This is what I want to see

[Human No More]

No, he is saying that the majority of people are choosing to leave Earth for a different life, and they make Earth into an idealised place for people that choose to stay behind as a sort of parting gift. People would still reproduce in both existences (although I would hope that children of each would have the opportunity to change to the other as they wished)

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Fkeu'itan

Are you saying, Clarke, that you want this kind of supermachinery to 'take over' everyone else so that you and 23 or so thousand other people can live the 'perfect life' outside?

No; it would be preferable for super-intelligences to take over because humans aren't very good at managing something as large and complex as a planet. The humans are only there because it would be unfair to evict them without reason. The "perfect life" is the one inside the simulation, on the reasoning that human suffering extends from scarcity, and scarcity doesn't exist in a land of software.

Also, what HNM said.

In my opinion, if you can't appreciate anything at all about life - not even the fact that there are almost limitless possiblilities here, an infinite number of different outcomes, seven billion conversations to be had, a million places to see and visit and that if you're willing to work, billions of different paths to be walked - then I feel extremely sorry for you.

If we keep imagining this is my nostalgia trip, I personally think you've missed the point. If I were to live a hundred lifetimes in software, I could do all of that; I could have a billion conversations, explore the Earth for decades, master ten thousand occupations, and then, just to top it all off, do six impossible things before breakfast the next morning. ...And then be back in reality for Christmas that same year.

Edit; And another few questions... Would this be an enforcement? Would you be shoving people into chambers telling them "It's what's best for them" and that they would "forget aaaaall about it in a few seconds"? Would new-born babies be forced to live in this fallacy, from birth? Would people even still reproduce?

That would be an autonomy violation and thus unacceptable. However, there wouldn't be much reproduction, IRL or in software, since everyone lives until they want to die.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

What about those of us who don't want to play, because the game sucks? Why can't I choose a better game?

Originally Posted by Clarke

Why this game and not a more entertaining one?

I guess it is hard to know what choice one has made at the beginning of the game. Maybe the purpose of the game is not to entertain, but to learn something new. I'd say if your everyday reality is one in which you can have everything at anytime, after some centuries or millennia it may seem like an interesting game to spend some simulated years in a level that has some strange rules and cannot be aborted at will. Maybe the next game will be a more entertaining one. Maybe its the lower levels that allow less "cool stuff" or maybe it actually a higher level that is much harder than the previous ones because of all the restrictions. Or maybe it is a multiplayer game and some players have more fun playing it than others, but everyone signed up for a lifetime. What is a lifetime after all - some 80 years may be simulated in a few minutes if computing power is big enough and then one can have some thousands of lifetimes within a yew years...

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

Let's change brains for a day or two and you'll be hitting yourself with a hammer for what you just wrote.

I dont know what you mean.

Have you ever considered the fact that for those who are talented, many such tasks aren't even challenging? Because essentially you are saying that those of us who suck at everything have it best

No, because if you suck at it, you can not really make it. No matter how long you try, you will not paint something that looks like a Van Gogh. For Van Gogh on the other hand, I am sure his paintings were a challenge and he trhew many of them and tried again. The trick is to choose a challenge that is within ones capabilities but still a challenge of sorts.

It's because of people like you that minecraft is so popular. What is it with you people who can't sit still for one second? Why is that these challenges can't be self-set rather than arbitrary things that must be repeated ad infinitum?

I never played minecraft and dont get that reference, but Yes of course - slef-chosen challenges are more fun indeed. I'd much rather face the challenge of mastering a hangglider than mastering housecleaning XD - and truely repetitive tasks are indeed boring - not challenging
But a challenge put to us by someone else is very interesting. Just take computer games. There are puzzles and mysteries in it and you as a player have the chance to explore and solve them. They are made by someone else. It would be boring to play a game that oneself has designed or read a book that oneself has written.

Originally Posted by Clarke

That's basically turtles all the way down. If you say this reality is a simulation, why not the next one up?

Yes it does.
In theory then, every level will be less detailled then, because it is basically running inside a simulation

Boredom is the most benign sort of unpleasantness. Almost certainly, a huge portion of humanity would kill to have the opportunity to be bored.

