You can write books, compose music, build software, debate opinions all in front of a computer. It’s not the sitting in front of the computer that’s the problem.

It should be clear from the thread's context we're not talking about those sorts of creative endeavors

That usage of "lived" is a romanticization. It's the grandparent telling the starry-eyed children about the good old times, glossing over the decades of toil and hardship.

Many video games similarly skip time to focus on heroic moments. You don't role-play the 10,000 hours studying tomes at Hogwarts to become a 1st level wizard; instead you start the adventure at graduation, or at most do a training montage.

> That usage of "lived" is a romanticization. It's the grandparent telling the starry-eyed children about the good old times, glossing over the decades of toil and hardship.

Nah, the grandparent knows exactly well the good old times were the decades of toil and hardship. The kids won't get it if the grandparent tells these core truths anyways, until they live it.

Not everything would agree. Most of the life on the planet's only hope is to be around long enough to reproduce and then be consumed in one way or the other. Humanity puts a lot of pressure on itself to flourish.

Well, perhaps they find the virtual life more compelling than the real one...

The problem is sustainability.

A virtual life cannot sustain itself indefinitely, and is not very robust. If money runs out or a tragedy occurs, it will be a scramble to get a job and interact in the real world. A virtual life does not contribute to society (if we mean a purely passive virtual life), and if people start adopting it en masse we'd be in trouble.

As far as I can see, we could simply try create a virtual life (or any kind of activity) that both is sustainable, and gives an interesting, engrossing life experience.