Real and virtual world. Virtual or real life, which is better?
Internet users find their friends here. They meet new people and communicate. Sometimes they also start virtual romances. At first glance, it may seem strange that any feelings arise between strangers. Is it really possible to love a person whom you have never seen, never heard of, whom you have never touched?
It turns out that everything is possible in life... For example, people meet each other on forums or on social networks. When discussing a newly released film, a person may find that someone else shares his views. With further communication, people soon realize that they have similar views on life.
After a while, communication between people is transferred to chats. Everything here is extremely simple. A chat conversation is similar to a live conversation, the only difference being that your interlocutor may be at a great distance from you.
If the user cannot find friends and acquaintances on forums and chats, he registers on dating sites. Here, among thousands of people like him, lonely and looking for communication, you can find a mistress, lover, boyfriend or girlfriend. Also, such services allow you to find a soul mate based on specified criteria: hair color, eye color, height, and so on...
People who have feelings for each other often use ICQ (Viber, etc.). It allows you to exchange emoticons and send photos. ICQ makes communication between people simple and convenient.
From the outside it may seem stupid to fall in love with a person you don’t know; it may seem that a person’s feelings are directed towards an image he imagines. And for real feelings, a real person is important, and not his virtual replacement. After all, our virtual prince in a white Mercedes, with a lock of black hair and blue eyes, in reality may turn out to be a fourteen-year-old bespectacled guy from next door.
The Internet also allows you to experience the pleasure of "virtual lovemaking." At first glance it looks wild, but this is the reality of our lives. Many people, due to the lack or complete absence of real “love making,” completely surrender to the temptation of virtual relationships.
In the Middle Ages, people sent anonymous letters and notes to each other. Flirted with strangers. Now everything is the same, only the possibilities are different. In the end, after “making virtual love,” no one will force you to get married?
By the way, what is the difference between “making love” over the phone and virtual? Nothing!
A person's communication on dating sites can be very useful for a person. After all, if he is withdrawn and uncommunicative, then in real life he has a lack of communication. Virtual life compensates for this. After some time, a person will transfer his virtual behavior into real life. And instead of yesterday’s nerd, a macho man will appear before us, who only needs a couple of phrases to get a girl into bed.
What if a person spends all his time at work? , goes to bed late. How can he find a life partner? Only the Internet is the way out of this situation. It’s so simple, I came to work, exchanged a few words with friends, sent a smiley face to my beloved...
But online dating also comes with its own dangers. New drug addicts - people who have become Internet addicts - began to turn to psychotherapists. They can no longer spend a day without online communication.
It's normal to flirt while chatting with a man for a while. But if it turns into an obsession...
Sometimes people seem to live on the Internet; the events of the real world cease to interest them. A person’s real personality dies, he is completely immersed in the virtual world. It is always worth remembering that real life is much more interesting than virtual life. No communication can replace a living person. Progress has come very far, but people's feelings have never changed their form. A person loves a person, not his virtual image.
Today, a lot has been written and said about the Internet. The pros and cons of the World Wide Web are flying from all sides. Opponents and supporters prove that they are right in all kinds of talk shows and on the pages of paper publications.
Meanwhile, the Internet lives its own separate life. The huge world, created by human hands, loves, hates, fights, laughs, creates families and destroys relationships, brings people closer together and alienates them from each other.
This world has no boundaries, it is beautiful on the one hand, but it also has a reverse, negative side. The Internet is a reflection of ourselves; evil generated by man; a miracle created by man. Like a mirror, it reflects our life, our fears and complexes, desires and dreams.
Nowadays, modern people cannot imagine their life without the Internet. Work stops if the connection suddenly disappears. Everyone around is nervous, urgent matters are postponed, documents have to be sent by fax, and work-related issues have to be resolved over the phone.
The Internet has become an integral part not only of work, but also of our personal lives. About ten years ago, most of the population had little idea what the strange word “Internet” meant. When I didn’t yet have a computer, but my cousin did, and he even sometimes went online, I tried to find out what it was and what could be done with it. After the answer: “You can do everything on the Internet,” the matter did not become clearer, and my thoughts about the Internet reached a dead end. Until I sat down at the computer and opened the browser.
