what feels good in the moment.

But curiously you don't see that from those who allegedly believe this stuff, you see the same meekness, fear and obedience that you see in everyone else. I don't think it's because they secretly don't believe it.

I reject the idea that once your're dead you're dead on principle, it's just a stupid idea. Regardless if it's true or not I'll fight to enforce the reality I want. If I succeed, great, if I fail, oh no, I was gonna die anyways. But at least I'd know that I didn't just lay down and take it like a bitch like so many others.

People say that our beliefs don't shape reality but reality should shape our beliefs, fuck that, reality is stupid. I didn't choose it, I didn't decide to be constrained by these dumb arbitrary rules. So those rules are wrong. Reality should be whatever I tell it to be, that's the only thing worth fighting for for me. Reality being (currently) more powerful than me doesn't make it worth bowing down to or respecting. That's my version of suicidal hedonism, I'm not gonna waste time living a "normal" life in a reality this pathetic.

They can only make these experiences work by using real, but alternative, sensory data... This would seem supportive of the idea that some part of the classic OBE NDE recollections might also incorporate real, but alternative, sensory data.

Interesting point!