Certainly. Until they experience boredom. Think of the classical example - the lazy bored king that has everything at his disposal but in the end is bored to death. If it was not for the joker and theatre people, he would go mad. And even with them he eventually does.

I myself would be very willing to spend some things on having the chance to just sit on a beach and do nothing right now that I am stressed at work. But from experience I know that after a week or maybe two, it starts to be much more interesting to rent a car and travel around the island, make a tour into the jungle, read a book on the beach, take a boat tour or do anything else that is new and surprising and entertaining. I dont say that boredom is only a problem of the rich - poor people are often even more bored because they are made to work in boring jobs for 10 hours a day or more.

The world today is orders of magnitude more interesting than the world of even 20 years ago, because there is so much activity and sharing of ideas, and that's because there's so much communication.

No not really. I found the world very very interesting 20 years ago. I was excited at catching snails and observe them, fireflies in the garden, we picked up small trees and planted them behind the house. I was experimenting with electrolysis and it blew up our bathroom and I was tinkering with a C64 computer to remote-control self-made robots and we were going to the forest to collect mushrooms (up to 1986 when that was off the list due to radioactive fallout). I thought these are very interesting times. Of course for someone living now, these activities might sound lame because one can have online gardens, can buy a robotics kit from Lego for a few bucks. But I claim that at least in many times, life was interesting for people. In some it was not, especially in those when people were enslaved ins ome way - maybe literally enslavement or in feudalism had to work as peasants or in industrialism as factory workers or in modern times as burger salesmen or call center agents. I think online remote communication is not the key to life being interesting. Though of course, when we used dial-up telephone connections to set up some of the first IRC networks back then in the 1980ies it was quite interesting to be able to communicate with people from far away.

...think you mad for calling millisecond-level ping times across continents, supported by information infrastructure to put all of pre-1900 human history to shame, uninteresting.

I did not say uninteresting. See above - we probably would in the 1980ies thought the same.

Bizarrely, I'd object to calling soldering electronics or building (as opposed to designing) a train landscape "fun;" the implementation is a solved problem, why should I need to spend the energy to execute it?

I begin to think you are a helpless case of someone who needs some serious slacktime . Of course I would not call building things fun anymore that one can buy easily. But as I said, it is interesting and fun to be creative, to invent something or to make something oneself that otherwise would be very costly. Soldering an automatic telephone switcher for the 2400 baud modem (Something that was not available for sale in this country at that time) was a challenge and in a way a fun thing to do in the 1980ies. Today, it probably is a $3 piece you can buy on ebay from Hong Kong, so of course it makes no sense anymore, instead people two years ago were building helicopters with cameras that can fly automatically between predefined GPS points. In 2-3 years maybe you can buy these as well (actually they start to sell stuff like this already) and then that will not be fun anymore.

I dare you to play Garry's Mod for a few hours, then.

I cannot play it I think. But even so, it is a simulated reality it seems, one that relies on the laws of physics to simulate what objects do. The fun is, that what you create in there has to work according to the rules of the game. To have limitless power would mean you can just randomly assemble anything and it still will fly. That would be a lot less fun because it is less challenging and does not require you to think and use that brain of yours.

But reality doesn't make most people happy at all, so even superficial happiness would be an improvement.

[/quote]
I think for many people that is not really true - that reality sucks. But even for those who think it does, it makes sense to seek for true happiness, not for superficial or even illusory happiness. Money gives some happiness - for a while - until one got used to it and then all is back to square one. Lottery winners that started out as unhappy persons are likely to end up unhappy again after a while, while those who are more stable will actually make something out of it. Happiness is not that easy to grasp and it certainly in the longer run does not depend on the ability to havy anything one wants at command.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

I guess it is hard to know what choice one has made at the beginning of the game. Maybe the purpose of the game is not to entertain, but to learn something new. I'd say if your everyday reality is one in which you can have everything at anytime, after some centuries or millennia it may seem like an interesting game to spend some simulated years in a level that has some strange rules and cannot be aborted at will. Maybe the next game will be a more entertaining one. Maybe its the lower levels that allow less "cool stuff" or maybe it actually a higher level that is much harder than the previous ones because of all the restrictions. Or maybe it is a multiplayer game and some players have more fun playing it than others, but everyone signed up for a lifetime. What is a lifetime after all - some 80 years may be simulated in a few minutes if computing power is big enough and then one can have some thousands of lifetimes within a yew years...

