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virtual prison goggles

occulus facebook locked onto your face
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the idea of having a heads up virtual goggles display strapped to your face has been shown before , specifically in the horrible unwatchable television fanatasy aliens show called [ falling skies on tnt network a show i regret ever watching]

while in the matrix they plug a jack into your brain, to force you to see things---in this nightmare, they simply strap virtual goggles to your face so you cannot see anything else.

occulus rift is getting pretty good. we're not there yet, but they can strap goggles to your face. what's to stop the next creative innventor from putting a lock on the strap, and preventing you from taking it off.

i present to you-----occulus maiden torture.

a prison for your eyes, and your mind.

just to demonstrate how powerful such a torture could be for 'reforming' human beings-----consider that reprogramming a human being by taking over their brain is pretty serious. the visual system is perhaps the most direct method of attacking, or hacking , the mind.

although this is not human research----it is on animals--- - there exists convincing evidence that virtual prison goggles could seriously mess you up. link below . i guarantee you will be surprised if you read it.

teslaberry, Mar 13 2014

reprogramming owls. http://www.theguard...-seeing-upside-down
[teslaberry, Mar 13 2014]

Pseudoscope http://vimeo.com/14870320
[Klaatu, Mar 19 2014]

What is a pseudoscope? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscope
[Klaatu, Mar 19 2014]


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       So, in addition to putting them in a virtual prison, you turn their vision upside down or sideways so if they ever do make an escape attempt they'll be stumbling around for a week before they can walk again?
scad mientist, Mar 13 2014
  

       The whole turning your vision upside down thing is interesting, but that is mostly related to relearning congnitive responses and reflexes. I wonder what would happen if you flipped the image for one eye left to right, so to look left, one eye rotates left like normal, but the other eye has to look right to see left. Would the brain be able to adapt that to that and regain depth perception? that seems like it would need a lot more reprogramming to work.
scad mientist, Mar 13 2014
  

       The Man In the Oculus Rift Mask
theircompetitor, Mar 13 2014
  

       Ever read/seen "A Clockwork Orange"? I'd messel you haven't as this is a bolshy central raskazz-element.
Zeuxis, Mar 13 2014
  

       [+] You have emboldened me to go to a topic I probably should shy away from.   

       I think we should replace long-term imprisonment with a "short, sharp shock" (followed by the various in-community restraints on liberty a 21st century society is able to use.) The short version of "why", is that it's obvious that the prison system as we know it, is just a bad habit inherited from Victorian times, and it doesn't work. (Hopefully this keeps me on the right side of the thin line between here and advocacy.)   

       Your idea, used with moderation, looks to be just the kind of apparatus the said shock could be delivered with. (It just has to be something so bad that you never, ever want to go through it again - just like imprisonment in a Crime University ... oops ... a bit of advocacy ... , but that you don't get habituated to, and unpredictably transformed by - unlike a prison.)   

       And yes, this is also sounding a bit Clockwork Orange, isn't it?
skoomphemph, Mar 13 2014
  

       zeuxis ---yes i've read clockwork orange.   

       and for eveyrone else, no i'm not suggesting you reprogramm people to see upside down. no , not at all.   

       if you've been following occulus rift , there's other ways you could 'mess' with prisoners. a sad thing to do for sure. treating human beings as animals to be caged. but the idea is to cage the mind. so if you're going to go down the road of entertaining this beyond foucault style idea. going past the concept of panopticon , a system always watching you. to the omnopticon, a system forcing you to watch it. [ which is very much like clockwork orange yes ..but without the shock treatment conditioning].   

       for example, you could hook up the occulus rift so that at least 6 hours of every waking day, the man in the occulus rift mask would be seeing a google glass audio-visual real time streaming feed of the point-of-view of their victim.   

       this would be particularly apt for violent crime.   

       one day the victim perhaps, just out of spite, goes to visit the prisoner in jail----and the prisoner finally gets to see his own image---as if looking in a mirror.   

       good ending plot twist to a movie no? something similar happens in the end of "strange days" but with a totally inverted purpose---the murderer straps on his point of view live feed onto the eyes of a soon to be murdered victim whom he has already paralyzed.   

       and they get to watch themselves get killed.
teslaberry, Mar 14 2014
  

       When I think of what some unwelcome visitors did to my next door neighbour (when the flying squad came, she didn't want to leave us to go and open the gate), then I think to myself that to Foucault et al, crime is just some abstraction, and that even a victim's desire for revenge is a lot more valid than the updated system now would have us pretend it is.   

