How do you feel about Video game Violence?

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ktz
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by ktz »

To Steve, to answer your kind of hilarious question about the inducement of bad parenting via cogent argument, I think the confidence a kid obtains in his or her own intellectual faculties from winning an argument like that probably outweighs the harms of experiencing violence in videogames. Plus you have shifted the onus onto them to maintain that these videogames have no negative impacts on their attitudes and schoolwork. Like I mentioned, there's only a 1% chance of the average individual experiencing a psychotic disorder in their lifetime, so unless you have a history of schizophrenia in your family there's probably a 99% chance that playing violent videogames themselves will be harmless throughout their lifetime.

Still, I encourage you to keep tabs on the possibility of more insidious potential harms -- e.g. desensitization to dopamine addiction, problems setting limits and impacts on grades, and especially the company they keep in these kinds of games, as the damage that can be done to a kid by spending too much time with pot-smoking, 4chan-going bad influences they may meet while gaming can do nontrivial harm to a kid's mind in the long term. You can also serve as a force to encourage more wholesome games like the Professor Layton series, Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, and... going outside and playing sports. All of which avoid the potential subconscious harms of imagining running around shooting people in the face.
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by Alias »

Why is anyone still pretending that American - or any "developed" - country today isn't about violence? Military confrontation with other nations, other cultures, other powers; fear and loathing of the victims of change as they flee the scenes of international violence; violent crime, violent economy, violent industry, the violent collateral damage of resource extraction and the transport of goods; systemic violence against women, minorities, immigrants, manual labourers, prison inmates, the poor, the mentally ill; terror, war on terror, drug trafficking, war on drugs, human trafficking, war on illegal immigration; organ-legging, sabotage, espionage, rendition, enhanced interrogation, mass protest, crowd control, robberies and police raids, precision military strikes and black ops, vehicular violence, gun worship, and a very public armed temper tantrum by an individual citizen pretty much every day. https://www.vox.com/2018/9/20/17882888/ ... n-maryland

Do mass entertainments and games cause violence? Of course not. Entertainments reflect the climate of their times. They illustrate what a society values, how it operates and how artists see it. Entertainments inure the population against the psychological effects of their culture by normalizing its violence; games prepare the next generation to participate in their culture by teaching the necessary skills. The entertainments amplify the culture and games help to perpetuate it.
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ktz
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by ktz »

Alias wrote: November 24th, 2018, 12:06 pm Why is anyone still pretending that American - or any "developed" - country today isn't about violence? Military confrontation with other nations, other cultures, other powers; fear and loathing of the victims of change as they flee the scenes of international violence; violent crime, violent economy, violent industry, the violent collateral damage of resource extraction and the transport of goods; systemic violence against women, minorities, immigrants, manual labourers, prison inmates, the poor, the mentally ill; terror, war on terror, drug trafficking, war on drugs, human trafficking, war on illegal immigration; organ-legging, sabotage, espionage, rendition, enhanced interrogation, mass protest, crowd control, robberies and police raids, precision military strikes and black ops, vehicular violence, gun worship, and a very public armed temper tantrum by an individual citizen pretty much every day. https://www.vox.com/2018/9/20/17882888/ ... n-maryland

Do mass entertainments and games cause violence? Of course not. Entertainments reflect the climate of their times. They illustrate what a society values, how it operates and how artists see it. Entertainments inure the population against the psychological effects of their culture by normalizing its violence; games prepare the next generation to participate in their culture by teaching the necessary skills. The entertainments amplify the culture and games help to perpetuate it.
That's an interesting perspective that I hadn't considered. Reminds me a bit of Chomsky and some of his ideas from Manufacturing Consent. Back when I used to play a lot of video games, you do definitely see a sort of emotional desensitization towards violence among adolescents and high level players in those kinds of games.

I might be inclined to disagree that any developed country today is necessarily "about violence" -- instead viewing the kind of violence you describe as an vestigial inertia from an even more violent past. At the least we can probably agree that such violence is not aspirational to anyone besides those who benefit from this kind of systematic exploitation of the weak. At least if the Twitter outrage culture is to be believed.
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Eduk
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by Eduk »

