“VR has the potential to induce severe pain or suffering...”
April 1, 2016 9:39 AM   Subscribe

We Should Be Talking About Torture in VR by Jason Johnson [Versions]
“BeAnotherLab, who conducted the empathy experiments, came away with a darker opinion: it would be just as easy for VR to inflict pain on someone. “VR has the potential to induce severe pain or suffering, whether physically or mentally, if it is applied with a tortuous intentionality,” the team wrote over email. 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.” The grim warning is an unexpected thing to hear from a lab whose sole purpose is using VR with compassionate intent. However, it seems that there are some serious misgivings about VR’s status as a holistically benevolent concept. It could be the case that Silicon Valley has inadvertently engineered the ideal device for psychological torture.”
posted by Fizz (67 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
So, Brainstorm? I can't say I'd be too surprised.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:55 AM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


It could be the case that Silicon Valley has inadvertently engineered the ideal device for psychological torture.

Inadvertently? LOL
posted by chavenet at 9:57 AM on April 1, 2016 [10 favorites]


Roko's Basilisk, Version 0.1
posted by leotrotsky at 9:59 AM on April 1, 2016 [6 favorites]


The .exe command certainly takes on a whole new level of meaning.
posted by Fizz at 10:03 AM on April 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Thank goodness Dan Harmon warned us about the dangers of VR technology falling into the wrong hands.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:07 AM on April 1, 2016 [3 favorites]




The technology will only be mature when it incorporates teledildonics and the Thermal Grill Illusion.
posted by Bringer Tom at 10:13 AM on April 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


teledildonics and the Thermal Grill Illusion.

Worst episode of Big Bang Theory ever!
posted by Fizz at 10:14 AM on April 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


Thank goodness Dan Harmon warned us about the dangers of VR technology falling into the wrong hands.

I just now got that was a Hellraiser reference.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:14 AM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


i hadn't even considered, and of course.
posted by nadawi at 10:15 AM on April 1, 2016


Can't you just close your eyes?
posted by talkingmuffin at 10:19 AM on April 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


Hadn't thought of this and considering I've watched Black Mirror, really should have...
posted by litleozy at 10:19 AM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


And the worst thing about VR torture? People will be paying $15.00 a month to continue."Come on, just got to grind this pain for 600 more hours, then I'll have the whole set...."
posted by happyroach at 10:21 AM on April 1, 2016 [8 favorites]


That's a chilling idea, the military, politicians and psychologists yielding "enhanced interrogation" to Silicon Valley.

"Look, we've been nothing but reasonable with the MeatQuery.js project. We get results faster than the legacy systems you Luddites cling to! We even added a code of conduct, so what more could you want?" [Code of Conduct is just "Be excellent to each other."]
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:22 AM on April 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


The Butlerian Jihad can't come soon enough.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 10:25 AM on April 1, 2016 [10 favorites]


Regarding 'just closing your eyes,' Clockwork Orange comes to mind, among other things.
posted by thegreatfleecircus at 10:30 AM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Don't have the time to read the whole article right now but.. VR can cause extreme physical pain? How?
posted by I-baLL at 10:31 AM on April 1, 2016


VR can cause extreme physical pain? How?

From the article:
“Within the confines of simulation, there are certainly many circles of mental hell that a head-mounted display can navigate: disorientation and physical sickness, the incitation of panic and fear, religious or moral defamation, sensory overload, sensory deprivation, a feeling of disembodiment, and dependence on a machine that could flash whatever horrible imagery its operator chose before the eyes.”
Also:
“Prolonged VR immersion would potentially alter how a person responds to visual stimuli. It would also affect the prisoner’s sense of self, place, and time. Coupled with what is already known about solitary confinement—that it causes visual and auditory hallucinations, that it hinders people’s ability to recognize an object as the same object when viewed from different angles, that it drives inmates to self-harm and suicide—VR confinement could leave detainees on the verge of a complete breakdown.”
The mental and the physical both influence each other. Not hard to see how this might be exploited.
posted by Fizz at 10:33 AM on April 1, 2016 [6 favorites]


That and it sounds like they are thinking of VR being used like solitary confinement--someone could be kept in it for weeks.
posted by looli at 10:38 AM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


I am against this.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 10:39 AM on April 1, 2016


How do you know you're not in it right now? Duuuuude.
posted by fungible at 10:44 AM on April 1, 2016 [5 favorites]



VR can cause extreme physical pain? How?

or just a more deliberate, sustained, impossible to turn off version of whatever's going on here.
posted by philip-random at 10:44 AM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


Pretty much anything humanity has ever gotten into its hands can be used to induce pain and suffering. That someone might imagine VR could be used this way doesn't surprise me in the least. We use water, the most basic thing required to stay alive, to torture people. And music, and lights, and heat and cold, and food (or the lack thereof) and friendship and sex and basically anything we've ever encountered, we have used to torture someone across our history on this planet.

