Will You Take The Red Pill Or The Blue Pill?

And quite honestly I'm surprised Sci-fi flicks haven't picked up on this, since it's something any idiot who's been to an Imax movie or on a boat will notice sooner or later. Quite frankly it's the disconnect that will inevitably occur between the signals being delivered by the inner ear (specifically the Vestibular system) and those being delivered by the eyes. If there's a significant disconnect between the two nausea is felt by the subject. The classic example is you're on a boat down in your cabin and the boat starts rocking, back and forth, back and forth, you can feel this motion but when you look around the room you're in doesn't appear to be moving, the resulting disconnect causes the phenomena known colloquially as seasickness. IMO, if you're seasick the easiest way to cure it is to just CLOSE YOUR EYES and rely on what your body is telling you. The same phenomina can occur when in something like an IMax or planetarium show that includes a lot of movement, which makes your visual cortex think you're moving but your inner ear think you're standing still.

One interesting future development of this technology may be to perfect a remote telepresence rig that would allow for the remote-control of robots, or virtual reality avatars, where the telepresence operator would feel as if they were really there.

That being the case, I'm not sure how this would effect such virtual reality exploration as you describe (or virtual reality video games). On the one hand I have noticed that if I feel sick from seeing moving images while I'm sitting still it's less severe than if I'm moving but the visual input indicates sitting still.

Video games or online worlds like Second Life would probably be the first to make use of this technology. Imagine a truly immersive online world. Imagine the business opportunities for some smart entrepreneur.

And that entrepreneur will most likely be either Nintendo or an as yet unknown company. Sony and Microsoft make good consoles (well, aside from technical difficulties), but historically Nintendo comes out with the innovations. Admittedly though Sony and Microsoft at present are the ones pushing higher end graphics.

People will probably go online - and never want to come back.

So? People do that anyway.

Their bodies will need to be stored, fed, and taken care of health-wise. Probably in a pod of some kind. You could stack them up into gigantic towers. Then, because the human body produces heat, you could siphon off the heat from the thousands - no, millions of bodies in the pods! And the carefree dreamers could live their virtual lives without fear for their "real" body. In time, some may even forget they are living in a virtual world altogether...

Think of the possible uses. It's already documented that people playing video games experience less physical pain while gaming than people who are just sitting around, reading or watching TV while being pained. Imagine, not only do you give a patient a numbing agent, but rather than giving them Anesthesia you put them into a virtual world so complete they forget what's happening to their bodies. Think of the breakthrough for patients (such as the elderly) for whom anesthesia is risky. Think of the kids who won't necessarily behave while uncomfortable/painful procedures are used on them, you go from a struggling crying child to one who's so absorbed in their game they don't even notice when you stick the needle in them. Think of the old people, or the quadriplegics whose bodies are really very useless, but in a virtual world they can run around and do whatever they want. Why, such a pod palace as you describe could be the next nursing home where the patients wander in their own little world while machines carefully measure their condition.

Oh and Brent, if you think online game worlds are "carefree" you're very much mistaken. No world created by humans is ever going to be "carefree", they just like strife too much to allow it. Don't they, Mr. Anderson?

Is it just me? I swear I remember reading about scientists being able to trigger everything from religious experiences, paranormal experiences, and out-of-body experiences with electric or magnetic stimulation of the brain. That seems far more relevant to actual OOBE than tricking the subjects' eyes.

no matter where you go, there you are

What if using the same principle we are tricking our brains into thinking we are in this body in the first place. What if we arn't even in this body at all?

God is love
God loves you
Why not to use the bible as toilet paper

God Is Loving has a point. I think the "confused about where your body is located" hypothesis is probably correct, but the experiments described are a few steps short of proving that it's the explanation for OOBEs. We've proven that providing inputs from a different location will confuse people as to where their body is. But we still need to show how the brain can take inputs coming from the correct location but misinterpret what they mean about the body's location.

Scientists using real science discovered why OOBEs happen. They constructed a hypothesis, used it to predict the outcome of experiments, experimented, then published their finding in the peer-reviewed science journal Science Magazine.

Such lovely snark. I'm going to be chuckling about that all day.

The thing that you are forgeting is this. They were able to make people feel as though they were experiencing an out of body experience by showing the sensor information from another location. In an out of body experience where some one is seeing their body from another location. How do they recive visual stimulation from a location other than their eyes without a camera connected to their eyes.

OKAY so if i can see from a point other than my body I'll get the impression that I'm out of my body. SO how do people see from a point outside of their body without cameras hooked up to them?

Secondly what makes you think your even in this body?

Maby the only reason you think your in this body is because you recieve visual infromation from the perspective of being in this body?

...using science to go hatin' on religious experience again, Brent. Next thing you know, you'll be saying that perhaps there's a link between religious rapture and orgasms. Sheesh.

Jim Downey

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