Introduction to Virtual Reality
There is considerable enthusiasm for technologies that allow people to simulate an engagement with a physical world. Virtual Reality (VR) is claimed to remodel education, therapy, marketing, fitness, video games, and lots of other industries. Some consider it will make us higher people by increasing empathy towards groups akin to refugees, the homeless, and people with physical and mental impairments.
The Empathy Machine
Chris Milk puts it in his TED talk, VR is "the last word empathy machine." Perhaps it could actually be utilized to make us care about—and help—those in need. In a recent New York City fundraiser by the International Rescue Committee, people lined up to make use of headsets that allow them experience the physical environment of a refugee camp in Lebanon. The executive producer of the IRC quotes, "We cannot bring donors or people to the sector, but we bring the sector to [them.] That’s what’s so great about VR; that is what makes it, I believe, such a crucial tool for charities."
Simulations and Experiments
Another exhibit in Washington, arrange by Médecins Sans Frontières, took a lower-tech approach. They had participants climb onto rafts (on dry land) and undergo a series of ordeals, having to provide up their possession one after the other until they ended up, empty-handed, in front of faux refugee camps. At Stanford, there are ongoing experiments with simulations that depict the strategy of getting evicted and becoming homeless. And there have long been disability simulations, by which participants sit in wheelchairs, or get blindfolded, or take heed to intrusive sounds in order to simulate schizophrenia.
Limitations of Virtual Reality
Although all of those simulations have an unpleasant component, they’re engaging—you don’t must coerce people to make use of them; they may line as much as try them out. However, VR is much from the moral game changer that some make it out to be. In part, it’s because it’s so focused on creating empathy, and empathy is a poor guide to charitable giving. Who we feel empathy for is strongly influenced by irrelevant aspects akin to race and attractiveness and similarity, and our empathy often directs us within the mistaken direction.
The Problem with Simulations
The problem is that these experiences aren’t fundamentally concerning the immediate physical environments. The awfulness of the refugee experience isn’t concerning the sights and sounds of a refugee camp; it has more to do with the fear and anxiety of getting to flee your country and relocate yourself in an odd land. Homeless individuals are often physically unwell, sometimes mentally unwell, with real anxieties about their future. You can’t tap into that feeling by putting a helmet in your head.
Safety and Control
One specific limitation of VR involves safety and control. During the debates over the interrogation practices of the United States through the Iraq war, some adventurous journalists and public figures asked to be waterboarded, to see what it was like. They typically reported that it was awful. But the truth is their experience fell far wanting how terrible actual waterboarding is, because a part of what makes waterboarding so bad is that you simply get it if you don’t want it, by individuals who won’t stop if you ask them to.
Duration and Habituation
Then there may be duration. It’s not hard to check out certain short-term experiences, akin to coping with a crying baby for a couple of minutes, sitting alone in a closet, or having strangers gawk at you on the road. But you may’t extrapolate from these to learn what it’s prefer to be a single parent, a prisoner in solitary confinement, or a famous movie star. Some experiences are effective within the short-term, but wear you down over time. Solitary confinement is an obvious example here.
The Better Alternative
Fortunately, there may be a greater version of VR that avoids a few of these problems. Affordable, durable, and sufficiently small to carry in a single hand, these devices will let you simulate not only the physical environment of people, but in addition their psychological experiences, and may do that for multiple people, moving forward and backward in time. They enable you to experience probably the most private experiences of others, each by triggering your personal memories and by extending your imagination in radical ways. These “empathy machines” are books, in fact—as in novels and journalism and autobiography.
Conclusion
When it involves simulating physical experiences, books usually are not as powerful as certain alternatives. But in relation to understanding the lives of others, nothing else comes close. Books offer us a novel opportunity to experience the world from one other person’s perspective, to know their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. While VR could have its limitations, books have the ability to move us to different worlds, to make us feel empathy and compassion, and to broaden our understanding of the human experience.