VR torture sounds awful, but all torture sounds awful.
posted by hippybear at 10:44 AM on April 1, 2016 [15 favorites]


Torture is fucking bad enough already. Period. Whoever wrote this probably has no idea about that. But slap "VR" on the article and here we are talking about "possibilities." The reality is far, far worse than this writer can imagine.
posted by My Dad at 10:46 AM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


That and it sounds like they are thinking of VR being used like solitary confinement--someone could be kept in it for weeks.

Remember that scene from Lost, I think it was maybe season 4 or 5, there was Room 23 where subjects were tortured by being forced to watch indoctrination/brainwashing videos.

Now imagine that, only with a VR headset.
posted by Fizz at 10:46 AM on April 1, 2016


Within the confines of simulation, there are certainly many circles of mental hell that a head-mounted display can navigate: disorientation and physical sickness, the incitation of panic and fear, religious or moral defamation, sensory overload, sensory deprivation, a feeling of disembodiment, and dependence on a machine that could flash whatever horrible imagery its operator chose before the eyes.”

So...basically television then.
posted by happyroach at 10:47 AM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Couldn't the person, y'know, just close their eyes? And no one would be able to tell because they have a headset over their eyes.

Not to sound cavalier, but I'm pretty sure that torture that could be done via a VR headset could be done far more effectively with actual physical torture and that we should be more concerned with banning torture in general, not some technology that may allow you to torture you in a similar way to already existing forms of torture.
posted by No One Ever Does at 10:51 AM on April 1, 2016 [8 favorites]


Couldn't the person, y'know, just close their eyes?

I thought that too, but keeping your eyes closed in fear of what you might be exposed to if you open them can be a form of torture in itself. And how long can you keep your eyes squeezed shut before that becomes painful?

Still, you'd think the author would have addressed this.
posted by HumanComplex at 11:02 AM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


You could do so much with GoPros on the headsets getting some processing before feeding the goggles. With a uniform (or predictable-enough) visual environment and sensitive-enough headtracking you could chromakey out zentai-suited torturers for invisible sources of unpredictable pain in an otherwise-realistic seeming environment. Disorient with randomly-changing distortions on the visual field. This is just what immediately springs to mind. If someone really wanted to be nasty they could come up with something much worse.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:04 AM on April 1, 2016


The Butlerian Jihad can't come soon enough.

It opened last month, its called 'London has Fallen'.
posted by biffa at 11:06 AM on April 1, 2016 [6 favorites]



Couldn't the person, y'know, just close their eyes?


NOPE
my lovely little droogs, no such optiony-woptiony
posted by lalochezia at 11:06 AM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


And how long can you keep your eyes squeezed shut before that becomes painful?

My rigorous training regime of keeping my eyes closed up to eight hours a day makes me confident I can handle our grim meathook future.
posted by figurant at 11:06 AM on April 1, 2016 [8 favorites]


Even if you close your eyes, you would still have screens shining lights onto your closed eyelids, which in and of itself can be a problem. I encountered these goggles with LEDs on them many years ago that had light strobing programs meant to alter the pattern of your various brain waves for various purposes. They were meant to be experienced with your eyes closed, with the lights diffusing through your eyelids into a sort of artificial phosphene experience, only much more intense.
posted by hippybear at 11:07 AM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


And seriously, what kind of personality looks at something like VR and their brain goes to "oh, I some people could use this to torture people"? That's Goebbels level shit right there.
posted by hippybear at 11:09 AM on April 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


And seriously, what kind of personality looks at something like VR and their brain goes to "oh, I some people could use this to torture people"? That's Goebbels level shit right there.

You don't have to be a psychopath or a societal monster to think of the implications of a piece of technology or the potential ways in which it might be abused by individuals, corporations, governments, etc. In fact, it's usually a good practice to think of how technology will be used as you're in the act of creating it.
posted by Fizz at 11:13 AM on April 1, 2016 [9 favorites]


Fortunately the inventors of the wheel, the hammer, the chisel, the drill, pliers, and electric current weren't dissuaded by the obvious utility each of these has as a tool of torture.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:16 AM on April 1, 2016 [8 favorites]


It could be the case that Silicon Valley has inadvertently engineered the ideal device for psychological torture.