it certainly makes me sad that as a society we invest so much economic and mental resources in to this particular spectrum of imagination. We don't want to experience killing and war in real life, so why allow children to imagine doing so for hours at a time?
There are many games out there which don't involve killing and war.
Why is there not a greater emphasis on creating compelling educational videogames that teach individuals how to perform surgery, or play musical instruments[/quote
I think because there are better ways to learn these things.
Why as a society settle for games that appeal only to the basest desires of our limbic system?
I certainly agree there are some major quality control issues with computer games as a whole.
Also, I feel like it is important to consider the edge cases before declaring with certainty that violent video games are without harm.
Tough one this. You have to show that the game not only contributed but that by removing games something else wouldn't have. I have seen no such studies and I can see no logical argument. People are just frightened of games, music, films, spiders, water etc etc.
Yet most seem perfectly willing to subject the entire population of airport travellers to screening procedures for this relatively minute risk.
The threat of terrorism has been blown out of all proportion and scared people.
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by Alias »

ktz wrote: November 24th, 2018, 1:24 pm I might be inclined to disagree that any developed country today is necessarily "about violence" -- instead viewing the kind of violence you describe as an vestigial inertia from an even more violent past.
vestigial inertia
It's not an appendix that flares up once in while but is mostly okay, and it's not a matter of having neglected to change old administrative systems.
True, there hasn't been a world war lately, but the one they're gearing up for is a dilly. I mean literally gearing up for: sinking vast amounts of resources into the technology of human extinction (and incidentally making pots of profit on pre-hardening the next cohort of recruits); resources that could be directed toward mitigating the other mass extinction coming at as with headlights blazing, and for The Leader of the Free World, it's more urgent to send five armed soldiers to meet each barefoot, hungry child threatening to "invade" his southern border. One European nation after another elects racist, fascist parties to government.
At the least we can probably agree that such violence is not aspirational to anyone besides those who benefit from this kind of systematic exploitation of the weak. At least if the Twitter outrage culture is to be believed.
Outrage is part of the violent culture. Getting mad is easier than fixing anything; punishing a bully is easier than changing a climate that breeds bullies. The weak must aspire to a capability for self-defence, or hire thugs to protect them; exploitation is the measure of success: the young need to grow a pair - big, hard ones - if they're to survive.
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ktz
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by ktz »

Alias wrote: November 24th, 2018, 7:37 pm
ktz wrote: November 24th, 2018, 1:24 pm I might be inclined to disagree that any developed country today is necessarily "about violence" -- instead viewing the kind of violence you describe as an vestigial inertia from an even more violent past.
vestigial inertia
It's not an appendix that flares up once in while but is mostly okay, and it's not a matter of having neglected to change old administrative systems.
True, there hasn't been a world war lately, but the one they're gearing up for is a dilly. I mean literally gearing up for: sinking vast amounts of resources into the technology of human extinction (and incidentally making pots of profit on pre-hardening the next cohort of recruits); resources that could be directed toward mitigating the other mass extinction coming at as with headlights blazing, and for The Leader of the Free World, it's more urgent to send five armed soldiers to meet each barefoot, hungry child threatening to "invade" his southern border. One European nation after another elects racist, fascist parties to government.
At the least we can probably agree that such violence is not aspirational to anyone besides those who benefit from this kind of systematic exploitation of the weak. At least if the Twitter outrage culture is to be believed.
Outrage is part of the violent culture. Getting mad is easier than fixing anything; punishing a bully is easier than changing a climate that breeds bullies. The weak must aspire to a capability for self-defence, or hire thugs to protect them; exploitation is the measure of success: the young need to grow a pair - big, hard ones - if they're to survive.
I appreciate your contribution to this discussion and for providing me a new interesting perspective on these ideas. I have my own suspicions that I try to keep suppressed that our modern world is perhaps heading towards some kind of unfortunate bottlenecking event which will culminate in a sort of Cambrian explosion of violence and suffering within the twenty-first century.

Do you think, assuming hypothetically for the moment the most optimistic case, that any action can be taken to improve this situation you describe at any scale?
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by Alias »

