Virtual food would obviously be possible in a post-FAI world, and I don’t see any reason why most people would bother with non-virtual food if they could get the same experience (probably even the apparent experience of putting physical food into one’s mouth and tasting and chewing and swallowing it and feeling satisfied) for free, in unlimited quantities, and in varieties not limited by regional or seasonal availability.
Though even if we entirely replace our bodies with better-designed ones that don’t need actual food as fuel, I’m sure there could be VR simulations of the experience of emptying one’s bowels, if anyone really misses it by that point...
In Second Life, many people use custom tools that trigger a virtual pregnancy from cybersex. At least one brand advertises realistic probabilities of conception, including variation on a monthly cycle. This suggests that some people may want to eat food that makes them poop, even if non-poop-causing food already exists (and is even the default).
Second Life being what it is, that probably has a lot more to do with proclivities unrelated to any of pregnancy’s usual associations than with a general desire to keep meat-phase life’s default inconveniences around. I’d expect the same for virtual defecation, and for most similar features.
Well, the item directly above that was to enjoy “food/drinking” and stuff’s got to go somewhere afterwards...
[Barring entirely virtual food, of course]
Virtual food would obviously be possible in a post-FAI world, and I don’t see any reason why most people would bother with non-virtual food if they could get the same experience (probably even the apparent experience of putting physical food into one’s mouth and tasting and chewing and swallowing it and feeling satisfied) for free, in unlimited quantities, and in varieties not limited by regional or seasonal availability.
Though even if we entirely replace our bodies with better-designed ones that don’t need actual food as fuel, I’m sure there could be VR simulations of the experience of emptying one’s bowels, if anyone really misses it by that point...
In Second Life, many people use custom tools that trigger a virtual pregnancy from cybersex. At least one brand advertises realistic probabilities of conception, including variation on a monthly cycle. This suggests that some people may want to eat food that makes them poop, even if non-poop-causing food already exists (and is even the default).
Second Life being what it is, that probably has a lot more to do with proclivities unrelated to any of pregnancy’s usual associations than with a general desire to keep meat-phase life’s default inconveniences around. I’d expect the same for virtual defecation, and for most similar features.