
What Happens When Virtual Reality Gets Too Real - jonbaer
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/01/03/what-happens-when-virtual-reality-gets-too-real/
======
Animats
I've heard that professor speak in EE380 at Stanford. The VR lab at Stanford
isn't in the CS department; it belongs to the "communications" (marketing, PR)
department. They have some scary results:

They have a VR simulation of swimming with dolphins. They let little kids try
it. Then a few months later, they ask the kids about their experience of
swimming with dolphins. A sizable fraction think it really happened, and add
details as if it were real. It's possible to use VR to implant false memories.

They have the capability of mapping one face onto the video image of another
person, and can construct, using morphing software, combinations of two faces.
They've discovered that, if they construct a face which is weighted 1/3 or so
of the subject's face and 2/3 of some politician's face, and play a campaign
speech, people still recognize the politician but agree with them much more.
Coming soon to an ad near you.

[1] [https://vhil.stanford.edu](https://vhil.stanford.edu)

~~~
Chathamization
False memories are fairly easy to plant in many people. It's possible to plant
them just by repeatedly asking someone about something that didn't happen:

[https://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm](https://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm)

Also this:

> “Our findings show that false memories of committing crime with police
> contact can be surprisingly easy to generate, and can have all the same
> kinds of complex details as real memories,” says psychological scientist and
> lead researcher Julia Shaw of the University of Bedfordshire in the UK.

> “All participants need to generate a richly detailed false memory is 3 hours
> in a friendly interview environment, where the interviewer introduces a few
> wrong details and uses poor memory-retrieval techniques.”

[http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/...](http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/people-
can-be-convinced-they-committed-a-crime-they-dont-remember.html)

~~~
beachstartup
i've made up memories spontaneously and was in total disbelief until proven
wrong.

~~~
tbagman
Are you sure? I think you're misremembering.

------
stcredzero
Summary: VR will change morality. The change won't be the end of the world.
Most likely, some changes will be highly disturbing.

I enjoy computer games. I played FTL until I had all the ships and all of the
achievements, so perhaps I qualify as a gamer. I volunteer at a videogame
museum. I have many friends who are avid gamers. That said, I seem to keep on
meeting young people have a moral system along the lines of, "If the laws of
physics and the laws of the government where I reside allow it, I can do it,
and it's moral."

The world isn't going to end, and it won't result in an instant Mad Max post-
apocalyptic world, but technological changes do have an effect on morality.
Pre 1400, insisting that people be on time to the minute, or even to 15-20
minutes would have been considered quite crazy. Birth control had a tremendous
effect on what society considers moral. When music had to be distributed as
manufactured objects, the technology brought about one set of moral standards
with regards to the selling/owning/distributing of music. Now that all media
exist as bits, we are now seeing a different set of moral standards come into
being. (One of which is, "Pics or it didn't happen.")

So VR is clearly going to influence what society considers "moral" \--
probably in ways we can't easily forsee. Many of alive today -- even typical
members of the HN community -- are going to find some of these changes quite
disturbing.

~~~
derefr
> "If the laws of physics and the laws of the government where I reside allow
> it, I can do it, and it's moral."

Personally, I think that sounds right and proper, and it's reality that's the
"broken" thing.

Living in reality means accepting that there are things that are "wrong" but
where there's no sensible enforcement mechanism: "externalities", when it's
the commons we're screwing over, or just "social ills" (e.g. hate speech) when
it's a specific target.

Living in a consensual massively-multiplayer VR space, on the other hand, the
_rules of the space_ can be changed to suit its citizens: morality can be
fully enforced, such that of course everything that's possible is good—because
everything that's not good is impossible.

And I do mean consensual _spaces_ , here—the plural is important; the most
important thing such spaces give us is the ability to opt in or out of them,
such that you can find one that fits _your_ particular value system. You might
personally enjoy a space with relatively few rules—a VR space equivalent to a
"PvP server." Or you might enjoy a space with incredibly constricted rules,
allowing almost no expression within their bounds, as in the game _Journey_.
Or—and this is the thing we can't get from regular old reality given any
amount of utopian politics—you can visit _both_ , at different times of day,
or even "multi-boxing" between the two in a weird VR sense we haven't invented
yet.

Really, I'm just rehashing the content of these two essays:

• [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-
atomic-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-
communitarianism/)

• [http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/06/the-future-is-
filters/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/06/the-future-is-filters/)

~~~
stcredzero
_Living in a consensual massively-multiplayer VR space, on the other hand, the
rules of the space can be changed to suit its citizens: morality can be fully
enforced_

Are there any massively-multiplayer online spaces which are completely without
griefers, trolls, or immorality of any sort? Which ones? (And try not to
arrive at a non-empty set by redefining all complaints conveniently as
"whining.")