I'm short of time, so I can't respond to everything, but I just want to say that I hate hate hate this trope with a burning passion. It sounds like a post-hoc justification, for the very simple reasons that 1) I would remember such a thing, and 2) why on Earth wouldn't it be wish-fufillment? Nobody role-plays mundanity, except for irony. It defeats the point of RP: fun.

To quote possibly the embodiment of this sort of wish fufilment, (i.e. The Doctor of Dr. Who) "I skip the boring ones." When you have access to reality warping (or in his case, a time machine) nothing should be boring.

[Fkeu'itan]

Eh... I'll stay behind and live out my alloted years, thanks.

I have no desire to live forever. Nor do I wish everything to be served up on a silver platter in front of me, real or not. And life is only boring if you percieve it to be. If you're obsesed with massive space journeys and technology, 'unenhanced' life will always seem boring, but when you can appreciate things like the feel of a breeze or the smell of a morning dew, the intensity of night in a woodland... life is rarely boring.

[Moco Loco]

I can appreciate all of those things and still be very ambitious I think this world sounds pretty sweet. I wonder what year these events in Clarke's narrative are happening.

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

I dont know what you mean.

Neither do I, but would you be so kind as to check if your private message inbox is full?

No, because if you suck at it, you can not really make it. No matter how long you try, you will not paint something that looks like a Van Gogh. For Van Gogh on the other hand, I am sure his paintings were a challenge and he trhew many of them and tried again. The trick is to choose a challenge that is within ones capabilities but still a challenge of sorts.

I would just want to be able to be good at something I like. I don't need to be a Chopin with the piano, but I'd like to be able to do better than a six year old. I don't want that playing piano is challenging, I want to play it to hear the music, I just want it to be fun.

I never played minecraft and dont get that reference, but Yes of course - slef-chosen challenges are more fun indeed. I'd much rather face the challenge of mastering a hangglider than mastering housecleaning XD - and truely repetitive tasks are indeed boring - not challenging

Well housecleaning is something that must be done regardless of one's opinion of it, unless one intends to live a rather unsanitary life. I think I'd rather master housecleaning than hang gliding, because heights do not really agree with me, nor the cold and danger that usually accompanies them.

But a challenge put to us by someone else is very interesting. Just take computer games. There are puzzles and mysteries in it and you as a player have the chance to explore and solve them. They are made by someone else. It would be boring to play a game that oneself has designed or read a book that oneself has written.

Now we are talking the same language, but only as long as the challenges are not physical in nature. Then again, the art of creativity is a challenge in itself, dare I say more so than anything else that can be done. Reading a book by anyone is easy, writing a book that people would want to read is not.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

I would just want to be able to be good at something I like. I don't need to be a Chopin with the piano, but I'd like to be able to do better than a six year old. I don't want that playing piano is challenging, I want to play it to hear the music, I just want it to be fun.

I can understand that. Maybe piano is then not it - there's other ways to make music that may be less challenging for you?

Now we are talking the same language, but only as long as the challenges are not physical in nature.

Well that is maybe personal preferrence. I also prefer challenges in the mind above physical ones in many cases but the physical ones can also be very much fun. Like taking a snowboard downhill a double black diamond slope with a ton of powder snow on it. Physical challenges can be amazingly fun.

Originally Posted by Clarke

1) I would remember such a thing, and 2) why on Earth wouldn't it be wish-fufillment? Nobody role-plays mundanity, except for irony. It defeats the point of RP: fun.

1) if you would, would you keep playing or just say "aw this sucks, I can just jump to the end of this level.
2) I know plenty of computer games that are sort of mundane - still people spent hours in front of a screen to play Super Mario over and over until they managed that one stupid jump. The other thing is, that you would have no idea who is playing. For a god, it may actually be sort of fun to play something mundane. Why would anyone play dungeons and dragons and fight monsters with swords? Just laser-gun them and go for the treasure. But that would be kind of boring, wouldn't it?

To quote possibly the embodiment of this sort of wish fufilment, (i.e. The Doctor of Dr. Who) "I skip the boring ones." When you have access to reality warping (or in his case, a time machine) nothing should be boring.