       But, treating crime as coldly as possible - as a problem needing a solution - it seems that it's worth trying to instill a dread of the consequences in people, as part of the overall strategy. (At the extreme, if one execution, on average, prevents just 2 murders, you have enough net deterrence profit to justify the hangman - maybe -- bad example).   

       Personally, I think imprisonment is a horribly cruel punishment. I can particularly remember one naughty kid who stole one time too many, went and did some time, and returned as someone who would cut your throat just because he was bored on Saturday night.   

       To cut that un-mirth-leavened contra-bakeristic paragraph short, we simply swap one kind of cruel for another. Cruel works; welcome in, Cruel.   

       And to cut the most latterly paragraph short, too, I personally think the Shorter, Sharper, (but more outright horrifying) cruelty is better.   

       Er ... may I just add that the main reason it's better is that once it's done, you can focus fully on attemting rehabilitation. No more punishment. Punishment's over.   

       And just one more ... ... please? ..   

       I also believe that especially for juvenile offenders, there should be a way to permanently clean up your record by actively doing things more worthy than most people bother with.   

       Shut up Eccles!!
skoomphemph, Mar 14 2014
  

       Augmented reality schizophrenic hallucinations, that sort of thing?
tatterdemalion, Mar 14 2014
  

       Maybe just sleep deprivation and constant loud music of a kind hated by the wearer. Simulated blindness might work.   

       I suppose the general answer would be "enough", and no more? Second offenders would not spend longer on the apparatus, they'd just have to endure everything at a higher intensity.   

       So maybe monsters and 3rd offenders could even qualify for a bout of schizophrenia. There really is no upper limit, other than that defined by effectiveness. (Or so some think.)
skoomphemph, Mar 14 2014
  

       Sorry, my question was directed to the poster, as they did not specify in the idea what would be displayed in the goggles.
tatterdemalion, Mar 14 2014
  

       Inverted reality would do quite nicely. And if the world was always just that little bit squonk, and vibrated at the motion sickness inducing frequency, I'm sure that would help to compress three horrible years into one month.   

       The occasional feeling that the entire world had become a vertiginous drain-hole might be a nice touch for special occasions, too.   

       But contemplating the proposed images interferes with the intent to be cool headed about it all, eventually.   

       (Realistically, if someone came up with a provable improvement in the system, though, it would be too risky for a politician to support. So maybe you need to hold Parliament hostage, then?)
skoomphemph, Mar 14 2014
  

       hmmm, for certain violent offences I wonder if a sentence of impermanent blindness and an extended feeling of helplessness while learning to adapt to a new set of sensory skills and knowing full well that a relapse in behaviour could result in this condition becoming permanent might just not work wonders...   

       //to Foucault et al, crime is just some abstraction//   

       Yes, well, bugger Foucault. There's less to him than meets the eye.
pertinax, Mar 15 2014
  

       sp. oculus   

       "Occulus" would be a semi-meaningful Latin word, on the other hand, being understood as a compound of "ob", meaning "in your face", and "culus", meaning "buttocks". The assimilation of the "b" of "ob" to the neighbouring "c" would be the same as occurs in "occupy" - and also in "occurs", come to think of it.
pertinax, Mar 15 2014
  

       The punishment aspect (and why not the revenge aspect, too, while we're about it) of a perp's processing by the justice system could be spread out over a series of sessions.   

       3 years worth of regular sessions if you would've gotten 3 years in the system that doesn't work.   

       Between sessions, you live among normal folk, and you work on trying to become a decent human being. You get help with this. As long as you don't remove your radio tagging device, and co-operate, the punishment sessions are not as bad as they could be, and your sentence does not get extended (by the anti-parole board).   

       It probably wouldn't be any more effective on the hard nuts, but if you actually succeed in rescuing a few more of the reformables, everybody wins enough to make this change (which will, of course, never happen, at I've acknowledged) worthwhile.
skoomphemph, Mar 15 2014
  

       Bone for Other: General.   

       Come on, [tb]. You've been here long enough that you're not a total newb anymore, but not long enough that you can just take a shit all over the standards of etiquette around here and call it art (you know who you are, person I'm referring to).   

       We can work on the capitalization and “creative” use of punctuation later, but for now let's start with baby steps.
ytk, Mar 15 2014
  

       Recent legal innovations such as required notification that a course of punitive action will begin prior to its commencement are a bit like strapping on blinders rather than virtual reality. I think one's autonomic reflexes will have a quite similar reaction.
reensure, Mar 15 2014
  

       Obviously this is a simplification, but seems like you're showing sadistic images to sadists...maybe use pretty flowers, and cute kittens..might work on one other species I can think of...   

