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Violent Games Credited With Reducing Crime Levels
maroberts writes "According to a research paper produced from a collaboration between the University of Texas and the Centre for European Economic Research, violent video games may induce aggressive behavior, but the incapacitation effect outweighs this and produces a genuine reduction in violent crime. This paper was referenced in a BBC news story giving reasons why the US crime rates are falling (at least outside the prisons!)"
in Japan...although it could be due to cultural influences in that case.
Maybe they should have Computers in the prisons, like they do in china. Exchange Virtual Gold for cigarettes ...
Correlation does not equal causation.
Just because we like the results, doesn't make it true.
They develop violent feelings but they take it all out on their fictional characters. They stop going outside (thousands of years of children spent their days outside because they lacked TV and vidya) so they aren't around other people even if they have all kinds of aggressive hormones flowing to compel them to pick a fight with the next person they see.
Nope. Abortion selects against unwanted children, who are most likely to develop without loving parental guidance.
That's because tentacle monsters are just visitors to japan and come from a far more sexually repressed society. When they get to japan they just go berserk.
On the other hand, it's well known that permanent resident tentacle monsters in japan are very polite and productive members of society.
The actual cause is not merely that it servers as an outlet for aggression, but that it also serves to dilute the overall effect of social anger. That is, you give enough sparkly lights and distractions and toys to even the most frustrated person and they will largely stop doing bad things.
In other words, your kids are learning to play video games instead of doing things like camping and hunting and so on - so even if they wanted to do anything, they largely would lack the tools and knowledge to do so. And with their pre-programmed miserably short attention spans, it's too much work to, say, figure out how to make a weapon. They just give up after five minutes and decide to vent their anger by shooting zombies.
But I do fear that our kids won't have those same skills that are possibly going to be necessary at some point in the future. Basic skills like camping, hunting, doing repairs, electronics, basic chemistry, and so on led to the last couple of generations that were much more prepared for anything that the world threw at them. Then we hit the current kids... And you can just see the acres of vapid drones on any college campus. For all of that anger that was displaced, it seems that much of the ambition, drive, and self-sufficiency was also taken away with it.
As usual the politicians are proven wrong and backwards with their attempts at 'curbing violence' by fighting this battle against the imaginary violence in games.
As usual, it is shown that whatever politicians wanted to do was going to have the exact opposite effect, so when they fight imaginary violence in video-games, they would be causing more of the real violence in real world, because now it is shown that violent videogames reduce violence in real world.
Whenever you are in doubt about what the outcome of any law, any bill is going to be in real life, just take the name of that bill and reverse it in terms of its intentions.
So if they want to 'fight poverty', it means they'll create more poverty. If they want to 'fight violence', they will end up creating more violence, etc.
You can't handle the truth.
Caesar had it all right, with the violent circus games.
We can now achieve this catharsis without spilling blood, thanks to video games!
A group swallows research that favors its view whole without questioning while disregarding any research that disagrees with its world view.
My my, did you even read the article or just went "I like this headline, therefor I will accept it as being true".
Don't blame your opponents for swallowing their headlines if you do the same.
Be careful now, this is a very sensitive subject. Please refrain from calling them "tentacle monsters". The preferred nomenclature is "bothria enabled people".
It sounds like Clockwork Orange psychology.
You are not violent if you are vomiting all the time so you cannot fight back.
Sure, but lack of correlation, or indeed anticorrelation as is the case here, refutes causation. If a implies (causes) b, and b is true, then that says nothing about whether a is true. However, if a implies b, and b is false, then a must be false.
Of course there are many other factors at play in these crime rates - and I wouldn't 'credit' violent games with reducing crime levels, but this does provide a useful argument against the idea that violent video games cause violent behaviour.
Not just in Japan, actually. Last I've seen, just about anywhere where they could put some numbers on historical access to pornography, it correlates the same way with a reduction in sex crimes.
I don't think there's all that much cultural about it. A similar effect has been noticed before between splatter movies and violent crimes, for example. When a new one starts in theatres, for the next couple of days you see less less assaults and such. If nothing else, because they're in the theatre instead of on the streets.
Pretty much the same for porn, really. If there's an easier outlet for either sex urges or power over someone fantasies, well, more people take the road that's less risky. Plus, they can't be both at home spanking the monkey and out raping someone.
Makes sense for the games too, if you think of it. As I was saying, the correlation was already noticed for movies.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
RTFA. Srsly.
Both TFA's don't just talk about crime levels, they talk explicitly about reducing VIOLENT crime levels. So, yes, it's a good thing, regardless of how you feel about petty crime.
Besides, I don't think the goal of the police is to worry about people's existential angst. Crime is something that one can objectively measure, while communities' feelings are subjective and unpredictable. You can't say that the police failed to do their job, if some scaremongering politician makes them feel less safe in spite of reduced crime.