Well - the Doctor is a Time Lord. If humans do that they'd go mad. But the point is more that life here does not have to be boring at all. If you play, instead of just complaining, maybe you would see that it can be quite fantastic. See - the plants on this planet are green? Who would think of something like that? Everyone knows that plants are blue. And there are animals with more than 4 legs - that is amazing. And who had the idea to put a spectacular color paining in the sky every evening instead if just grey and then black....
I'm just making a bit of fun here, but fact is that if this is a game we're playing and are not the designers of the game ourselves (now that WOULD be boring) who knows what the challenge for the game was, who designed it and how much this world differs from what else we experienced up to now.
I am aware that this is a non falsifyable idea - that all this is already a game, a simulation. Unless you find the red pill or the cheat codes, it is about as unprovable as "god made it so".

Even the Doctor takes a week off occasionally and makes a vacation - And sometimes he even intenionally forgets who he is because it is part of his life/game/adventures.

Originally Posted by Fkeu'itan

If you're obsesed with massive space journeys and technology, 'unenhanced' life will always seem boring, but when you can appreciate things like the feel of a breeze or the smell of a morning dew, the intensity of night in a woodland... life is rarely boring.

Exactly. To make ones fulfilment dependant on something far int he future creates unhappiness if one cannot appreciate the present. Maybe this is the purpose of this life or this "game" - to discover the importance of the moment, the little details....

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

I can understand that. Maybe piano is then not it - there's other ways to make music that may be less challenging for you?

Keyboards are one of the easiest instruments to play, and I've tried guitar for example, but my hands are just way too clumsy for that.

Well that is maybe personal preferrence. I also prefer challenges in the mind above physical ones in many cases but the physical ones can also be very much fun. Like taking a snowboard downhill a double black diamond slope with a ton of powder snow on it. Physical challenges can be amazingly fun.

You do snowboarding...

...

I demand that you teach me how, because it's like impossible not to fall over, let alone go anywhere when both feet are glued to the same board. There are some things I would like to be able to do, and that is one of them. How long did you practice to be able to do something like that, or are you a natural? You see, I'm also a natural, a natural disaster when it comes to physical activity.

But that is just too awesome... I wish I could do something like that...

[auroraglacialis]

Haha - well, I started in 1989 when the boards looked like this. Took me 2 days or so of falling down on the icy slope until I learned it so much that I dared to go by myself, but I made alot of mistakes I later needed to correct because there wer not really teachers around. But I got a hang of it soon and by the mid 1990ies I was going down slopes that are crazy. I did not participate in this one, but these was a mountain I went down (until I reached my limits there and broke a leg): Freeskiing World Tour Gets Extreme in Crested Butte Colorado
Way WAY off topic now

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

I can understand that. Maybe piano is then not it - there's other ways to make music that may be less challenging for you?

I wrote a crude synthesizer because the actual making of the music was fairly uninteresting to me. Producing any given note is obvious, so it seemed a waste of effort to string notes together manually - a haphazard process prone to mistakes - when the computer could do it flawlessly for me, with only one, interesting exertion on my part. (The problem of how to generate sound data was interesting at the time.) Implementing the music with such hard-to-organise hardware is silly when there's an faster, more controllable way of doing it.

1) if you would, would you keep playing or just say "aw this sucks, I can just jump to the end of this level.

And that's a flaw in the game. If the challenge is genuinely interesting, I will want to solve it without skipping things.

2) I know plenty of computer games that are sort of mundane - still people spent hours in front of a screen to play Super Mario over and over until they managed that one stupid jump. The other thing is, that you would have no idea who is playing. For a god, it may actually be sort of fun to play something mundane. Why would anyone play dungeons and dragons and fight monsters with swords? Just laser-gun them and go for the treasure. But that would be kind of boring, wouldn't it?

Because these things are vastly simplified from what they're simulating, and become fun because of that? No sane GM will ask you to keep track of exactly where on your person you're storing all your stuff, or how hungry your character is. "Oops, your chlorea develops and your lung implodes, you die," isn't a fun game.

I'm just making a bit of fun here, but fact is that if this is a game we're playing and are not the designers of the game ourselves (now that WOULD be boring) who knows what the challenge for the game was, who designed it and how much this world differs from what else we experienced up to now.
I am aware that this is a non falsifyable idea - that all this is already a game, a simulation. Unless you find the red pill or the cheat codes, it is about as unprovable as "god made it so".