       What's really needed is for the west to find a better set of ethics.
not_morrison_rm, Mar 16 2014
  

       Look, I suppose if we're going to take an ethics-first option, the idea that what's in your mind is intrinsically sacred, no matter what's in there, might very well be a trump card against any other. So if there are horrible sadistic fantasies in the perp's head, those are inviolate (qua fantasy), and attempts to forcefully tamper with such cognitive innards are always wrong, whatever benefits might flow from doing so. Maybe.   

       As far as the deterrence aspect of the abominations we are, today, quite happy to perpetrate against perps goes, I think that's an entirely different batch of buried herring. Separating punishment from reform means when the punishment is in progress, your aim is simple. Punish. (OK, maybe a little bit of low level reflex conditioning, but nothing in excess of what we already do.) I don't have great qualms about making the consequences of crime painful, but I suppose tolerances vary.   

       And if we try to *encourage* reformed behavior as part of the process maybe that amounts to improved ethics - in practice. I'm not sure what better ethics would entail, but one component would surely be to encourge free and willing self-improvement by those most in need of improved selves?   

       The way we do things now, on the one hand, we torture offenders in an environment that makes them worse than they were, before; and on the other hand, we attempt all sorts of "rehabilitation". For the people it's actually possible to help reintegrate into humanity, this doesn't help; for those who live in the various alternative versions of humanity, it's just a game they can play against their enemies (us).
skoomphemph, Mar 16 2014
  

       as the old Russian saying goes "prison is the place where the innocent are punished by the guilty".   

       Also in "Didn't you kill my brother?" film we get the Marxist version, which is if someone is a bicycle thief, teach him how to make bicycles, so now he has a trade and doesn't need to steal any more bicycles...
not_morrison_rm, Mar 16 2014
  

       Yes, prison can certainly be a passable holiday for the muscular sadist. In fact, in prison, the people he gets off on hurting can't move to another town. The authorities keep them available for his various pleasures every day.   

       Look how miserable King Rat was when their camp was relieved. (He was a great and benevolent king, of course, but those are scarce in places like "C-Max").   

       To rise in the ranks of a gang, you need to do things like stab a warder in the mess. If this doesn't lead to more time, it might delay parole. But if you do your deed, you get to rape the fresh young boys when they arrive, so I suppose for some that makes it worth while. The worst prisoners try to stay there.   

       One could relativistically say that the guilty punish the innocent.   

       Trouble with the bicycle-making method is that it's hard to give someone whose main need is to hurt other people a similar substitute. I suppose that offers the potential for some half-baked solution. What do you give a dedicated rapist/murderer as a birthday present?
skoomphemph, Mar 17 2014
  

       I still say that loss of sight for your stretch would work wonders.
Makes it a little bit hard to net the new fish without putting out a few feelers to be smacked.
  

       This will not rehabilitate a sociopath of course, it would merely teach them some new tricks, but for about eighty percent or so you'd find people not only more hesitant to commit crimes which warrant that punishment, but also more thoughtful about the role of the victims in their little scenarios.   

       Normally it takes a series of crimes for the courts to reach the point where imprisonment is considered, so to some extent the justice system functions as a kind of sociopath filter. (Obviously this doesn't apply where perpetrators of victimless offences get sent off to be stabbed and raped on their first offence.) I think the sociopath ratio in prisons would be significantly higher than among convicted offenders in general. It might be that 50% of those who graduate from fines to prison have some sociopathic tendencies.   

       However, there would be enough of them with no more sociopathology than the rest of humanity. Perhaps something like prison goggles, if coupled with pupil dilation measurement apparatus could be used to study the minds of the various kinds of inmates. (Who would be all alone in my version of the short, sharp shock). This could build a profile to share with police departments, to be used in as yet unforseen ways. Imagine the Knowledge the justice system could generate!   

       (Of course would be kings will find uses for that kind of thing that we citizens never intended, so such measures have complications beyond the immediate objectives.)   

       Nice thing about short, sharp shocks is they're of short enough duration to be a universal replacement for unfair punishments like fines. Maybe being more vicious to first offenders is the way to reduce the numbers of subsequent offenders, after all.   

       I start to feel a suspicious of my own quantum of sociopathy, about being willing to consider such measures. Could it be that the other blade of this sword is a bit too sharp?
skoomphemph, Mar 18 2014
  

       // I start to feel a suspicious of my own quantum of sociopathy, about being willing to consider such measures.//   

       That's a good sign.   

