Virtual Memory Allocation
I love it when smells and tastes trigger memories long buried in my brain. Sometimes these relationships can be pretty random.
The taste of chokecherry jelly = flashbacks of me of playing in the work room in my old house.
Burning plastic = flashbacks of sitting on shag carpet playing Link.
Running outside in the fall = flashbacks of Skyway City (From City of Heroes)
That last one is different because it is a memory of a virtual place. You'd think that somehow my brain would treat it differently. But no... Memories of the digital world are treated exactly like any other. For some reason this only started happening when games switched to 3d. Perhaps something about our brains is wired to memorize 3d spatial information in a different way, even if it is virtual. How easily fooled we are!
As videogames become more immerse they will require the use of more subconscious skills that have been handed down to us by evolution. It started with basic hand eye coordination and basic competition. (Pong) Then came memory, intuition, logic, problem solving. Soon after came RPGs with character development thus tapping into our emotions. Things went 3d and started tapping into our brain's ability to visualize, memorize and interpret 3d environments. Sound designers began tapping into our brain's ability unconsciously model 3D directionality.
With the invention of MMORPGs the complexities of interpersonal relationships, and group dynamic were added to the equation.
Games are tapping into some pretty fundamental elements of the human mind. I used to laugh when a videogame caused my body to release an adrenaline boost, like somehow it will help my virtual avatar dodge the next attack. Now I wonder why my mind is so easily fooled by flashing lights and sounds...
What other evolutionary gifts are left for game designers to tap into?
Taste?
Spacial Orientation and the Inner ear?
Smell?
Force Feedback (Although this is currently being worked on)
These questions bring me to the next section of this article.
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All this Richard Dawkin's stuff has been very interesting. The Internet chugs along as the religious right and the liberal left do battle via forum, news site, podcast and youtube video. Following the debate has been great for me because it allows me to see the state of the art in Science vs Religion.
Yesterday night I was listening to another Dawkin's lecture and he started talking about his Middle World argument. (Not Middle Earth!) The middle world argument comes into play when discussing the ability of humans to grasp things beyond their current sensors. What is beyond our senses usually stuff that is fast, big, small or complicated. Middle World is the world we can see where things are slow, simple and medium sized.
I was excited when he started talking about this argument because I came up with exactly the same thing while writing a philosophy paper in the last year of my undergrad. Coming up with something on your own and finding out that somebody famous has already done it can be disappointing. However, I take comfort in the fact that if I keep learning and working things out on my own, perhaps I'll come up with something new.
posted by Inspired Reality @ 7:40 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I very much like the work of Dawkins. I think that he poignantly addresses the fallacies of religion. His middle world theory is definately intriguing, however I have the following correction to posit, which I had for you as well when I read your paper:
To suggest that the human window with which we process reality is narrow because it doesn't include the very big, the very small, or the very complex, is only partially true. What needs to be realized is that "very big", "very small", "very complex", are all terms we use in our current understanding. If I proposed something that "widened the slit in the burka" and described it as "very big", "very small", or "very complex", you would form an understanding of it no greater than could ever have been acheived for as long as those terms have existed.
For us to truly be receptive to the possibilities of reality, we need to be open to thinking in terms that are as new as the discoveries we can make. If we reduce possibility, and experience thereof, to the mere qualification (very) of an understanding we already have (big), then the boundaries of our middle world remain tangible.
The expansion of my understanding begins when I search my being for experiences I cannot define.
-D
I'm pretty sure I addressed that issue in my essay regarding identity theory and the scientific method.
I'll have to find it. Not having included that much in my paper, you are right.
Interesting. Drop me an email if you find the argument with which you may have addressed the issue. I suppose posting it here could allow us to further the discussion for those who may also be reading, although for such a hot topic the bandwagon seems to consist of just us two.
Also, the thought just struck me, this entire business of the middle world hypothesis is very much like the discussion of the conceptual framework we had ages before our discussion of materialism. Clearly the middle world is a conceptual framework (as created, and limited, by science). It's refinement, however, has to do with whether people fall into a closed-belief trap system or not. The idea I postulated earlier suggests that the inclination to describe possibility through qualification of current understanding is very much characteristic of a closed-belief trap system.
To indeed further our understanding of the world, we must first open our minds to possibility and then actively search for that which we cannot define. This, interestingly enough, was the underlying premise for a paper I wrote in October of 2004. In my "World Religions" course, we were tasked with creating a religion that exhibited a number of absurd characteristics that fit the criteria used in identifying a religion (an example question was "What is the deity's (or dieties') gender (if any)?"). Me being the non-conformist apostate I was, decided to try something different. I created a religion that had no deity at all, and was centered around the power of peoples' dreams. The idea was that by exploring the boundless possibilities in the dream world (I mean, who hasn't taught themselves how to fly in their dreams?) you could harness the power of your own dreams and create a permanent shell for your consciousness when your body dies.
What I suggest now is that we don't limit our exploration of possibility simply to the dream world. Why not harness the exploration of possibility, in ways outside of our conceptual framework, to further our understanding of the world we experience now?
The only thing I wish I had changed about my paper was the name of the religion, "Quies Ultimum".. ugh.. But, despite such a wretched title and the ubiquitous use of latin terminology in a vain attempt to make things more "mysterious", the prof did ask for her own personal copy of the paper, to use in future lectures, for which she gave me an A+..
.. a possibility I had previously explored.
-D
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