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Games and Music, the New Book Burning
It seems that a Newport News, VA pastor finally got around to reading Fahrenheit 451 and has decided that it was a good idea. Despite several studies claiming the contrary, Rev. Richard Patrick is blaming violent video games and music for crimes that he say has affected 90% of his congregation in one way or another.
It's worth clicking through to this interview which is linked in tfa. It's not as bad as they are making it out to be, in my opinion. He talks a lot about reasons for the problems and doesn't talk about video games that I could tell. The closest was this question and answer:
Q: How significant a problem do you believe violent video games and violent rap music is?
A: It has a tremendous influence on young people and violence. That's basically all they see. Most of them try to emulate what they see, when in reality, the people they see don't even live in those communities. Some of the rappers they see on TV portraying crime don't live in the urban areas - they live in the suburbs somewhere. It's all a facade.
It sounds to me like he is responding to the rap music part of the question and never deals directly with the video game part. But ultimately that doesn't even matter. If people want to voluntarily burn their own property - more power to them. Where I live we call that freedom of speach.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
See above
and has every right in the world to burn whatever he wants that is his in order to make a point.
I think we set the webserver at gamepolitics.com up in smoke as well...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
... think of what burning all that plastic will do to the environment!
As long as we always have SOMETHING or SOMEONE to blame, we never have to be responsible for our own actions.
Slashdot made me do it!
Yes, yes, it's all music and games fault, after all, before music and games there was no crime and no violence. "Witch" burning only happened after a Burn the Witch video-game and war and massacre only happened after we got a song telling us to do it.
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
The original article is pretty tame. Nowhere does "Rev. Richard Patrick is blaming violent video games and music for crimes that he say has affected 90% of his congregation in one way or another". Rather he answers the question "Have you been affected personally by the violence", in which he responds, "Not only has it affected me, but, I would say, 90 percent of the congregation has been affected in some way by violence or crime."
The closest he comes to bringing games to violence is when he answeres the question "How significant a problem do you believe violent video games and violent rap music is" with "It has a tremendous influence on young people and violence. That's basically all they see. Most of them try to emulate what they see, when in reality, the people they see don't even live in those communities. Some of the rappers they see on TV portraying crime don't live in the urban areas -- they live in the suburbs somewhere. It's all a facade."
Where I think, to a point, he's straight on. Note, he never says "games cause violence". Rather he says the same thing most parents will tell you about kids, and most computer scientists will tell you about comptuers - garbage in, garbage out. What you surround yourself with is what you become familiar with. And the sad part is, like he says, it's all a facade.
Please, RTFA before blowing it out of proportions.
agreed, but i think we can all agree that invoking the reputation and usual applications of 'book burning' is in terribly bad taste due to how horrible the connotations are.
furthermore i doubt he was thinking of this in terms of a clever free speech statement, rather he made a poorly thought out statement using unnecessarily loaded words.
The rise of exceptionally violent and explicit media, starting in the early to mid 90's, is actually inversely related to the violent crime rates. That's right - as media has gotten more violent, actual violent crime has provably gone down.
Anybody trying to claim that violent media is responsible for any objective worsening of American society doesn't have a single iota of evidence in their favor.
"Brain damaged caused by lead, mercury, fluoride and other chemicals do far more to increase crime rates than music and video games."
Fluoride? As in, "Precious bodily fluids" fluoride?
"the theory that lead poisoning causes crime is hard science."
I think you need to look up what "hard science" really means - physics, chemistry, and the like. The "soft sciences" are biology, sociology, medicine, economics (oops - that's the dismal science). Basically, anything where results are largely expressed statistically. There may be a strong correlation, but "cause" is a reach. From the articles you linked to, lead levels are associated with aggressive behavior - not crimes in and of themselves. It is how the individual, families, and institutions deal with those tendencies that make criminals.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Now rap music is radical - compared to society - but society has lost those controls that it had. Extreme now != extreme then.
In the 50s very, very few kids would have taken "Kill the fucking cop" songs to heart.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
> Rev. Richard Patrick is blaming violent video games and music for crimes that he say
> has affected 90% of his congregation in one way or another.
What about fraudulent theories of cosmology that have affected 100% of your congregetion in one way or another, almost certainly detrimentally, and even more certainly far worse than video games' effects?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
While you support your argument about lead poisoning, you offer nothing about the other two elements.
I'm guessing you're one of those that didn't vaccinate your children and avoid fluorinated water, even though all the peer reviewed research shows you're just putting your children at greater risk of disease and tooth decay, rather than decreasing any risk of autism. But while it's a guess, I'm basing it on your trying to link lead research to mercury and fluoride without proof.
I also suspect that you'll next say "but mercury is toxic!" and show a bunch of links about mercury toxicity as a red herring. Fine. But you can't come up with one reputable peer-reviewed link against fluoride in drinking water. And don't you dare try to say MMR vaccinations caused autism, because the long-term results are in.
