I am very sympathetic to the claim that urban and residential environments are filled with irritants and distraction. However...
> Unfortunately, in our modern society, houses have little to no interior
> noise insulation and almost every single electronic device makes a constant
> high-frequency drone. Neurotypicals either do not hear these sounds, or tune
> them out after a few minutes (and then claim the sound doesn't exist, having
> immediately forgotten it). These houses are then built right next to roads
> with noisy cars, often without sidewalks, and sometimes with ubiquitous
> traffic noises when buried deep inside the city. How distracting these
> noises are depends on the person, the noise, whether it is speech, music,
> a kind of music you don't like, or a ticking clock. Many places make these
> sounds inescapable, like restaurants with loud music and conversations, or
> offices with ticking clocks in every single room.
>
> In contrast, in VR you can wear noise-cancelling headphones and put on music
> no one else can hear [...]
I don't think you have to be in VR to wear noise-canceling headphones. That said, I also don't think noise-canceling headphones are a solution to incidental, sudden ambient noises, since they are pretty clearly best suited to droning sounds, such as airplane engine noise. In-store music, a baby, a passing truck, and a rattling air conditioning system all easily defeat noise cancellation.
> [...] allow plural people to switch between avatars depending on who is fronting.
*Painful echoes of being cornered in college by someone who was very excited about self-applying the label SAPIOSEXUAL and couldn't stop talking about it.*
This really, really reads like the Very Serious Writing of 17-18-year-old people picking up and putting down identities that they desperately want to fit them.