Do you think, assuming hypothetically for the moment the most optimistic case, that any action can be taken to improve this situation you describe at any scale?
By whom? I can envision intelligent, decisive collective action that might save our asses, and I'm far from alone. But people like me never have any power, and only rarely the ears of anyone in power.
The average voter could maybe wake up and hold their representatives to the principles of their constitution; some pols might cave and do as their constituents demand, rather than as their party dictates. Groups, even quite large, organized ones, could march, demonstrate, strike and protest, but they'd only suffer physical damage: entrenched power controls formidable legal violence. The political options are limited, given the degree of corruption of democratic process. Unfortunately, so many of the citizens have already been bombed back to the stone age - I mean, dumbed down, propagandized, inured to violence, racked with anxiety, riled up to unthinking rage* - that the vote could still go either way. Did you see how close the US [no-brainer] midterms were? France, Germany, Holland, Denmark - countries that have made such impressive strides toward adult humanity since the second world war - reverting to medieval mentality for fear of Islam .... while the Muslim nations, that have made such impressive strides toward enlightenment since WWII are also sinking back into medieval mentality for fear of the west... Economies flounder because capitalism is self-consuming, but we keep them afloat by consuming more, wasting more, blowing up more ****...
*This particular ape is imaginative. And aggressive. When things go bump in the night, it conjures up choirs of bogeymen and herds of spooks. Its first instinctive reaction is to kill whatever frightens it. Any manipulator can so easily scare them and then turn their fear to rage.

No, I don't think so. I think the cycle will have to play out, as all the previous cycles have.
Between disasters, there is usually a lull: peace, prosperity and progress. Since the cycles have been compressed with population density and technology, the next lull should come just short of 2100 and last about 40 years.
barata
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by barata »

i admit it that your post is really sound asuming....hehe
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by Sy Borg »

It's a bit like being crew on the Titanic. Everyone can see the iceberg ahead but the vessel has too much momentum to stop or turn so we just watch it plough into the ice as if in slow motion.
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by Alias »

I had a minor car accident once, shortly after I started driving. I had to turn off a busy highway, into a narrow driveway. I slowed down... not quite enough, not quite soon enough. I saw the mailbox, fencepost and ditch coming at me, knew exactly what the damage would be - front bumper and fender bent all to ratshards, left headlight smashed; no injury to self - at least, not till my father saw it - knew exactly what I had done wrong. All in excruciating detail, in that long, long one second before impact. That's how I've been seeing our civilization since 1976 - a very long second.

I was wrong about only one thing on that occasion. Rather than being angry, my father was distressed and contrite: he had neglected to fix the speedometer and felt my close call was his fault. I never dared admit that I'd forgotten to look at the speedometer. See, it was his fault, for sending an inexperienced kid out on a fast highway, alone - as well as mine, for being overconfident. That's hoomons for you.
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

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The government shouldn't interfere in video game censorship. That is up to the kids and their guardians only.
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ktz
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by ktz »

Eduk wrote: November 24th, 2018, 5:49 pm
it certainly makes me sad that as a society we invest so much economic and mental resources in to this particular spectrum of imagination. We don't want to experience killing and war in real life, so why allow children to imagine doing so for hours at a time?
There are many games out there which don't involve killing and war.
Here's a list of the most watched games on the Twitch streaming platform in 2018, in millions of hours viewed:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/507 ... rs-viewed/

Sure, there are plenty of fun games that don't involve killing and war. None of them cracked the top ten in streamer popularity last year. Although all the games listed besides "Just Chatting" simulate killing in some form, more than 200 million hours were devoted to Fortnite, Call of Duty, Counterstrike, and PUBG where killing is both the primary purpose of the game and executed in precise graphic representations of humans with guns shooting each other.

I'm not saying that inexorable logical conclusion is a prescriptive banning of all violence in video games. I'm just expressing a sadness in the way we as a society choose to encourage our kids to spend their time and follow their basest desires, through advertising etc.
Why is there not a greater emphasis on creating compelling educational videogames that teach individuals how to perform surgery, or play musical instruments
I think because there are better ways to learn these things.

I certainly agree there are some major quality control issues with computer games as a whole.

Tough one this. You have to show that the game not only contributed but that by removing games something else wouldn't have. I have seen no such studies and I can see no logical argument. People are just frightened of games, music, films, spiders, water etc etc.

The threat of terrorism has been blown out of all proportion and scared people.
Columbine happened before 9/11, and I believe the conversation first came into full force there. The thing is, the availability of graphic-intensive killing simulators is a wholly new phenomenon in human existence. No previous generation had the ease of access to the visceral and addicting degree of entertainment now available to adolescents. Like many other technological adaptations, we are essentially running an experiment with no control scenario. There may be long-tail effects that we won't know until it is too late.
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Eduk
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by Eduk »