       ... But I think it's just my objectivity shining through...   

       Or I'm a recidivist.   

       Sadly, my objectivity in these matters has been blunted by knowing too many people who've had guns held to their heads. (The next door neighbours, the lady up the road, three of my cousins - one of whom survived being actually shot, an uncle, another sort-of uncle I think of as such, but who technically isn't -- who was hijacked Thrice -- and then just various friends of friends like a woman whose pets I looked after for a few weeks last year, and the former neighbour two houses up another street, who was pulled out the shower, not permitted to get dressed, thrown on the bed, but fortunately not raped. She just had to remain naked for humiliation's sake or something. They were a bit cruel to our neighbours, actually. Oh I forgot (yes, forgot): my brother was in a shoot-out involving lots of shots exchanged in the dark. I'll skip the details... and that's enough to paint the backdrop, I think.)   

       Still, the idea of periodic brutality punctuating real efforts to deal with root causes in a gentle manner most of the time is quite liberal in its own way, is it not? Compared to current reality, I mean.
skoomphemph, Mar 18 2014
  

       Sadly, it sounds like we grew up in similar neighbourhoods. Who knew there were so many?
Ever been the guy left for dead, or were you lucky enough to just witness the brutality?
  

       Hey, either way, we've both lived through it so far...
and that makes us Asylumni!
We need like a sorority and a secret handshake or something... and, and we could hold reunions and count how many less of us are left each year, and have a betting-pool... it could be a whole thing!
  

       ...had to look up "recidivism"   

       I'm not sure I understand your last sentence.   

       From what I've seen the criminal mind forms early in life, (other than sociopathicism which starts early too but for different reasons I don't understand).
Kids make the best mules since they're mostly overlooked, can be trained, and their criminal record gets expunged before adulthood, so they are preyed upon by the ass-wipes of the world.
Entry level small crime and gang life looks like a pretty good deal from a street-kid perspective.
...and as long as you can choke down your gag-reflex and suck in a new crop before your own drinking age kicks in you can set up your own little tweeny network.
So the cycle perpetuates.
  

       That needs to stop.   

       If it takes some cruelty then so be it.
Caning seems to work pretty well in some countries but I know first hand that pain used as a teaching device can backfire.
  

       Helplessness on the other hand causes no physical pain and costs very little to society compared with incarceration.
There need be no jail, guards or solitary confinement as the perpetrator is free to associate with all of their old crowd as long as the helmet remains untampered with... and if they can trust their old 'friends' enough to not take advantage of their new temporary status on the totem pole.
  

       Of course safe houses would be provided for the few hard-asses who deigned to need protection while in their new victim-state, but I think that there would be much reflection on previous roles in civilized society.   

       My last sentence was just a bad summary of the idea up to date. I didn't envisage people wearing the things all the time, and I thought that when they did come in to spend say a week inside the world of the Rift, that this week would be a week in Hell. At the end of the week, off with the Rift, on with the tracking tag, and out you go into the world. Visits to the authorities during the periods between punishments would be "friendly". Those who want help would be able to find help. So that's the periodical brutality I was on about.   

       Good point about the hazards of using pain to condition people. The way I would fit this into my "On-Off" proposal is to strictly specify that the sessions in Hell are for punishment, only - for putting others off trying the same stunt, rather than for correcting the offender. The "jailers" would have to make very sure the offender knew that no conditioning was intended, that the target of the operation was "the kids out there", and that any hope of somehow negotiating some mercy was futile.   

       So there needs not only to be a clear, sharp separation between the ways in which an improved system deals with people; but the perp needs to know how it works, too - that deterrence is aimed at others, not him. As far as he's concerned, all that's wanted is to restrict his capacity to do harm, and to offer help with becoming a decent human being, if that's what he wants.   

       Yes, and then thanks for the reminder that there are rough neighbourhoods. My mother grew up in those, but I grew up in (and still live in) suburbia. None of the crimes mentioned took place in an old-style tough neighbourhood. They took place in hick towns, out in suburbs (most of them), and on farms, (and in the case of the woman whose dogs I looked after, in quite a fancy suburb). In rough neighbourhoods it gets worse, and those of us whining about how suburbia has gone downhill need reminding of that. Suburbia as a place people run away to, serves only to sweep the dust under the carpet.   

       But anyway, now I need to go and reflect on what I think about simply using the Oculus Rift as a long-term helplessness-producing device. Certainly just from the point of view of achieving the practically useful aspects of imprisonment on the perp, it looks promising.
skoomphemph, Mar 19 2014
  


 

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