I thought it was pop ups?
posted by infini at 11:16 AM on April 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


And facetiousness aside, this is nauseating.
posted by infini at 11:17 AM on April 1, 2016


I'll tell you what, you close your eyes, and they play the disembodied sounds of your child/ wife/ sister/ cousin/ uncle/ father/ mother/ whoever. Is it real, is it imaginary. Are they in the room, are they not? Is what it sounds like actually happening to them? Are they here? Is there another person near you? Go through sensory deprivation long enough and how do you respond when your stimulus is or isn't real. Objectively, yes... close your eyes. Keep them closed long enough and your a wreck from what you haven't seen. Imagine being unable to remove your headset or your ear coverings, and what you are hearing and/or seeing is strictly disconnected to your actual reality. Maybe the floor drops a foot, or there are hot coals 10 feet forward though the headset looks like its safety... Do you walk forward, do you stay still - no part of your visual stimulus can be trusted. Sounds, echoes - they can't be trusted. You have broken the senses - dissociated them from eachother. Yeah its a potential mess.
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:23 AM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


There are a lot of problems with this article. We've had VR for years, it was just more expensive than it is now. And if you want to do really elaborate psychological torture on people, I'm sure the CIA can organize a real-life simulation with actors much easier than developing something in VR.

Furthermore, what is the point of "talking about torture in VR"? You can talk about the impact of VR immersion on emotions without going down this weird torture hole. There's no solution to the problem of governments torturing people using VR that doesn't solve the problem of governments torturing people using ____. "Enhanced interrogation techniques" are horrible, it doesn't matter if they're playing recordings of squealing pigs, pumping someone full of scopolamine, or strapping a HMD to someone and putting them in a disturbing environment.
posted by demiurge at 11:31 AM on April 1, 2016 [7 favorites]


I'm imagining torture by gaslighting. Is that wall an inch closer to me? Does my soup taste funny? Did I just see something in my peripheral vision? Am I...taller than I was yesterday?

And American government officials will tell us that it isn't torture.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:32 AM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


demiurge: I had a demo of the HTC Vive last year, and that experience was not like anything I've had in the past. You can feel things sneak up on you down in your gut.
posted by billjings at 11:38 AM on April 1, 2016


i've never seen such a baseless, overblown load of horseshit in my life. this is honestly ridiculous.
posted by p3on at 11:39 AM on April 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Furthermore, what is the point of "talking about torture in VR"?

Well, perhaps to at least attempt to get people into the mindset that use of VR as a torture device would constitute torture and not totally-OK "enhanced interrogation". Just like how the taser was supposed to be a nonlethal alternative to drawing a firearm, those who would use it would perhaps argue that VR is a non-torturous alternative to torture, rather than, you know, torture.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 11:45 AM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


(And torture might not be allowed but, you know, this thing which isn't torture is totally fine.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 11:47 AM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


The old Cyberpunk 2020 game by R. Talsorian had the concept of Braindance.... which was that in the year 2020, US Prisoners were subjected to torturous VR for the duration of their prison sentences. As a consequence, the streets of Night City are full of cyber-psychos.... broken machine men with heads full of bad code.

If we're all getting a cyberpunk dystopia, we'd better at least get a Johnny Silverhand album. Or Kerry Eurodyne.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:06 PM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


I agree with the need to publicize this. Many desire the effects of torture, but with plausible deniability that they are not actually torturing anyone. We should should not afford ourselves the same delusions they indulge in.
posted by billjings at 12:08 PM on April 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Many desire the effects of torture, but with plausible deniability that they are not actually torturing anyone.

We have at least one Presidential candidate who wants to change the laws to allow torture in open deployment. The lizard brain revenge drive to torture those who are enemies of whatever definition is something that civilization was created to transcend.
posted by hippybear at 12:13 PM on April 1, 2016


Read The Hacker and the Ants. Rudy Rucker was a bit ahead of his time.
posted by Splunge at 12:38 PM on April 1, 2016


Now, I happen to think that VR is the next 3D cinema (people are going to pay lots of money for something marginally better, but hideously inconvenient, and they'll be all alone when they do it), but this article is the most scaremongering, accusational crock of shit. Traditional torture methods are cheap, and have an excellent cost benefit ratio. And at no point does stabbing a dude in the butt with a rusty shank fail because you've got an incompatible chipset in some of the headsets.
posted by The River Ivel at 12:41 PM on April 1, 2016


"In fact, they are currently launching a study into whether or not VR increases people’s vicarious pain sensitivity—a mysterious condition, common among amputees with symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, where the nervous system misfires and triggers pain at the sight of someone else’s suffering."
This reminds me of Octavia Butler's hyper-empathy <>from the Parable trilogy.
posted by domo at 12:52 PM on April 1, 2016


I think the problem is more that stabbing someone is obviously torture, whereas people might not think that hostile VR environments are torture.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 12:54 PM on April 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


This is only the first step towards the real endgame: a version of Total Recall/We Can Remember It For You Wholesale where closing your eyes isn't an option because while you sleep they put years and years of (torture/prison time/seclusion/reform/imagined future where your friends and family have been killed) directly into your memory so that you wake up believing all of it.

Just think, carrying out a 30 years prison sentence for murder and coming out of it completely reformed and rehabilitated by spending a single night in a hospital bed.