~~~
derefr
It's pretty easy to avoid griefers/trolls when the community is closed or
invite-only, or puts even the tiniest monetary barrier to entry. In the non-VR
case, Metafilter and SomethingAwful do well. "Private servers" for most MMOs
also do well, though they're rarely massively-multiplayer themselves.

But you're right that the concept of making _literally any_ kind of social
more into a "law of physics" of a VR space is basically impossible with
current technology. We'd need somewhat-better AI (though not order-of-
magnitude better) to recognize+classify e.g. speech and body-language that
"break the rules" of a place, and refuse to transmit those to others.

And for one particular exception, I don't think any VR world could (or should)
allow for enforcement regarding social norms of internal states—i.e.
"thoughtcrime." Even if we figured out a way—even if it was inherent to the VR
equipment to read your mind to do its job—thoughts are "yours", rather than
being something one of your "faces" (i.e. the part of you people know as you
in that space, which could itself have multiple avatar-characters) has on its
own. Which further means that you can't really establish social norms about
what you do _outside_ of that VR space, using one of your other "faces." The
"meta-norm" necessary there would be that a "face" is the root of identity,
and so one "face" cannot be blamed for the actions of another, even if they
have the same _person_ behind them. (This presumes that there's still _person_
-based authentication between the user and any VR space they interact with,
and that there's one exactly one persistent "face" per {user, space} pair,
that cannot be discarded and recreated.)

~~~
stcredzero
_And for one particular exception, I don 't think any VR world could (or
should) allow for enforcement regarding social norms of internal states—i.e.
"thoughtcrime."_

I think Tumblr has that one covered anyhow.

------
jackgavigan
I played VRLympix' Ski Jump game[1] recently, which isn't at all
photorealistic but the vision and motion control is spot on.

Looking over the virtual edge of the ramp was a bit discombobulating but
bearable. However, when I got up to speed and was approaching the jump, my
lizard brain nearly panicked at the prospect of a potentially death-dealing
jump/fall/crash, even though my higher brain knew that I was standing safely
on a solid, flat floor. My brain seemed to trust the visual reference points
at least as much, if not more than my inner ear and I had to lift the headset
to stave off the feeling that I was going to fall over.

1: Here's a video of someone else playing it -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtZgRqQw2uI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtZgRqQw2uI)

------
ItsDeathball
>...the technology could affect users’ outlook and viewpoints more than other
once-new technologies — such as televisions, the Internet or mobile phones —
because it creates more lifelike experiences and often makes users active,
rather than passive, participants.

Hasn't this exact same thing been claimed about videogames for the last twenty
years or so, by people who want to regulate game content, with no conclusive
evidence?

------
hellbanner
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0441005667?keywords=forever...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0441005667?keywords=forever%20peace)

Forever Peace: sci-fi written by a Vietnam War veteran.

US Military uses robots for fighting that include mind-to-mind communication..
but bans links longer than N Days. After N days, a human with such an
immediate connection to another becomes irrevocably pacifist.

~~~
vdaniuk
That's great SciFi but maybe don't do the spoiler thing and edit your comment?
The main side effect of mind-to-mind communication doesn't get revealed until
the end of the story.

~~~
hellbanner
Sorry, I can't (too late to edit).. wanted to discuss the idea and doubted
much of HN had read it. Thanks though!

------
startupfounder
Why do we fear technological advancement? "Fire will get to hot and burn our
villages", "the wheel will crush our children", "guns kill people", etc.

Tools and technology are neither good or bad, it is what we humans do with
these tools that create our reality.

Yes, we could fill children's heads with a false reality, but on the contrary
we can also provide education that is 100x better to the entire planet.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
People have a good reason to be cynical. At the early horizon of the Internet,
people believed utopia was right around the corner. What they found was more
income inequality while the biggest payouts in Silicon Valley went to people
sucking up more of our information to sell us more ads.

So yes, we certainly can do amazing things, but more often than not, someone
in the boardroom will eventually ask: "where's the profit?"

Just think of Facebook's Open Basics. They could afford to provide the extreme
poor with the full internet, but they chose not to, since using Facebook at
least would help the company collect more data and sell more ads. That was a
deliberate choice.

~~~
Thriptic
> So yes, we certainly can do amazing things, but more often than not, someone
> in the boardroom will eventually ask: "where's the profit?"

That's because these entities are businesses, not charities. Their primary
purpose is to generate profit, and the board is there to ensure that they do
that. To expect a business to act like a charity is not reasonable.

~~~
ProAm
> To expect a business to act like a charity is not reasonable.

This is why we fear such leaps of technology, because the people doing it lack
empathy and sympathy in place for profits.

------
cfcef
> In the Stanford lab, researchers have found even a single experience can
> affect people. In one test, researchers found that test subjects who had
> just cut down a virtual tree used fewer paper towels when cleaning up a
> spill after the experience than subjects who hadn’t cut down a tree.

Oh great. _More_ priming studies.