ADHA on Fluoride
ADA on Fluoride
23 studies refuting MMR and autism link
CDC's website on MMR and autism
If I've gotten you all wrong (which I doubt, based on your anti-fluoride stance), then you have my apologies. Next time, support your argument.
You can't take the sky from me...
We are considering having something similar to a rally where parents and children can bring CDs and video games that they consider are destructive to the mind set of our youth and have a burning...
... television and videos are telling young people a vision but something that's not reality...
Young people are being influenced by what they see and what they hear. They are being influenced by television
How sad is that? Kids have all kinds of games that bask in sex and violence, and if you ask most of them, they'll tell you it's just a game and that's what they're like. Then you have people like him, inciting grown adults to go out and do this empty, ignorant, exercise in hating a common enemy so they can feel like they've made a difference. The adults are behaving more foolishly and suggestibly than the children!
If these crimes have effected 90% of his congregation, maybe the common factor to the crimes is not gaming but... his congregation?
If you are listening to violent, misogynistic garbage like most gangsta rap while you are going about your day, you are just feeding yourself a steady stream of crap. It's not entirely unlike propaganda in that respect, since it is ambient information that just keeps hitting you, hitting you, hitting you. Since it is passive, not active, your brain is probably not actively engaging and analyzing the input the way it would with a book or video game.
I'm about as libertarian as they come. Some of my positions are damn near scary to others because I believe that people have a right to screw up their own lives. However, I'm also not blind to the fact that things like pornography and violent, depraved music are psychologically harmful when regularly consumed. I've known friends who are hopelessly addicted to porn, for example. IMO, the reverend is probably not far off when he blames violent and sexual media for some of his congregation's recurring problems.
Granted, as a Christian, and a liberal calvinist, I would remind the good reverend what the "T" in TULIP stands for: Total Depravity. As my pastor has said before, if you want to slow down and maybe mostly stop sin in your life, don't fight the sin. Come to Jesus instead; when your focus is on Jesus, your focus won't be on sin.
So 90% of his congregation is involved in violent crimes (as perp or victim). Why doesn't he blame himself? He's the one responsible for protecting their souls. 90% is a high correlation. Maybe Rev. Patrick is the common factor that's responsible for these crimes.
At the very least, he's insulting god by saying that rappers and videogame devs are stronger than god. But maybe god just doesn't have nearly as good an agent in Rev. Patrick as does the devil.
--
make install -not war
I agree with your comment, but it got me thinking.
Water has a toxicity level too and can cause death by brain swelling. I'm also assuming it would be very uncomfortable to get to the point where one's ingested too much water as with fluoride.
And I believe that if one died from fluoride toxicity before dying of water toxicity, there's something else wrong.
Your comment about hydrofluoric acid in the stomach was interesting, so I looked it up. Since the stomach naturally uses hydrochloric acid in digestion, I looked up what swallowing it would do. Apparently, the same thing as hydrofluoric acid.
Large doses of things tend to harm us. Smaller doses may actually help us, directly or indirectly. Yet the alarmists aren't trying to ban water or food or electricity. Could it be that they're even willing to admit that some things have nuanced applications?
Because the studies are done by morons who have a predetermined outcome in mind. This happens all too often in the behavioural science, unfortunately.
The one that sticks out the best in my mind was one that found just that: People got more hyped up and "aggressive" (thought that wasn't well defined) after playing a violent game. Ok... Except the test was garbage. For the violent game they chose the original Unreal Tournament (keep in mind this study was done just a few years ago) and for the non-violent game they chose... Myst. Yes, that's right, Myst.
Man, I could probably find two games with less in common, but it would take effort. They really weren't testing violent vs non-violent in that case, they were testing competitive vs non-competitive, and fast paced vs slow paced. Gee, no surprise that people might get hyped up by UT and nearly put to sleep by Myst.
A proper test would be to take a more modern game, say UT3 at this point, and set it up so that one group plays a violent style of game and another group plays a non-violent style. For example have both groups play CTF, but one plays normal CTF with guns that blow people up, the other plays a freeze tag version where guns just freeze you in place (and your team can thaw you and such). That would control for most other variables other than violence and non-violence.
However there's two problems with that:
1) Most behavioural science researchers understand little about technology and less about games. I can go on and on with examples from my undergraduate studies.
2) A large number of researchers have an outcome in mind and, on purpose or subconsciously, they design the experiment to give that outcome.
So, the data at this point is basically worthless. I have yet to see a study where there was any sort of good control and measurement done.
TFA says, "Young people are being influenced by what they see and what they hear."
Okay, for the purpose of argument, let's allow as how that's true. Given that, what sort of influence is thereby exerted when children watch adults burn video games, books, or any other "bad" stuff??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?