I don't see how being designers would be boring, unless you're operating on the incredibly out-dated and Hollywood-like assumption that computer programs are simple enough that you can specify "This goes here, that goes there." In most cases, they are complex enough that nobody, programmers included, can see how they will proceed.

Even the Doctor takes a week off occasionally and makes a vacation - And sometimes he even intenionally forgets who he is because it is part of his life/game/adventures.

The only time he did that is because he was running from somebody. He's never did it with the goal to have fun. (I would guess because, in comparison to everything he does normally, "muggles" are thoroughly uninteresting, even from the inside.)

[auroraglacialis]

I just saw an interesting talk that reminded me of this. It was about stars and the night sky and planetariums. So maybe this is actually along your line of enthusiasm, Clarke. Consider you can either look at the night sky on a very dark night in a remote place. You can see our galaxy, billions of stars, even see the reflections of the pieces of ice that circle around the sun (forgot the name of it). Or you could go into a planetarium in the middle of New York city and enjoy this view on a 360° screen with central heating and a cushy chair and photo projections of planets. Sure, the latter sounds much more comfy and you'd be able to see closeups of planets and galaxies you cannot see in the outdoors, even if you bring a telescope. I dont know about you, but almost every person I know who is interested in stars and space FEELS that the first version of experiencing the stars is more genuine, exciting, true, inspiring than the second version. Maybe that is not so for you and you really prefer doing the planetarium thing. I mean, regard it as an either-or choice. Obviously the best thing would be to go see the stars and then go to a planetarium to look at the space teleskope images, but choosing a simulation over real life permanently would to me be like being enclosed in a planetarium. More colorful and detailed and filled with data? Certainly. Comfortable? Sure. But one would always just look at a screen, at recordings, at mediated experiences and never at what is really real and directly experiencable.

Originally Posted by Clarke

And that's a flaw in the game. If the challenge is genuinely interesting, I will want to solve it without skipping things.

Oh, I guess then you are playing it wrong. I do, too. But you can play WoW and do "gold piece mining" by doing the same stupid tasks over and over because you think you get something for it - or you could go out and experience a world of adventures. Maybe you need to do that - go out and experience this world and its adventures. I tell you it can be amazing and not that much menial at all. Though of course many games contain that element of having to do something stupid and boring to get a reward.
But the point is, we can move around freely. You could go to Guatemala and take drugs from a shaman and then climb some ancient mountains before you travel to the Amazon, risking death by poison snakes to visit the lost ruins of an ancient civilization and if you have not hit the "Game Over" by then, you can continue to the south and try to reach the south pole, if you have enough experience points and gold pieces - I mean dollars - you probably have good chances...

No sane GM will ask you to keep track of exactly where on your person you're storing all your stuff, or how hungry your character is. "Oops, your chlorea develops and your lung implodes, you die," isn't a fun game.

Yet it happens even in games. If you are stupid and jump into some disease infested sewer and fail your resistance roll, the GM will tell you that now you are sick. Of course in D&D you can always go to a healer or magician and it is all well, as you usually are rich bastards in these games that can afford everything.

Or another thought, maybe we are NPCs - brrr - scary thought

[auroraglacialis]

Also an interesting piece on the game of life and its "goals": Alan Watts - The Human Game - YouTube and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7blUY...eature=related

EDIT: Ah, this one is even better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_oWR...eature=related - it says basically what I was trying to say but maybe he says it in a different way that is more understandable by using a dream analogy. This is 100% on topic of what we discussed before about simulated realities and how they would be and why I think that they would not have to be at all like we think they would have to be.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Obviously the best thing would be to go see the stars and then go to a planetarium to look at the space teleskope images, but choosing a simulation over real life permanently would to me be like being enclosed in a planetarium. More colorful and detailed and filled with data? Certainly. Comfortable? Sure. But one would always just look at a screen, at recordings, at mediated experiences and never at what is really real and directly experiencable.

You mean the very, very thin slice of reality that's directly experienceable?