Sure, there are plenty of fun games that don't involve killing and war. None of them cracked the top ten in streamer popularity last year.
While I agree that a large and perhaps disproportionate number of the most watched games on twitter are the first person shooters such as Fortnite, PUBG etc you are mischaracterising a number of the remaining games. It is like saying that fantasy novels involve killing and war and therefore they are bad. Or that horror movies involve killing so they are bad. Hearthstone is a card game. It is as offensive as D&D.
Sadly if you look at any of the most popular charts in movies, tv or music you will find disappointment. Again what you have to show is that games are somehow different.
I just think you have to have a bit of nuance.
the availability of graphic-intensive killing simulators
Mario involves 'killing' enemies by jumping on their heads in a war with the evil Bowser. Mario is nothing like actual killing or actual war. PUBG with its 'realism' is nothing like actual killing or actual war. Again if I read the battle at the end of the Hobbit am I prepping myself for armed conflict?
Columbine happened before 9/11, and I believe the conversation first came into full force there.
Yes there was a lot of nonsensical fear mongering, there is still is.
No previous generation had the ease of access to the visceral and addicting degree of entertainment now available to adolescents. Like many other technological adaptations, we are essentially running an experiment with no control scenario. There may be long-tail effects that we won't know until it is too late.
This is true. Like many other technological advances. Thus far the world has continued to turn. There are myriad examples of the harm of games and myriad examples of the lack of harm of games.
Actually this argument reminds me of another one I heard a while ago. The argument was the football is evil because of hooliganism. Now we all agree there are hooligans. We all agree they are detrimental. But I didn't agree that football created them, there is no causal link.
Unknown means unknown.
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by Alias »

ktz wrote: December 4th, 2018, 10:04 am I'm not saying that inexorable logical conclusion is a prescriptive banning of all violence in video games.
How could a government do that, while counting on the electorate's acceptance of its own real-world atrocities?
Anyway, that kind of piecemeal intervention doesn't work.
Video games are part of the fabric of the culture: you can't remove one strand and expect the fabric to change. This killing-centered problem solving goes all the way back through history - of the whole world. In the USA, it's not only the staple of song, legend and mass entertainment, but also enshrined as a tenet of faith: "The way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Too bad the bystanders and collateral damage can't tell the good guys and bad guys apart, since they all wear camo, not cowboy hats.
Trouble is, the good and bad guys can't tell themselves apart, because the anti-hero (outlaw, mobster, street gang, biker) goes quite a long way back in popular fiction. The idea is merely an idea - one-dimensional. Add a voice; it becomes song or legend. The notion of 'frontier justice' sticks in the mind, is then reinforced by reading stories of retribution (the reader identifies with a character - now his imagination is engaged) then the fantasy is reinforced and supplied with graphic imagery by movies, which are daily fleshed out by prime time television: already, there is a whole coherent ethos lodged in the viewer's psyche - even if he lives it only vicariously. Add a video game, where he can translate that fantasy into action, and he's only one thin layer of reality away from enacting the fantasy. If the subjects are impressionable youth in hormonal flux, some of them will certainly act out. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/02/us/schoo ... index.html
That's just the schools; doesn't include churches, concerts and restaurants.

Of course, the subjects are not all adolescents: more and more adults spend more and more time gaming, even to the point of addiction.
That's not to say they all play violent games, or learn violent methods - after all, there is also a surge in on-line gambling, for example, and interactive games that supply lonely people with a virtual community. It's quite probable that many of the players use games as an escape, or to channel their frustration: as a substitute for lashing out at real people. One might question how long such a displacement activity will suffice before the subject craves actualization, but there are no reliable stats.
I'm just expressing a sadness in the way we as a society choose to encourage our kids to spend their time and follow their basest desires, through advertising etc.
The business of America is business. Addictive substances are the most lucrative products.
The most effective way to keep a market growing is to gradually increase the dosage of whatever - sugar, salt, fat, alcohol, nicotine, morphine, adrenaline, testosterone, dopamine - to keep the customer needing more. The economy keeps needing more revenue, while producing less tangible goods, so it's got to depend on sports, entertainments, self-decoration and money-changing: if you took violent video games off the market, the US economy might actually collapse.

When the interests of business and government coincide, and most of the people either don't notice or don't mind, no real change can take place; no token gestures will make any difference at all.
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Re: How do you feel about Video game Violence?

Post by Eduk »

Also some people play computer games because they like to. Furthermore some people read fiction because they like to.
Add a video game, where he can translate that fantasy into action, and he's only one thin layer of reality away from enacting the fantasy.
Because statistically the murder rate has gone up since the invention of computer games and there is a direct logically causal link?
It's like saying I am one short step from interdimensional travel because I watched Rick and Morty and then played the video game.
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