keeping it in SL....

And real brains are able to work out that the Alien isn't going to come after me once it's impregnated Sigourney Weaver.

Pep (OK, I'll concede that some "real brains" thought that Mr Ed really *did* talk)

That doesn't mean that the emotions aren't real. "virtual" is not a synonym for "less intense".

"Emotions aren't real"? I didn't say that. I said they are less real. My fear of falling out of a sky box without a parachute and plummetting to earth is considerably less real than that of skydiving *with* a parachute in real life.

Pep (I say that the same goes for attraction between avatars)

The word you're looking for is not "real".

Yes it is; I am using the word real because *you* used the word real and I am contradicting your assertion as *I* understand the word real. If you have a different interpretation of the word real then that is your problem, not mine. You are free to think that you can tell me what you think I am thinking, but you are wrong and just make yourself look foolish for attempting to do so.

Pep (Whatever "love" is, it isn't as real in sl as in rl; I certainly don't "love" the bacon sandwiches in sl as much as I do those in rl)

Contradict all you want, you're still mistaken. If you are moved to joy or anger, sadness or passion, by words spoken to you by the person next to you, by words spoken over a telephone, by words spoken by an actor in a play, by words written in a book, a letter, or on a computer screen, the emotions are the same. They are not feigned or simulated. They may, depending on the person, depending on the medium, be rendered less intense, but they are still the expression of the same chemical and electrical changes in the chunk of fatty tissue at the top of your spinal cord.

On the contrary, when I see a bacon sandwich in sl I have completely different bodily chemical and electrical changes from those I have when confronted with one on a plate before me in real life. Similarly, my chemical-electrical responses are very different when looking at a Picasso nude from those I experience in my local real life lap-dancing club. They are not just different in intensity, they are different in almost every way!

Pep (extrapolated, you seem to be arguing that I have the same emotion for a bacon sandwich as a lap-dancer )

You're deliberately misunderstanding me. If you see a bacon sandwich in real life you have a different emotional response than if you see a beautiful sunset, a beautiful woman, or a beautiful pratfall, but that doesn't mean that one emotion is "real" and the other is "virtual". They're all real emotions.

Well done. You are getting there, even if educating you is like pulling teeth. What I *am* saying is that any emotions you feel in a virtual world are very different (not virtual) and are not "real" emotions as you would feel them in similar real life situations.

Pep (So they are less real)

Babbling on about your weird personal definition of "real" might be awfully amusing to you, but I can't believe you're stupid enough to actually misunderstand the distinction I was making.

*plonk*

I can only go with what you wrote, and since you don't have the sole rights to a meaning of "real" (in the same way other posters don't have the rights to define "love" universally as what *they* feel) I can most certainly say that emotions experienced in sl are not the same as "real" emotions experienced in real life in similar circumstances - otherwise we would have more massacres like the one in Germany yesterday.

If you want to make a distinction then you need to explain it and justify it a lot more explicitly than in the flippant way that you have attempted to so far.

I am disappointed. I expect over-emotional "Women are from Venus" types to say without explanation that they feel the same "love" in sl as they do in rl, but I expect better from someone as usually cold-blooded and solution-orientated as you.

Pep (I'll stop this now, as I think that I have had the opporunity to make my simple point about the ridiculousness of believing that sl feelings are *exactly* the same as rl ones)