TBH, my preferred option would be to watch the fire that burns at the core of Sagittarius A* (billions of times more brilliant than any star in the galaxy), to listen to the beat of the Milky Way's pulsars (a tune that will never repeat in the whole history of the universe), and to watch the carousal of the galactic disk, with stars being born and dying in its endlessly spinning arms.

Wait, what you do mean my body is too slow, too short-lived and too limited to do that?

IOW, here's the one, major disadvantage of reality: it has impossibilities. It is possible for a real human to indirectly fly through Europe's skies - although humans can't fly, only pilot flying machines. In simulation, I can fly like a bird through not only Europe's, but Titan's skies. Or Saturn's rings. Or I can adjust the scale of the simulation in space and time a bit, and solar-sail around the planets to arrive on Neptune. It is absolutely, completely impossible for a human to do that in reality.

Maybe you need to do that - go out and experience this world and its adventures. I tell you it can be amazing and not that much menial at all.

Fantasy is/would be more compelling, more beautiful, more rewarding...
JC managed to cause PAD with 2.5 hours of film. I'm not even going to guess how devastating 2.5 hours of experience could be.

Though of course many games contain that element of having to do something stupid and boring to get a reward.

(It should be noted that many games are not made entirely for the purpose to entertain, but also to make money for the developers.)

But the point is, we can move around freely. You could go to Guatemala and take drugs from a shaman and then climb some ancient mountains before you travel to the Amazon, risking death by poison snakes to visit the lost ruins of an ancient civilization and if you have not hit the "Game Over" by then, you can continue to the south and try to reach the south pole, if you have enough experience points and gold pieces - I mean dollars - you probably have good chances...

The physicality of Amazonian ruins are uninteresting to me. I would much prefer to know what and how they thought, how they lived, what their life was like, their social dynamics, mythological evolution, etc. As much as I would like to, I cannot do the Sherlock Holmes trick of looking a plain-looking artefact and immediately deducing interesting things about its owners. Since I'm interested in the ideas, not the objects, I need nothing more than an Internet connection and a glut of data for what I find interesting.

Not to mention I don't have the budget, in money or time, for gallivanting around the globe like that. It also disrupts what I do enjoy - expanding my horizons with new information. (usually from the Internet.)

Yet it happens even in games. If you are stupid and jump into some disease infested sewer and fail your resistance roll, the GM will tell you that now you are sick. Of course in D&D you can always go to a healer or magician and it is all well, as you usually are rich bastards in these games that can afford everything.

You've missed the point. D&D, and almost every RPG before and since, has a Rule Zero: every single rule in the game can be suspended in the name of fun. The game is played because, and only because, it is fun. Anything that is unfun on the whole is banished as fast as possible. That is not the case in reality, and so I reject your idea that reality is a "game."

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

EDIT: Ah, this one is even better: Alan Watts: Adventure of Dreams - YouTube - it says basically what I was trying to say but maybe he says it in a different way that is more understandable by using a dream analogy. This is 100% on topic of what we discussed before about simulated realities and how they would be and why I think that they would not have to be at all like we think they would have to be.

"I skip the boring ones."
Considering there are literally infinite fantasies to explore, where the laws of physics are fudged in the name of fun, why would I dream of something mundane? This life isn't fun; the majority of it is boring, in the grand scheme of things. The Doctor's life, for instance, is far more fun than basically any life of a human.

And this is assuming that I would want to dream of "life," instead of just designing new and interesting universes to explore.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Clarke

You mean the very, very thin slice of reality that's directly experienceable?...
IOW, here's the one, major disadvantage of reality: it has impossibilities. It is possible for a real human to indirectly fly through Europe's skies - although humans can't fly, only pilot flying machines. In simulation, I can fly like a bird through not only Europe's, but Titan's skies.

You have not really answered my question. You respond by saying that simulation can make things appear realistic that we could otherwise not experience and that is of course true, that is the fascination that comes from this. But it is besides the point in the sense that what I wanted to explore with this question was, how it makes a difference if an experience is simulated or not - and the only way to look at this effect, scientifically, is to use the same settings and only change one thing. Just as you cannot compare what plants do when they are in a hot, humid, sunny region to what they do in a cold, dry region that has 4 month long darkness - and try to find out what the effect of the temperature is. too much intereference. So for this purpose I chose two identical settings - e.g. looking at the stars from the perspective of someone standing on Earth - but either in a planetarium or outside in a dark night.
What we can experience may be a "thin slice", but I think the direct experience is something that has inherent value. The same can be true for somewhat mediated experiences - I think it makes a whole lot of difference if I take a microscope and look with it at a drop of water - or take a telescope and look at Jupiter compared to simply looking at a videoclip or a photo of the same thing. The first two are still real experiences, the other are simulated. Dont you think these two have a distinctly different quality to it?