After some time, I also had a computer at home, and I could surf the Internet as much as I needed. And to my mother’s question: “Well, what is the Internet, can you explain to me?” What can you do there for so long?”, I answered: “That’s it!” Time passed, my mother gradually mastered the computer and, while I am not at home, opens the browser, reads the news, and looks for some materials on work.
Yes, who would have thought that once in my mother’s distant childhood they watched TV through a magnifying glass, that on that TV, which, by the way, was not yet in every family, only two channels were broadcast. And those lucky people who had a TV set, on warm summer evenings, put it on the window with the screen facing the street, neighbors who did not yet have one gathered, and everyone watched some movie.
We used to write letters on paper, a checkered piece of paper from the middle of a notebook. As a child, girls’ letters always smelled like their mother’s perfume and had “kisses” on them at the end of the letter - imprints of lipstick, and on the back of the envelope they always wrote “Write!” with a felt-tip pen. or “Fly with greetings, come back with an answer!” and drew hearts. We received the long-awaited envelope from friends and relatives with trepidation. And they were always worried that a letter dropped into a mailbox would definitely reach the addressee.
And sometimes, in the hustle and bustle of our days, we forgot to answer letters. If they answered, it was not enough. “Everything is fine, no changes.” And often those who were once close were lost from sight.
Now letters are sent and received in seconds, and there is no need to send telegrams. It is enough to install one of the messengers, and the person who is on the other side of the world becomes close. Headphones, microphone, webcam – and thousands of kilometers don’t count. Only the monitor separates you. Well, or a bad connection!
Through many sites we find our classmates, childhood friends with whom we once lost contact. We find new friends, like-minded people and even our love. We learn languages, complete courses and receive certificates. We shop without leaving home, sell, earn money, watch movies, listen to music, learn to cook and take photographs. Some “advanced” even register a virtual marriage!
But is everything so harmless in this space “on the other side”?
Of course, everything or almost everything depends on ourselves. After all, sometimes this same virtual life sucks a person into its networks unnoticed. Of course, there are reasons for everything. In some way, “virtual” is an escape from reality. When a person considers the World Wide Web not just as a means of communication, communication, receiving news or any useful information. This is where danger awaits. Who hasn't been captivated by virtual life? Someone, having “overcome” their hyper-attachment to the Internet, “cools” towards it and uses it as a source of information and communication. And someone is starting to be used by the Network itself.
A person is immersed more and more in the virtual, forgetting about his problems, because THERE is a different world. In it you can be whoever you want and as far as your imagination is enough. Your life passes only according to the laws that you create yourself. In that world you have everything that you don’t have in this real one. There are friends who understand you, there is love. You can defeat any enemy, you can tell anyone everything that you would never dare to say in real life. You can be brave, you can be arrogant and uninhibited. You can be a fashion model or a poet. You are waiting for the support and approval of those invisible interlocutors. This is especially important if that same support is not enough in real life. You build yourself THERE, put it together piece by piece the way you would like to see yourself in reality. You gain authority.
You have your own world, and you have not yet realized the harm of its artificiality. The gifts there are not real, and the flowers don’t smell, although they look almost like they’re alive. You post the best, skillfully edited photo, and expect high ratings from those who are your friends THERE. When you go to bed in the morning, you once again remember that you didn’t call your friend. But you haven’t seen each other for a month, maybe more. But we should meet, but there’s still no time...
You have Internet at work, at home and on your mobile phone. You come to visit and the first thing you do is look for your computer or download one of the instant messengers from your mobile phone. Listening out of the corner of your ear to the conversations of your friends, you answer questions at random and somehow maintain the conversation. You're in another world. But not to keep in touch. No! To constantly feed your own self-esteem. For your own confidence. Therefore, you think with horror that someday the door to that world may be closed. Life there is more interesting and brighter. And you can no longer live without her.
The worst thing is that a person stops noticing his own problems in real life. Instead of solving them, it is often easier to immerse yourself in another world and feel artificial happiness. Receiving ratings from virtual friends is much more pleasant than sitting with a friend in the kitchen over a cup of tea. And in love there you are not at all the same as in real life.
How many mistakes we make, afraid to live! How much pain we cause to our loved ones with indifference caused by some unreasonable fear! But you just need to try to be free. One time, one day. Gather your will and become decisive here, in reality. Finding a way out of a difficult situation in life offline is much more pleasant and tangible than there. Say “I love” to a person, looking into their eyes, overcoming your shyness. Hold a bouquet of roses in your hands and inhale their aroma. Seeing the face of a loved one in front of you, his smile, hearing his voice, feeling his breath and the warmth of his palms. Breathe in the frosty winter air. Go out at night with friends to play snowballs or build a snowman. After all, this is life! Here she is, the real one!
