Imagine that Openwater.cc is successful, and we have the ability to extract and replay memories in full “lived experience” resolution. How many people might choose to spend their ~75 years “living” in the peak experiences of mankind rather than the mundane struggle of real life? Would that be a social paradigm we want to support, to allow?

Given how willing my 8 year old is to watch someone else play video games instead of playing the game himself, I think you're on the right track here.

You're still ultimately stating an intent to limit other people's freedom of thought and leisure "for their own good" - it's baked right into this idea.

If people choose to spend more time in the virtual then the physical, then that's a pretty good sign you've setup your society wrong and need to work on fixing that.

I don't think that's an apt conclusion. If you addict people to something psychologically it does not imply that thing is better than reality. You can get addicted mice to consume themselves to death via addition, is that better than whatever mouse reality is?

Conversely, an individual in an uncontacted tribe, do they miss out on this? Do they feel left out of anything modern? No. What about most people if they were dropped into an isolated tribe, how would they feel. Why so? Point is, you can deal with reality just fine, you don't need distraction. Distraction is a distraction from reality but is unnecessary and completely disconnects people from their selves.

Could we get a regular uncontacted tribesperson hooked on a VR future, you bet, even if they were living out their lives just fine before ---just as they could get addicted to hard drugs even if they did not need that before.

“ You're still ultimately stating an intent to limit other people's freedom of thought and leisure "for their own good" - it's baked right into this idea.”

Where does free will absolutism end? The tip of my nose. Truthfully, I couldn’t care less on an individual level, so the concern is not “their own good”. Such a system would be the ultimate drug. The concern is species level. For instance, physical reproduction would be a dim, depressing shadow compared to the heights of ecstasy the system can produce on tap. Better ramp up that robot womb research...