Lets assume we develop the capacity to create virtual worlds that are near indistinguishable from the real world. We hook you up into a machine and you now find yourself in what effectively is a paraller reality where you get to be the king of your own universe (if you so desire). Nothing is off limits - everything you’ve ever dreamt of is possible. You can be the only person there, you can populate it with unconscious AI that appears consciouss or you can have other people visit your world and you can visit theirs aswell as spend time in “public worlds” with millions of other real people.
Would you try it and do you think you’d prefer it over real world? Do you see it as a negative from individual perspective if significant part of the population basically spend their entire lives there?
One issue with learning and training, is that you’ll have the same limitations as now. You are still human, just connected to a machine and time cannot accelerate to learn faster.
However if we could move, change time to whatever place we want, create whatever we want. And still look real.
Then that would maybe make something very interesting for learning and training. It wouldn’t be faster. But for example a teacher would be able to create a world where they can help the students learn better, with images, simulations, stories…
However that may also create some issues where it wouldn’t be wise to recreate wars, death and other things which can be shocking for people. Because of that realism, it would be very hard to distinguish between a simulated war/death and a real one.
Tho it would maybe create a huge benefit for training for flying a plane for example. Cheap and no risks to break anything.