A thought about VR

Hello, blog!  Remember me?  I am your author.  It's completely understandable if you forgot.

Anyway, I had a thought about... a bunch of things, but it manifested as a statement about virtual reality.

Now, to get this right up front, I'm thinking of fully immersive stuff, typically mental uplink.  In other words, what brains do when you replace a physical body with a simulacrum.

Virtual avatars.  From what I remember, they're typically just the physical body for some reason (The Matrix) or dictated by whim (The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect).  However, consider what is known about our mental maps of our bodies.  In the absence of a body part, the brain will still act as if that part is there.  This is "phantom limb".  However, it's not a perfect match for what would "look right", if we could actually see it.  Often, phantom limbs are a confusing tangle of sensations, with duplications at multiple points in space relative to the body.  A prosthetic limb that conforms to what looks right (or makes sense) can feel uncomfortable if it doesn't match the mental map.

If people can perfectly manipulate the structure of their avatars, in the end, they would gravitate towards comfort rather than fashion.  (I am psychologically incapable of believing otherwise.  I have hardwired optimism.)

However, the structure of the feedback loop would be fundamentally different.  Because the body would be beholden to the brain's desires, completely, instead of the laws of physics (as they apply to bodies, I mean), there wouldn't be a damper on the loop, in essence.  People could end up looking like the other side of a funhouse mirror, and feel perfectly comfortable.

Actually I guess it could turn out a lot like Homestar Runner.