From: edlantz@aol.com (Edlantz) Subject: Re: TECH: Virtual worlds with alternative physics and/or Date: 10 Apr 1996 21:39:38 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Regarding the last post of Jorge Alvoeiro : Jorge, we are obviously at odds on this issue. I'm an engineer, not a psychologist. However, I am in posession of an excellent experimental facility for cognitive research (my brain). Indeed, I am drawing many of my conclusions from personal experience. Feel free to contradict me with experimental results where appropriate... - Ed You wrote (snip, snip): >> >>Why not represent tactile information >> aurally? Or represent aural information visually? If we constrain >> ourselves too rigidly to an accurate representation of our physical >> reality, we are missing out on one of the primary advantages of >> virtual worlds... the transcendence of physical limitations. - Ed > We cannot do what you have suggested because my, your and every other >people's brain is not prepared for switching modalities. We, humans, >have developed through thousands of years to reach a level of cortical >activity which is pre-programmed for Earth physical laws. Sorry but >there is nothing you can do, unless you move into another planet and >after a few generations one switch channels. - Jorge I suppose that I have more faith in the ability of humans to re-adapt to alternate realities than you. I see television as a good example of re-adaptation. That a few hundred thousand points of light can represent another reality is a radical re-adaptation from Neanderthal man, is it not? Granted it did take many generations of gradual improvements in graphical representation. But what about adaptation to microgravity in space or reduced gravity on the moon? What about adaptation to a typewriter or keyboard? Or driving an exoskeleton (an auto)? These adaptations to "unnatural" situations can happen very rapidly. - Ed >What one can do is to >understand the outside stimulus and process it according to what one >already knows and learn from that stimulus if is new to us. But, >(there is always a but) one has always to revert to Earth physical >laws. - Jorge Absolutely, one cannot make TOO radical a leap without causing confusion. Someone once said that order-of-magnitude improvements in reasoning can be obtained by transforming unfamiliar situations into familiar ones... - Ed >...No, is not!!! VE is not akin to dreaming (snip) >...when one is 'flying' in a dream one still does it >using earth physical laws. - Jorge not me!!! >...Our brain is wired in such way which would only 'produce' >sensory output in the same way as it processes. When one is in a >sensory deprivation tank one still gets physics illusions. The system >does not know otherwise. - Jorge You are dead wrong here. Dreams and hallucinations are products of our imagination, not our senses. They are NOT subject to physics. People on LSD, for instance, have reported tasting or hearing colours, radical distortions of time, floating or out-of-body experiences, "seeing" with their entire body, etc. Dreaming, meditation, hallucination, imagination... these inner activities are not directly limited by physical constraints. Granted, some of these experiences may be too much for the mind to handle. But rapid adaptation is possible, I believe. - Ed >Some time ago someone here said that >the ultimate VE site is the 'holodeck' of 'Star Trek'. This creates >physical objects which are made of VR holograms with shaped force >fields in order to have a 'real' interactive/immersive VE. There is >some work to be done in this area but this sort of situation may be >more akin to what a virtual environment should be like. 'Johnny >Mnemonic' may be too far fetch for earth human beings. - Jorge There are undoubtedly those, such as yourself, who would prefer a straight, 1:1, linear representation of reality like a holodeck. Then there are those such as myself who, like Dante Alighieri, would rather delve through hell, purgatory, and paradise as created by a mentally unstable VE artist. To each his own, I suppose. But my original point was that imaginative VE's will violate physical laws (in ways that we can understand) to achieve utilitarian goals. I stand by my original hypothesis: >> I hypothesize that that the mind can readily adapt to and may even prefer >> interfaces which utilize non-physical/non-ordinary analogues and metaphors >> provided they: >> 1) behave consistently or repeatably >> 2) have simple rules which can be readily discovered through >> experimentation >> 3) achieve a desired result in a manner which is more direct than other >> means Cheers, Ed 0 0 0 0 0 Ed Lantz 0 0 Spitz, Inc. 0 0 P.O. Box 198 0 0 Chadds Ford, PA 19317 0 0 tel: (610) 459-5200 x27 0 0 fax: (610) 459-3830 0 0 email: edlantz@aol.com 0 0 www.libertynet.org:80/~spitz 0 0 0 * Spitz: fifty years of visual immersion *