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Computer Characters Tortured for Science
Rob Carr writes "Considered unethical to ever perform again with humans, researcher Mel Slater recreated the Milgram experiment in a immersive virtual environment. Subjects (some of whom could see and hear the computerized woman, others who were only able to read text messages from her) were told that they were interacting with a computer character and told to give increasingly powerful electric shocks when wrong answers were given or the 'woman' took too long to respond. The computer program would correspondingly complain and beg as the 'shocks' were ramped up, falling apparently unconscious before the last shock. The skin conductance and electrocardiograms of the subjects were monitored. Even though the subjects knew they were only 'shocking' a computer program, their bodies reacted with increased stress responses. Several of the ones who could see and hear the woman stopped before reaching the 'lethal' voltage, and about half considered stopping the study. The full results of the experimental report can be read online at PLoS One. Already, some (like William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute) are asking whether even this sanitized experiment is ethical."
I'm sorry, but that is just an insulting statement. How could a Christian have more ethics than average? Christians strive to be like a god which tortures the majority of the human race in eternal hellfire. By modern ethical standards, that is evil.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I'm gunna go out on a limb here and suggest that your parents got divorced at an early age and your mother got full custody right?
Are you an accountant now? Do you do tax audits?
How we know is more important than what we know.
You spelled "indelible" wrong. Get a dictionary you hack. Did you even do any research before writing your post? No, you are just citing what you think is correct. The fact is, all soldiers that kill someone are happy with it. Nobody ever has a problem with that at all. Nobody has even thought to suggest that there was something wrong with asking someone else to kill the enemy. It's just the way things are. Oh, and the last 9 sentences of this paragraph are only added because slashdot wouldn't let me submit just one sentence. You could have used an easier to spell word such as "unforgettable" or "memorable".