Comments on: Virtual insanity http://mindhacks.com/2007/05/29/virtual-insanity-2/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Mon, 20 May 2013 15:51:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Anonymous http://mindhacks.com/2007/05/29/virtual-insanity-2/#comment-18620 Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:15:24 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/virtual-insanity-2/#comment-18620 I had an odd experience in SL that appears to be part of a larger project of involuntary human subjects research. The SL part appeared to include various types of priming – priming to believe a certain type of stalker situation in RL, and worse things. I reported the “stalkers” in SL to no avail, but with time began to understand what they were doing in terms of their tactics. This appears to be a simulation of psychosis but in a much different way – using threats posted elsewhere, damages to my car, hacking, etc. to create a situation in which I would resort to the primed information (“organized stalking” etc.)

I saw conversational NLP tactics, anchoring, priming with similarities to people I know in real life (indicating I was a mark from the beginning), and worse – priming for Fregoli’s syndrome. That one never transferred to real life. The idea of a Fregoli delusion on the internet is almost laughable though, since it’s hard to know who is on the other end of the communications.

I’m glad that there are psychologists and neuroscience people who try to make things better for others. But the fact that any group could be involved in something this disgusting is an indication that those professions need a serious ethics overhaul. Their objectives don’t merit this type of crime.

]]>