And finally, understand: it doesn’t matter to me how many “friends” I have in “My World”, on “Odnoklassniki”, “VKontakte” and “Facebook”. The important thing is that after a hard day at work I can come to my Friend’s house to watch a good movie on DVD, or gather my friends and go for a walk, to the cinema, ride on the carousel, wherever! It doesn’t matter to me how many virtual gifts they gave me. The important thing is that after work, going into the store, I will see some little thing on the window, maybe an insignificant trinket, and I will want to buy it and give it to my loved one.
What is important to me is that I always have time to meet with friends. You have the strength to solve problems. There is this life, this world. And then there is the Internet - an invisible thread connecting me with my loved ones in other cities and countries.
It’s wonderful that I have all this!
Humanity today has become so immersed in high technology and virtual reality that the first assumptions have appeared (not from ordinary people, but from famous physicists and cosmologists) that our Universe is not reality, but just a giant simulation of reality. Should we think about this seriously, or should we perceive such messages as just another plot of a science fiction film?
You are real? What about me?
Once upon a time these were purely philosophical questions. Scientists were simply trying to figure out how the world works. But now the requests from inquisitive minds have gone to a different plane. A number of physicists, cosmologists and technologists console themselves with the idea that we all live inside a giant computer model, being nothing more than part of the matrix. It turns out that we exist in a virtual world, which we mistakenly consider to be real.
Our instincts, of course, rebel. This is all too real to be a simulation. The weight of the cup in my hand, the aroma of the coffee, the sounds around me - how can you fake such a richness of experience?
But at the same time, there has been extraordinary progress in the field of computer science and information technology over the past few decades. Computers have given us games with uncanny realism, with autonomous characters that react to our actions. And we involuntarily plunge into virtual reality - a kind of simulator with enormous power of persuasion.
This is enough to make a person paranoid. 
In life - like in the movies
The idea of the virtual world as a human habitat was presented to us with unprecedented clarity by the Hollywood blockbuster “The Matrix.” In this story, people are so trapped in the virtual world that they perceive it as reality. The sci-fi nightmare - the prospect of being trapped in a universe born in our minds - can be traced further, for example, in David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983) and Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985).
All these dystopias have raised a number of questions: what is true and what is fiction? Are we living in a delusion, or is the delusion a virtual Universe, the idea of which is being imposed by paranoid scientists? 
In June 2016, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk said the odds are "a billion to one" against us living in "base reality."
Following him, artificial intelligence guru Ray Kurzweil suggested that “maybe our entire Universe is a scientific experiment of some young high school student from another Universe.”
By the way, some physicists are ready to consider this possibility. In April 2016, the issue was discussed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Proof?
Proponents of the idea of a virtual universe give at least two arguments in favor of the fact that we cannot live in the real world. Thus, cosmologist Alan Guth suggests that our Universe may be real, but for now it is something like a laboratory experiment. The idea is that it was created by some kind of superintelligence, similar to how biologists grow colonies of microorganisms.
In principle, there is nothing that rules out the possibility of “manufacturing” the universe with an artificial Big Bang, says Guth. At the same time, the Universe in which the new one was born was not destroyed. It was simply that a new “bubble” of space-time was created, which was possible to pinch off from the mother universe and lose contact with it. This scenario could have some variations. For example, the Universe could have been born in some equivalent of a test tube. 
However, there is a second scenario that can nullify all our understanding of reality.
It lies in the fact that we are completely simulated creatures. We may be nothing more than strings of information manipulated by a giant computer program, like characters in a video game. Even our brains are imitated and respond to imitated sensory inputs.
From this point of view, there is no "escape from" matrix. This is where we live, and this is our only chance to "live" at all.
But why believe in such a possibility?
The argument is quite simple: we have already done the modeling. We carry out computer simulation not only in games, but also in scientific research. Scientists are trying to model aspects of the world at different levels - from the subatomic to entire societies or galaxies.
For example, computer modeling of animals can tell how they develop and what forms of behavior they have. Other simulations help us understand how planets, stars and galaxies form. 
