But come on already, enough is enough! Can anyone point me to any study or theory that says Virtual Reality deaths may cause you to die? I doubt it.
Agreed. Pat Cadigan dealt with this issue in her latest book, "Tea From an Empty Cup," but it was handled much better -- can't say how, it's a semi-spoiler. But at least her answer made sense. And her book was much more interesting than this crap episode.
If we are using dreamstates as a current example of virtual reality, though, you can't entirely discount the possibility of causing yourself damage. I've dreamed that I was swimming only to wake up when I finally had to take a breath -- and look at sleepwalkers -- or the opposite physical effect to sleepwalking, Old Hag Syndrome. Sleepwalkers' minds don't always put them into the state of semi-paralysis that the average person's mind does and so they can walk around and do things, sometimes even holding conversations with people or otherwise convincing people that they are wide awake when in fact they are still sleeping. And with Old Hag Syndrome, your body remains in the state of semi-paralysis for a moment after you wake up, giving you the feeling that you can't move or that something is sitting on your chest (hence Old Hag -- since it used to be thought that this was caused by a witch sitting on you for some nefarious purpose). We may just be lucky that when we sleepwalk we generally aren't having the sort of dream that would cause us to take a knife to our arms or something.
But I have to say, I preferred this episode to YET ANOTHER theory as to what happened to Mulder's sister (what, we've gotten at least 5 entirely different answers to that question?). Just barely, though.
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Agreed. Pat Cadigan dealt with this issue in her latest book, "Tea From an Empty Cup," but it was handled much better -- can't say how, it's a semi-spoiler. But at least her answer made sense. And her book was much more interesting than this crap episode.
If we are using dreamstates as a current example of virtual reality, though, you can't entirely discount the possibility of causing yourself damage. I've dreamed that I was swimming only to wake up when I finally had to take a breath -- and look at sleepwalkers -- or the opposite physical effect to sleepwalking, Old Hag Syndrome. Sleepwalkers' minds don't always put them into the state of semi-paralysis that the average person's mind does and so they can walk around and do things, sometimes even holding conversations with people or otherwise convincing people that they are wide awake when in fact they are still sleeping. And with Old Hag Syndrome, your body remains in the state of semi-paralysis for a moment after you wake up, giving you the feeling that you can't move or that something is sitting on your chest (hence Old Hag -- since it used to be thought that this was caused by a witch sitting on you for some nefarious purpose). We may just be lucky that when we sleepwalk we generally aren't having the sort of dream that would cause us to take a knife to our arms or something.
But I have to say, I preferred this episode to YET ANOTHER theory as to what happened to Mulder's sister (what, we've gotten at least 5 entirely different answers to that question?). Just barely, though.