Posted on 07/12/2013 7:29:20 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
STANFORD, Calif. -- Inside a lab on the Stanford University campus here, students experienced what it might feel like to be a cow.
They donned a virtual reality helmet and walked on hands and feet while in a virtual mirror they saw themselves as bovine. As the animal was jabbed with an electrical prod, a lab worker poked a volunteer's side with a sticklike device. The ground shook to simulate the prod's vibrations. The cow at the end was led toward a slaughterhouse.
Participants then recorded what they ate for the next week. The study sought to uncover whether temporarily "becoming" a cow prompted reduced meat consumption.
The motivation wasn't to make people vegetarians, said Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. But the project hoped to uncover whether virtual reality could alter behaviors that tax the environment and contribute to climate change.
"If somebody becomes an animal, do they gain empathy for that animal and think about its plight?" Bailenson asked. "In this case, empathy toward the animal also coincides with an environmental benefit, which is that [not eating] animals consumes less energy."
It's one of several environment-related experiments Bailenson is conducting in the lab, all tailored toward revealing whether there are new ways to encourage environmental preservation. Volunteers also have virtually chopped down a tree, a study aimed at examining attitudes toward paper use. Others took a virtual reality shower while eating lumps of coal -- literally consuming it -- to gain insight into how much was needed to heat the water.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
Right. Pass the tri-tip, please!
Moo! Soothing engine warmth! |
That’s hilarious.
When I was much, much younger I ask a girl out. Years later I saw her and she had turned into a cow.
I went out with nice girl, she was driving. I didn’t find out she was a witch until she turned into a motel.
:^}
Oh. Shiite. Just. PLAIN SHIITE. The world is just plain shot to Hell.
Put them on the surface of the sun to understand global warming. If they live, put them in antarctica to understand global cooling. Don’t thank me; I have advanced degrees so I can think of this stuff.
So what would happen if they buried you up to your neck in dirt for a couple months, yanked you out of the ground by the hair, diced you, and threw you into boiling water?
Would we then weep for the lowly carrot?
There are a lot of good posts in this thread but yours is the one that made me choke on my Swiss chocolate.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Instead of wondering, why don’t people just ask Pasiphaë?
Maybe
Ooooh, that’s a riot!
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