Or to quote Dara O'Briain, who puts it the best: "[i]I give out when people talk about crime going up, but the numbers are definitely down. And if you go, "The numbers are down", they go, "Ahh, but the *fear* of crime is rising." Well, so fucking what? Zombies are at an all-time low level, but the fear of zombies could be incredibly high. It doesn't mean you have to have government policies to deal with the fear of zombies.[/i]"
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Not exactly.
1. They don't say that violent games cause an increase in VIOLENT CRIME, but in aggression. Which is a whole other dish. One can be aggressive in various ways that don't actually involve bashing someone's head in.
The difference is basically like that between feeling horny and rape. Even if, say, pornography makes people hornier, it doesn't also make them go rape someone. I'm using that example because we already have a damn good correlation between access to pornography and a dramatic reduction in rape incidence over the years.
So basically it's not as simple as having a +10% crime safety and a -5% crime safety there to sum up. There is nothing in there that says you actually even have a - at all.
2. On the same note, if it's increased aggression that only happens in games, then who cares? You'd only have a - there if it translates to violence outside the games, which nobody showed yet. In fact even for aggression, nobody showed a longer term effect than the next couple of hours.
Again, I'll return to what we know about pornography and rape. Sure, pornography makes people horny, BUT it also offers the easiest outlet for that. It's easier to just spank the monkey and be done with it, than shut down the browser and go look for someone to rape.
On the same note, if violent games make people aggressive, BUT also offer a more immediate way to vent that aggression, then basically there is no - there at all. There is some increased aggression... in a game. Who cares?
Or to put it in an example less emotionally loaded than pornography, think buying a scratching post for your cat. Sure, it may make the cat scratch more than if it had nothing available, but it doesn't mean more scratching on your furniture. Scratching more on the post, who cares about that?
3. That duality between maybe increased urges, but also a way to vent them, is important when it's not the only way to get such urges in the first place. A way to work out that aggression without actually harming anyone can work not just for aggression from games, but for aggression that was there without games too. And you can't just decree what else should work for venting it.
Basically if someone is feeling aggressive, you can't just tell them to vent it on playing The Sims 3 instead of Call Of Duty. If the game they're allowed doesn't scratch the itch they have, then you don't just have the + without the -, you don't have the + in the first place.
Basically same as it works for the aforementioned pornography correlation. If someone is feeling horny, you can't really tell them to go pray and do wholesome activities and thoughts instead, because it doesn't work that way. We have thousands of years of trying to tell them that, and it didn't work as well as in theory. We tried to preach chivalrous courtly love and non-sexual thoughts, and even threaten people with hell if they don't, but it turns out they still went and raped someone. Then comes an age of just letting them watch porn and spank the monkey, and, what d you know? Something that actually scratches the itch works better than just telling them to pretend the itch doesn't exist.
Or same as the cat and the scratch post. You can't just tell the cat to do something else instead of scratching, because the urge is there anyway. If there is no scratching post or surface, you get scratched carpets and furniture, and that's that. The thing that works is to give it something better than your furniture to scratch.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Of COURSE there has been a reduction in violent crime in the last few years, and it's rather obvious why. Seems someone forgot to take into account the change in the crime "landscape" that the internet brings to the table. Violent games is unlikely the only factor here, or even the main one.
Who the hell robs a gas station or liquor store anymore when you can sit at home and search for credit card numbers and CVV2 codes with Google? Like credit card companies actually dedicate real time and effort investigating credit card theft? Please. They wipe your bill clean, issue a new credit card, and write off the loss, and the thief hardly lifted their hands off a keyboard.
Who the hell steals CDs from a music store anymore when you can torrent the music in less time that it takes to put your shoes on to go rob said music store?
Bitcoin mining? Another shining example of how "theft" has changed from armed robbery to mouse clicks and CPU cycles.
On top of all that, never underestimate the power of pure laziness. We have an entire up-and-coming generation unfortunately "representing" that.
Something my grandfather knew and my great-grandfather... Many crimes are crimes of opportunity, usually linked to boredom. There have long been clear statistics that kids who play sports, play an instrument, or have dedication to a hobby are far less likely to be involved in crime. If someone is playing video games... They're not bored, and they're not out finding crimes of opportunity. Keep kids busy and they stay out of trouble.
I think it was Alan Dean Foster's "Quozl" in which the traveling aliens have ultra-realistic game setups (not quite a holodeck) in which they can hunt and messily kill their prey from back home. Without that opportunity to drain the aggression from their systems, they know they would turn on each other as easily as on outsiders. Cesar Milan, "The Dog Whisperer", often talks about making sure one uses up a pet's energy for similar reasons. Why should anyone be surprised that humans have the same problem - especially humans who aren't satisfied with just sitting and reading /.?
If you just want to reduce how safe a community feels, then just reduce media coverage of crime. There's little correlation over time between crime rates and "feeling safe". It's nearly entirely based on how much our politicians want to keep up afraid, so we'll support their agenda, and how much the news is trying to boost ratings by being sensationalistic. This is why there are no "crime rate" stories for the 5 years in a row when the rates are falling, and on the 6th year, when it ticks up a bit, every local station is all over the "story".