Dangerous Virtual Worlds

I thought that if things got significantly more intense I might have a heart attack and die!

I was initially skeptical that this was a risk worth considering. I've heard anecdotes of people dying of excitement, but seemed like a "shark attack" sort of risk that's more discussed than experienced. However, some Googling revealed "Cardiovascular Events during World Cup Soccer", which finds that cardiac incidents were 2.66x higher on days the German team competed during the 2006 soccer world cup. FIFA's website says an average of ~21.9 million people watched each match. This website says Germany had a population of 81,472,235 in 2006. 

If we attribute 100% of the 2.66x increase to 21.9 million soccer fans being more excited on those days (as opposed to getting less sleep, drinking more alcohol, etc.), then we get (CV_risk_x * 21.9 + 59.57) / 81.47 = 2.66, so CV_risk_x = 7.18x higher risk due to extreme excitement. If we arbitrarily attribute 33% of the increase to excitement, we get (CV_risk_x * 21.9 + 59.57) / 81.47 = 1.548, and CV_risk_x = 3.04x.

That's higher than I expected, but still not too bad, especially if your current risk is low. I think virtual reality in particular is less of a risk than many other high-excitement activities because it involves more exertion than, say, normal video games or reading. I expect the increased exertion on net more than balances out any excitement risks.

On the bright side, I expect this to be a slower-moving trend than the main AI risk, and also easier to combat, and also less dangerous. But I might be wrong. (See: "New and powerful forms of addiction" in this list.)

It's worth separating harms of wasted time vs degraded experience in a given lifetime.  It's also worth comparing against the very similar worries of previous generations.  How much time is spent reading fiction, listening to rock and/or roll music, watching television, playing D&D, etc. seems to be a perennial concern, only with changing specifics.

Once, I played a virtual reality game where robots attack you and you shoot them.

What game?

Asking because I want to know, and I'm also curious if 'better gaming'/graphics/whatever can sour people on older (presumably) lower grade stuff.

A political newspaper that is optimsed to maxime a sense of belonging to a certain receivement of a world I thought was going to be one of the dangers. I guess for that differs in that the consumer doesn't know it is fiction. But still being correct is boring and scracthing those belonging itches might be a replacement to the "inferior" reality.

I have often thought that the computer games industry might reasonably be considered grossly unethical. It is built on getting its customers to expend as much of their brainpower as possible on activities that produce nothing of value. The creators are in a competition to destroy as much as they can of our most valuable natural resource: thinking.