Fantasy is/would be more compelling, more beautiful, more rewarding...

Wow, so the people who warned us about D&D were right
The young people nowadays really have become detached from reality and fleeing into fantasy

(It should be noted that many games are not made entirely for the purpose to entertain, but also to make money for the developers.)

Well but those that entertain more will be sold more often, so why bore players? And actually in some way, these things are not even boring but a challenge in a way. Just one that I personally dislike - to get the coordination just right to make that pixel figure jump just in the right moment....

The physicality of Amazonian ruins are uninteresting to me. I would much prefer to know what and how they thought, how they lived, what their life was like, their social dynamics, mythological evolution, etc.

I think both has a place. I personally travelled a lot and I tell you, to stand at the Grand Canyon and look down into it, or to walk over a salt glacier or to walk down into a cave that has the remains of some of the first humans - it is definitely a different experience than to listen to the accompanying lectures on geology and anthropology at the university. I always loved field trips. Theory can be fun - to know how many millions of years are visible in the Canyon, what animals lived there in the past, how their fossils are arranged - but to actually see the vastness of the canyon in person, to actually hold a fossilized ammonite in my hand - it is emotionally a different experience. Have you done something like that?

Not to mention I don't have the budget, in money or time, for gallivanting around the globe like that. It also disrupts what I do enjoy - expanding my horizons with new information. (usually from the Internet.)

I can just support the savings in CO2 - but really, the information you get there is only one type of information and certainly it is only one direction you are expanding your horizon into. Other types of information are in the emotional and perceptual connection to the places one learns about.

You've missed the point. D&D, and almost every RPG before and since, has a Rule Zero: every single rule in the game can be suspended in the name of fun. The game is played because, and only because, it is fun. Anything that is unfun on the whole is banished as fast as possible.

Well, I must say, my characters in D&D died occasionally, or got crippled or got into really bad situations that ended up with me not taking part in the game for some hours - if all rules can be bent in the sake of fun, then suddenly people would do crazy stuff - fly around because it is faster an more fun and bring a machine gun to use against the zombie army. But that is not the case - there is another rule in the game and that is that it has to be a challenge and that wrong decisions can be punished.

Considering there are literally infinite fantasies to explore, where the laws of physics are fudged in the name of fun, why would I dream of something mundane? This life isn't fun;

Did you see these videos at all?
The point was, that if you have infinite fantasies to explore, some of them will include experiencing something mundane. In case of Alan Watts and his Zen/Hindu philosophy, the idea is that we all are "God" playing a game. And that once god played a near infinite number of realities in which one can fly at will and make up large stars to see them burning and flying through rings of planets, he felt like experiencing how it feels like to be a human on Earth. In the scope of infinity, what are a couple of decades in which one feels occasionally bored - after millions of years of action, some boring things can be allright and an experience of themselves.

You like the doctor - but even he seems at times really tired, dont you think? Especially in the last season, he occasionally seemed like his long exciting life also has a toll. Just as humans have to switch between being awake and sleep, just as light has only meaning when there is also darkness, so does fun and excitement only have a meaning if it is contrasted with calm phases that are only recently considered to be called "boring". Otherwise you have a shifting baseline. Flying through the rings of Saturn? Boring, when you can also fly through the arms of whole galaxies.... Existence is defined by the contrast of absence and presence of something. Light, matter, life, excitement - waves and cycles. This IS existence - if it would not be so, all would be grey and dull... Like a rollercoaster, the fun is that it goes up AND down and not that it stays on top all the time or that it throws you in all directions at all the time but that there is a change between calm phases and freefall...

And this is assuming that I would want to dream of "life," instead of just designing new and interesting universes to explore.

Well what do you now with your limited existence and imagination know of what kind of dreams a god could come up with