Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I hate VR, but I used to, maybe 15 years ago, play WoW, and I enjoyed running and flying and interacting in that world--sometimes I'd think "If this were the real world, there is no way in hell I'd still be running right now" after crossing the entirety of Eversong Woods. I spent hours playing, then one day my wife took a photo of me in my headphones staring seriously at the screen and I had a moment. I quit not long after.
But to answer your question "do I enjoy being embodied and doing stuff with my physical body" the answer is what I suspect it would be for most: Sometimes. Most of the time probably. Even after having my ass kicked and thrown all over the floor in Aikido, when I come home and shower and then get into the furo I feel sore as hell--but I feel alive. I was having this conversation with my oldest son recently: I feel most alive when I am walking in the freezing cold at 4:30 am going to the train station. If it's pissing down rain or snowing, all the more.
I am not a masochist. But you don't get to my age without having experienced a lot of physical discomfort (and I am relatively whole and healthy with all my limbs, unlike many.) You learn to enjoy the relaxing moments in the warm bed, or in the pool, or on the couch, or having a glass of wine at the kitchen table with your wife where the room is heated, while at the same time holding in the back of your head that this is only a brief respite from the freezing cold or burning heat, from hunger and fear and extreme exhaustion and a walking journey with a big pack where the end will not be for hours and hours and you have to make sure of not only your own safety but that of others, and you're scared shitless but that's your lot. That's an earthquake away. Or fill in your disaster. To say nothing of the eventual hospital or hospice bed where you may someday be in constant freakish pain without IV analgesics.
Yes I enjoy being embodied. Or more to the point, until your post, I've never questioned that "being embodied" is anything but reality, or that anything that is not that is unreality, or a Baudrillard hyperreality. Maybe when I was a kid and I watched that Star Trek OS episode Spock's Brain where his mind is literally disembodied (Brain and brain! What is brain?)
I'm intrigued at your feelings of what you're calling "severe distaste," particularly in that you say you've felt them since childhood. It makes me wonder if gaming has knocked loose something in the human brain that shouldn't be knocked loose.
Nota bene: I am old. You will get different perspectives on this.
That is by far the biggest downside of a baseline human body, and why I don't want to be stuck in one even if I like mine.
It will, despite our best medicines, decay and fail you. Maybe our drugs and treatments will get better, and we can keep people healthy indefinitely. But even then, I want things that no human body constrained by biology will be able to provide.
I'm not physically decrepit. Well, not yet. When I say old I mean mainly my perspective is different from that of the generation that grew up online.
Edit: As for the remainder of your comment, I'm at a loss. The human condition is its frailty and finitude. The Gift of Men, as Tolkien wrote.
"Aging and death are good, actually" is the biggest fucking cope I have seen in my life.
I'm not as much of a transhumanist as some of the other rationalists, but I really don't think wanting to live until the heat death of the universe in an 18-year-old body is too much to ask.
I can't tell if you're calling George's words or Tolkien's "cope", but if it's the latter then I think you're mistaken. Tolkien was Catholic, and his setting reflected his beliefs. Death is absolutely a good thing in that framework, because you get to be with God, and that is such a profound joy that all else pales in comparison (even being in an 18-year-old body until the heat death of the universe).
Also, I think you're underrating how weary the world can become after even just our short stay here. Some of those problems would be obsolete in your hypothetical scenario, but not all. At some point, when you've seen a pointless genocide for the hundred thousandth time, is the fact that your body works great really that much of a solace? One thing I've noticed in spending time with old people (proper old, not @George_E_Hale lol) is that they are often quite ready to lay down their cares and rest. And the young never quite understand it because they just haven't been through enough of life to get to the point where death seems like a welcome end to things (with some exceptions, like very depressed people). But it's a very real thing, and to be honest I can understand it a lot more now at (almost) 40 than I could at 25.
Only because Christians rarely bother to spell out what day-to-day existence in heaven actually means. When they do, it ranges from the boring (eternal rest and praising God) to the pedestrian ("Heaven is a city 15,000 miles square...") to the horrifying (profound joy at being in the glorious presence of God is just religiously flavored wireheading).
Transhumanists sometimes write about what heaven on Earth might look like (Star Trek, The Culture, Friendship is Optimal, etc.) and if we fall short, I don't see the Christians doing any better.
Well, I'm 35, and I still don't see it; my reasons for being weary of life are all fixable. I'm tired of getting old, but that can be fixed by being eternally 18. I'm tired of watching my friends and family die, but that can be fixed by making them all eternally 18. I'm tired working a job I hate, but that can be fixed by making AIs do all the jobs. I'm tired of having lost the love of my life, but that can be fixed by forking her and modifying the copy just enough that she will want to be with me until the last star grows cold and the universe comes to an end.
You know, simple solutions to simple problems.
you can think of it as being a permanent version of basically the hottest boy-anxiously-but-purely-asks, woman-gives-freely-and-usually-a-bit-more-than-he-can-handle-type /ss/ doujin you've ever seen, except instead of just sex the exploration space is infinite
[reference pictures #7 and #8 here, SFW...ish]
that is how the relationship God [the woman] wants to have with you [the shota] is supposed to work; infinite desirability and infinite depth in infinite ways comes to you, for free, in the same ways
sex might not be the best way to illustrate it because of the implications (and Christians have a rather famously bad relationship with it) but Song of Songs does it anyway so IDK lol; it's supposed to feel like losing every single virginity at once to a beautiful woman who takes you to bed simply because you asked her to
Can anyone explain the Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid reference? I just don't get it even though I've seen S1.
Shotacon's a porn genre; that's why he's called that in the show (the 'u' in his name is silent in both sub and dub). The author of this work has others that play this a bit straighter but it's worth noting the relationships his characters have are generally constructive, not destructive.
The interesting part of it is that the most difficult parts/negotiations of the typical male and female relationship dynamic are standing on their head or taken for granted. The thing about the casual awkward sex-type button-pushing is that normally the man is supposed to offer something to the woman and in return she'll show him her tits, but in this case, the man can't offer anything except best effort and the woman is trying to stuff her tits in his face before he's proven himself; the inverse of how a typical relationship is supposed to function.
The other thing about Shouta is that he's, well, innocent. He approaches [what is basically God] like a child would (Kobayashi does this too, but in a slightly different way)- hence the nervousness to accept the gifts offered him (and the apprehension about accepting them publicly; he does share a bed with her, after all, and they do have a kid in the spinoff), but it's worth noting he does accept them (considering that he does care for Lucoa and doesn't want her to go away, and is worried about doing that by accident).
It is noteworthy that in Christianity, this is repeatedly stated to be the way God works; so just extend that principle out to everything rather than just the sexual angle and... there you have it.
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