By hacking together a pair of VR headsets, a group of artists and DIY neuroscientists from BeAnotherLab discovered that they could create empathy between two strangers. Men could empathize with women. The old could understand the young. White people could hold up their hands and see black skin. Not only was VR slick, shiny new technology, but it had a wonderful potential for helping people learn compassion. VR was hailed as a savior, and the praise was piled on. However, same team came away with a darker opinion: it would be just as easy for VR to inflict pain on someone. According to them, VR has the potential to induce severe pain or suffering, whether physically or mentally, if it is applied with a tortuous intentionality. They went on to say that most certainly, the military will shortly be experimenting with VR as a form of torture if they have not already begun. https://versions.killscreen.com/we-should-be-talking-about-torture-in-vr/ What do you think? Would it be more "humane" way to torture someone or equally bad/worse?
How can you "create" empathy? Unless they can boast of making a psychotic serial killer empathize with a rock for having a hard life, it's crank. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! (Batman vs Superman)
Torture is wrong, no matter how it is implemented. The bad guys torture people. If someone condones torture then they are one of the bad guys.
My first taste of VR was when my daughter's boyfriend brought over his new phone with a pair of VR goggles. Though the images were grainy, I still thought it was pretty cool. It seems that anyone with a phone that is compatible with the Google's Cardboard app can get a taste of VR. https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/ As for the the ethical and moral implications...I don't know. If torturing one person could potentially save the lives of 50, 100, 150, or more people, would it be acceptable? I've heard mixed results from such things. If I were the recipient, I would probably tell them anything they wanted to hear, as would most people. It wouldn't necessarily be the truth, either. I believe we want to hold ourselves to higher standards, in general, so I suppose it depends on what we want to sacrifice in an effort to maintain a safe society. Also, where do we draw the line on when and where it should be used. If we legitimize its use in a fight against terrorism, would we then find ourselves using it in more domestic issues down the road? Sticky issue indeed.
Jack Bauer isn't a moral guide to life because he is fictional, living in a universe with scripted outcomes. Torture always works at getting information because when people are tortured they will do what is necessary to make it stop. However saving peoples lives requires getting truthful, reliable information not just random noise (which is also, formally, information). Torture cannot help there. Nor can a reputation for torturing people assist you in judging if information obtained by torture is truthful, because other people will corroborate any story if they fear you might torture them next.
A Clockwork Orange. That's behaviour modification, not torture per se. Virtual reality could possibly be used to get information without torture. A number of episodes of Mission: Impossible (the old TV series, not the dreadful movie series) come to mind.
If you allow your government to torture people, you no longer have a safe society. That's a much bigger threat than any pissant terrorist.
