Can the Virtual World Replace Reality?

 Imagine a disgusting green world where the buildings have decayed, the streets are filled with garbage and people walk among them as if nothing has happened. How can this be you ask? How can something like this happen? A scenario where society has fallen yet people still walk around town happily as ever. 

They’re all wearing an AR headset obviously. Imagine people seeing the world as Beautiful through their virtual headset goggles 🥽 but in reality everything has become decrepit. A very dramatic dystopia but still a possibility. If everyone eventually will be seeing the world with an extra filter, there’s no reason to upkeep and or redesign certain things and eventually all inventions and developments will cease in the real world. I imagined someone drinking a smoothie and in their headset their looking at a delicious fresh smoothie but when this one guy without a headset sees this in the real world he just sees a guy drinking out of a metal box labeled fruit paste.

In general there is a question of virtual world and ai vs. reality and the traditional methods of doing things. As humans we can't help but wonder, how will we be able to separate reality from this new incoming virtual world if it becomes exactly as realistic as the real world we live in today? If everything looked and felt the same, would we ever know? And if a person we were speaking to was an ai that was identical to a real human, how would we tell the difference? Is there an innate gut feeling we get when we're around a real person or are those just as technical as signals running through your body telling you to feel a certain way, and can they be replicated. Will people be making genuine connections with virtual beings that aren't even real? 

*Image made with DALL·E 3