Some things just stick with you, and they come back to mind later when you read something, and the combination is either amazing, or amazingly terrible to consider.
It was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that there were two small tables straight in front of him, each covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two from him, the other was further away, near the door. He was strapped upright in a chair, so tightly that he could move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad gripped his head from behind, forcing him to look straight in front of him.
For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and O'Brien came in.
'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'
The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.
'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'
He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.
'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'
A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.
Not exactly the same topic, but I don't know how I would feel about violence in VR.
I don't ever cared about violence in video games, music and movies and such.
I always thought that people arguing that violence in these games should be censored were just puritans.
But with sufficiently advanced VR, I believe that you can really feel like what it would be like to someone who is extremely violent. And I wonder if this can desensitize someone to the point where their propensity to be violent is significantly increased due to VR usage.
We'll need to take ethics in VR more seriously as VR becomes more mainstream and more powerful.
2. The caption for the Guantanamo Bay picture is not accurate. The detainees are kneeling waiting to be processed. (the picture was taken in the first few days Guantanamo opened as a detainee prison): http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/16/gitmo-o.... Certainly bad treatment, but hardly sensory deprivation.
1. They can just sew your eyelids to your forehead. It probably wouldn't leave much scarring, your muscles are not strong enough to warrant the use of very thick wires...
I'm not sure how torture in VR would be any worse than torture in real life. The focus should be on outlawing torture, not slowing down unrelated technology because it could possibly be used for torture.
Are we going to ban the drill? The hammer? Towels? Those can all be used for torture, but that's not the use case for 99.999% of all uses.
I think it's less about VR torture as a replacement for torture in general, and more about VR torture as a more effective replacement for current psychological torture. There's nothing preventing them from continuing with physical torture to in addition, or as a supplement to VR torture.
Unless we're talking about some sort of implanted brain-machine interface that directly alters human perception I don't see VR being even an effective replacement for psychological torture.
Virtual Reality really isn't this immersive yet to be able to used for psychological torture, in fact the idea is almost laughable. Anyone that has used a VR headset knows that you don't actually think you are in the game, though the closeness of the screen and 360 degree freedom does definitely make it more real than looking at a TV 6 feet away, it is a longshot from actual reality. Additionally whats to stop the viewer from closing their eyes? Also, the torture techniques they mention in the article are far worse than wearing a VR headset...
Sometimes the rational mind takes a back seat to your irrational fears. How hard is it to cycle through thousands of the most common fears a few seconds for each, while tracking vitals, and note which ones give an elevated response? Tell the claustrophobe "it's okay, right past that door it's wide open!" Tell the arachnophobe "it's okay, it's not a poisonous spider!" Tell the father "Don't fret, those images of your daughter weren't real. What do you think we are, monsters?"
All of this assumes I somehow don't know I have a headset on, feeding me fake imagery. It only takes the action of the spider to jump at me but me not to feel anything to remind me that I'm actually in an empty room by myself. All 3 examples would be far more effective if they took place in reality though, and your last example would give the same response headset or not.
> It only takes the action of the spider to jump at me but me not to feel anything to remind me that I'm actually in an empty room by myself.
I suspect you don't have a phobia like this, and have not dealt with people who do when they are affected by it.
> your last example would give the same response headset or not.
Meaning you view it as effective or ineffective? I used to think things like that had no effect on me. Absolutely none. Then I had children. Now I cry when a movie hints at a child losing a parent or parent losing a child. It's an involuntary reaction to the empathy I have for the situation. I can't control it at all, and this is in fictional settings with fictional characters.
Yeah, torture in Virtual Reality is definitely something that could become scary in the future. I mean, there's already talk of using it to give someone the experience of being in prison for decades while only days have actually passed.
Now imagine if you could design a prison that mimicked the detainee's worst nightmares. You've probably seen stuff like A Nightmare on Elm Street or the Scarecrow from Batman, right? That could potentially become an actual thing if VR gets really advanced and its used for 'punishment' purposes. It might even be usable for actual brainwashing, if you design the environment so it deliberately destroys each and every one of a subject's political opinions or religious beliefs.
On the bright side, virtual torture could make for some pretty cool horror games in the future. There have already been tons of stories and creepypastas about horrifying games like this on the deep web.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 60.7 ms ] threadIt was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that there were two small tables straight in front of him, each covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two from him, the other was further away, near the door. He was strapped upright in a chair, so tightly that he could move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad gripped his head from behind, forcing him to look straight in front of him.
For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and O'Brien came in.
'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'
The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.
'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'
He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.
'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'
A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.
- George Orwell, 1984
You get old, the world changes, and you just can't hack it, so you turn to controlling others through violence and laws.
"Back in my day sonny..."
2. The caption for the Guantanamo Bay picture is not accurate. The detainees are kneeling waiting to be processed. (the picture was taken in the first few days Guantanamo opened as a detainee prison): http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/16/gitmo-o.... Certainly bad treatment, but hardly sensory deprivation.
Are we going to ban the drill? The hammer? Towels? Those can all be used for torture, but that's not the use case for 99.999% of all uses.
I suspect you don't have a phobia like this, and have not dealt with people who do when they are affected by it.
> your last example would give the same response headset or not.
Meaning you view it as effective or ineffective? I used to think things like that had no effect on me. Absolutely none. Then I had children. Now I cry when a movie hints at a child losing a parent or parent losing a child. It's an involuntary reaction to the empathy I have for the situation. I can't control it at all, and this is in fictional settings with fictional characters.
Now imagine if you could design a prison that mimicked the detainee's worst nightmares. You've probably seen stuff like A Nightmare on Elm Street or the Scarecrow from Batman, right? That could potentially become an actual thing if VR gets really advanced and its used for 'punishment' purposes. It might even be usable for actual brainwashing, if you design the environment so it deliberately destroys each and every one of a subject's political opinions or religious beliefs.
On the bright side, virtual torture could make for some pretty cool horror games in the future. There have already been tons of stories and creepypastas about horrifying games like this on the deep web.