~~~
ForcesOfOdin
It's testing whether the virtual reality experience can 'prime' people for a
behavior change. It was intentional priming and I don't see an inherent flaw
there. The experiment does sound weak though. How reliable is the control on
the amount of spilled, how accidental it seemed, and the timing for each group
who had different events preceding the spill? Also, what does the behavioral
difference matter if they do not carry that behavior beyond the single
experiment or if the ones exhibiting that behavior were already more paper
towel conscious without the VR. I find the article really weak because of a
lack of substantial examples, and the examples given lack detail.

------
pshc
Anecdotally, I experienced mild depersonalization in 2014 after too many
sessions in the DK2. (Other life stresses were also a factor though.) Very
disorienting at the time.

But I know what that dissociation feels like now and can manage it, so I'm
looking forward to pushing boundaries with CV1!

------
have_faith
Gene manipulation, advanced AI, advanced immersive VR, expanding population, a
rush to control essential assets (water, food, power), internet with speeds
that makes measuring the speed unnecessary, future Google Glass, quantum
computing, further class inequality, further technological advancement with no
effect on reducing the work day.

I for one welcome our Ghost in the Shell/Matrix/Blade Runner future.

------
mschuster91
What's missing is material feeling, like you see a switch, you see your hand
touching the switch and you feel something.

Could that be done using e.g. a metallic powder held in an oscillating
magnetic field? If so, then shouldn't it also be possible to coat the
particles with plastic, wood etc for a more realistic feel?

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "What's missing is material feeling, like you see a switch, you see your
> hand touching the switch and you feel something."

Take a look at this, I think it could be the start of what you're looking for.

[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/03/haptic-
japane...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/03/haptic-japanese-
holograms)

~~~
mschuster91
Awesome, kind of looks like a miniature holodeck. But I think with this
technology it wouldn't be possible to convey the behavior of materials (e.g.
metal feels cold to the touch, wood not)...

The alternative would of course be direct neural manipulation a la Matrix but
I highly doubt that research in this direction will happen due to ethical
concerns...

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "But I think with this technology it wouldn't be possible to convey the
> behavior of materials (e.g. metal feels cold to the touch, wood not)..."

Perhaps, though consider what makes metal cold to the touch, is it not just
due to the way our brains interpret a certain set of electrical impulses
received by our skin?

If that's the case, perhaps we could combine the haptic holograms with sensory
gloves, e.g. the holograms provide the physical resistance of the virtual
item, and the gloves mimic the electrical signals that convey the other
physical properties of the item.

~~~
mschuster91
Hmm yeah, that could help... but one problem remains, if you want to display
an holographic forest, you'll need a holo-room the size of the forest.

~~~
ZenoArrow
We're still talking about VR right? In the scenario I thought we were
discussing the haptic hologram stuff would just be for simulating touch, you
wouldn't be looking at it (though it could be great as a visual medium in
other scenarios). As for movement, couldn't we use something like a Virtuix
Omni to allow someone to move through the forest...

[http://www.virtuix.com/](http://www.virtuix.com/)

------
danharaj
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality)

Think about how many concepts are social fictions that everyone takes for
granted as real. Hyperreality is already here in more subtle ways.

------
strictnein
Clearly this: [http://vrmaster.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/virtual-
rality...](http://vrmaster.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/virtual-rality-and-
fear.jpg)

~~~
cbd1984
I never got how that was supposed to be so much worse than someone in ratty
clothes in a ratty apartment reading books. Do people think any new technology
is automatically The Matrix?

------
endergen
This is a great problem to have. I'd rejoice.

------
_asdf_asdf
Wow, this VR simulation looks and feels _EXACTLY_ like I'm sitting still in a
chair, in an air conditioned room, with two pounds of earmuffs and safety
goggles strapped onto my face!

Wait, what's that smell? It smells like stale coffee that someone brewed only
just a few hours ago...

This is _so_ realistic!

~~~
curuinor
The quality of being realistic in a mediated environment is called
telepresence, or presence. There's a journal for it. It's a small journal,
although pretty old for a CS journal (not at all old for a social science
journal) so I read an appreciable piece of the thing for an aborted attempt at
my master's thesis (my actual thing was way more formal).

They've thought of all the stuff you just thought of. Even smells, in an Iraq
War PTSD study or five (because they only have to simulate a few smells), and
in some failed commercial products.

The head-mounted displays began with the "Sword of Damocles", which was named
that because it weighed 150 pounds and was dangled over your head and rendered
a princely 100 polys/sec. So everything will get better, don't worry.

