The Great Filter: Zen End

Read this. It's a great comic called Clinic of Horrors. And it got me thinking: maybe the reason why there are no aliens is because this is how we end up. Sentient species somehow find a way to hijack their sentience and jump into a virtual world, where they give up on physical space travel and instead begin a journey into the mind. Thousands of virtual worlds expand before them as their physical bodies sit in silence with neural wires stuck into their heads. Every physical need is provided for by robots. All physical work is unnecessary. Instead, individuals frolic and do whatever they want in the vast universe before them. Play games, read books, consume entertainment as their thoughts are harvested for some universal AI that, for some reason, likes watching that species think. The world goes quiet and is populated by thousands of identical, windowless structures that house the pods that these individuals exist in. What if this is our fate? What if this is really the reason why we don't see any aliens out there? What if every civilization goes quiet as it transfers its mode of existence into a purely virtual stratum? Is this a utopia or a dystopia? Or something in between? 

In this world, unlike The Matrix, there is no overlord gaining from the species' self imprisonment. It's just what each individual naturally gravitates towards.

Another interesting thought. If, somehow, we are able to upload our minds onto some sort of future internet before we die, how will we pay for the power bills that keep us going? Well, that's an easy answer. Any kind of intellectual work, be it programming, writing, or composing music, can be done without a physical body. Thus, a detached mind existing purely in the metaverse can still do meaningful work and earn their keep. This model has surprising solidity in how it may work. 

Me, I'd take that choice any day of the week. Upload my brain to a computer or have myself permanently strapped into virtual reality gear? Sign me up! It sounds like a world of infinite interest, where the things to do don't end. What do you think about this? Would you sacrifice your physical form in order to live forever in a non-physical playground? Whatever your choice, it seems to me like this is a plausible end point for our human civilization, assuming we don't nuke ourselves to extinction.