We can also simulate human society with fairly simple "agents" that make choices according to certain rules. It gives us insight into how people and companies collaborate, how cities develop, how traffic laws and economies function, and much more.
These models are becoming increasingly complex. Who's to say we can't create virtual beings that show signs of consciousness? Advances in understanding the functions of the brain, as well as extensive quantum computing, make this prospect increasingly likely.
If we ever reach this level, we will have a huge number of models working for us. There will be many more of them than the inhabitants of the “real” world around us.
And why can't we assume that some other intelligence in the Universe has already reached this point?
The idea of the multiverse
No one denies the existence of many universes formed in the same way as the Big Bang. However, parallel universes are a rather speculative idea, suggesting that our Universe is just a model whose parameters have been tweaked to produce interesting results such as stars, galaxies and people.
Now we get to the heart of the matter. If reality is just information, then we cannot be "real", information is all we can be. And does it make a difference whether this information was programmed by nature or by a super-smart creator? Apparently, in any case, our authors can, in principle, interfere with the simulation results or even “turn off” the process. How should we approach this?
And yet let's return to our reality
Of course, we like the joke of cosmologist Kurzweil about that brilliant teenager from another universe who programmed our world. And most adherents of the idea of virtual reality proceed from the fact that now is the 21st century, we are making computer games, and it is not a fact that someone is not making superbeings.
There is no doubt that many proponents of "total simulation" are avid fans of science fiction films. But we know deep down that the concept of reality is what we experience and not some hypothetical world. 
Old as time
Today is the age of high technology. However, philosophers have struggled with questions of reality and unreality for centuries.
Plato wondered: what if what we perceive as reality are just shadows projected onto the walls of a cave? Immanuel Kant argued that the world around us can be some kind of “thing in itself”, which underlies the appearances we perceive. René Descartes, with his famous phrase “I think, therefore I am,” proved that the ability to think is the only significant criterion of existence that we can attest to.
The concept of a "simulated world" takes this ancient philosophical idea as its basis. There is no harm in the latest technologies and hypotheses. Like many philosophical puzzles, they challenge us to reconsider our assumptions and preconceptions.
But while no one can prove that we exist only virtually, no new ideas change our understanding of reality to a significant extent.
In the early 1700s, philosopher George Berkeley argued that the world is simply an illusion. In response to this, the English writer Samuel Johnson exclaimed: “I refute it like this!” - and kicked a stone.
The real world is represented by the material component in human life. And the man himself 
first of all, material, because he is born only with the needs of the body. Although this statement can be doubted, because emotional experiences are an invisible virtual entity that is also inherent in an infant.
Virtual life is the possibility of wireless contact, it is the release into the boundless space of your opinion, your thoughts, your experiences, your dreams.
Nowadays the virtual world is associated mainly with activities on the Internet. But a person’s internal morality, and his mental and emotional life also have a virtual essence.
It is from this varying degree of inharmonious development that the imbalance of a person’s interests and behavior begins.
Both evoke sympathy.
Virtual life on the Internet has filled the void of those people who live a rich mental and 
emotional life, because the overcrowding of their consciousness requires an outlet. Understanding is required by those people who have conceived a business project, and by humanists - people of art and philosophy, and people involved in science, and people who have found themselves in a psychological bind - everyone who has left their psychological comfort zone, whether of their own free will or not.
Virtual communication has even increased the sensitivity of the human nervous system. Many can feel the energy of a virtual interlocutor. And this is also a significant step in the development of man himself.
The Internet has absorbed all thoughts, feelings, spiritual impulses, scattered them around the planet and helped to establish new connections, acquaintances, business contacts, and then set in motion the material basis of a person’s life - his movement, the movement of financial flows, trading parties, etc. significant, multifaceted and numerous. This shows how long and strong the grip of the real world was, where not too much attention was paid to the virtual invisible life of a person. This suggests that a person’s capabilities in terms of self-realization have now increased significantly.
Yes, it is impossible to say what comes first - matter or consciousness. They are so interconnected.
Of course, virtuality - feelings, for example, are inherent in plants, and even more so in animals. But, even if a person descended from a monkey, he still must develop in the direction of the priority invisible life of the mind and heart.
In general, life, both in the real and virtual world, is exciting, endless in learning and full of miracles. Future human discoveries will still give us amazing opportunities and joys of life. You should definitely take part in them!
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