Alternatively, I suppose, this horrible torture application where you wake up begging to tell someone everything you know because you just lived through 10 years of torture and watching your family tortured. I'm sure we won't go that route, though, right?
posted by jermsplan at 1:15 PM on April 1, 2016


Or the DS9 espisode where O'Brien was sentenced to implanted memories of 20 years of terrible imprisonment that gave him PTSD.
posted by emjaybee at 1:19 PM on April 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Right, I new I'd seen it somewhere! Thanks MJB, that was gonna bother me all night.
posted by jermsplan at 1:20 PM on April 1, 2016


I'm surprised nobody mentioned it yet, but Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge goes into the use of very futuristic VR as a form of punishment, where it's used as time-dilated solitary confinement, similar to jermsplan's idea above.

Yeah, you could spend 10 perceived-years with your eyes closed, but you'll still "be" there, and of course it's ACTUALLY only a few weeks so: totally humane right?
posted by zinful at 2:52 PM on April 1, 2016


Sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, when VR was having its first hype phase, Amnesty International did a report on its potential for torture - I wish I could find it, but it's late and it was pre-Web-as-we-know-it.

That got to me, and as I was writing fiction at the time I tried to put together something around how it might actually pan out. I settled on a father being forced to experience a simulation of his young daughter being hurt, without knowing whether it was real or not, and came to a few conclusions - you don't get much out of non-consensual VR that you can't get more easily through simpler means, and that there were things I could write that I really didn't want to.

I think I hold to both. There's still too much V to R rario for it to be the best answer to anything much, and I still won't walk that walk.
posted by Devonian at 5:36 PM on April 1, 2016


And if you want to do really elaborate psychological torture on people, I'm sure the CIA can organize a real-life simulation with actors much easier than developing something in VR.


VR scales.
posted by ryoshu at 5:59 PM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


"The mental and the physical both influence each other." - Fizz, 2016

"The body cannot live without the mind" - Morpheus, ~2190
posted by quinndexter at 6:08 PM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


What I don't get is, with advances in anesthesiology, why torture?

I think there is a cadre of individuals who do this for fun. For what it is worth, I have been a victim. There is nothing quite like the subtle awareness you are waking up in a conversation, that you don't remember the beginning of. Then there is the awareness that if you continue looking blank, they will give themselves away with their cavalier faux superiority, and you can learn what they have been questioning you about, and how in depth the conversation has been. They were amateurs. Then they say things like, "It is important how you say goodbye." Then you say, what happened to this room, "All the furniture is broken?"

Actors, the problem with intelligence guys who think they can act, it takes a lot to convince me, and even more to entertain me.
posted by Oyéah at 6:59 PM on April 1, 2016


I think perhaps to at least attempt to get people into the mindset that use of VR as a torture device would constitute torture and not totally-OK ‘enhanced interrogation’ illustrates why this article doesn't need to exist: the problem with “enhanced interrogation” wasn't that there was ever any real confusion but that people in power were able to avoid punishment for practicing torture. The techniques were widely agreed to be torture well before Bush was elected and VR is very clearly already covered by e.g. the UN Convention against Torture:
the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.
I really don't see why we should be distracting the issue by talking about hypothetical new techniques rather than the documented use of torture which still hasn't been punished. Go after the disease rather than the symptoms.
posted by adamsc at 7:19 PM on April 1, 2016


Even in the future, the dangers of VR, even in a game, nearly bring the Federation's flagship under calamitous control.
posted by juiceCake at 8:08 PM on April 1, 2016


What I don't get is, with advances in anesthesiology, why torture? 
Power.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:26 PM on April 1, 2016


The primary purpose of torture isn't to extract information. It's to destroy opponents, and to intimidate political dissent.

In our recent history, torture of detainees seems to have quickly turned into a system for supporting the pre-existing intelligence narrative.
posted by thelonius at 1:15 AM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


See also: the Edward Furlong vehicle Brainscan and the torture scenes from Rollerbabies with the ants and the defleshing of the arm.
posted by ostranenie at 7:02 AM on April 2, 2016


demiurge: I had a demo of the HTC Vive last year, and that experience was not like anything I've had in the past. You can feel things sneak up on you down in your gut.

I've used VR for longer than that, and it is immersive, there's no denying that. You get instinctual reactions to things in the virtual environment. Modern VR headsets are even better than the stuff 10 years ago, cheaper, lighter. You know what else is immersive? Someone forcing you to sit in a cold room naked while loud music is piped in. Someone slapping you in the face and yelling at you. Someone forcing you to stand for 40 hours.
posted by demiurge at 9:41 AM on April 2, 2016


What I mean is that even if there is a danger of governments using VR to torture people, maybe we should make sure that they don't torture people, not just not use VR to do it. VR does not make it easier or more convienient to torture people.
posted by demiurge at 9:50 AM on April 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


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