"Children are generally innocent and are much less capable of identifying and defending themselves against threats" I have read several articles suggesting that actually not innocent but un-socialized and that the importance of imparting social and moral values in children is important because there may be less hard wired specific patterns than general tendencies. We only need to look to other cultures to see how the social values are taught and accepted, say the desirablility, nay necessity of honor killings for sexual transgressions or the hint of sexual transgressions in some parts of the world. So it may be important to control the message and the training for children for a very different reason than they are innocent. But regardless decisions that we make as adults on behaviors are and should be individual rights. We recognize that children do not have enough experience nor moral ethical training that is locked in to make those judgements. Once they do, then we judge them on their actions and if those actions are too outside of the current norms then we arrest and imprison them. But I think that in the U.S. that the priorities are out of whack. The FBI should be looking at the overall crime scene and making a judgement about impact on the country and its citizens, all of them. It seems that organized crime, the illicit drug trade, white collar crime that steals the end of life quality of life for so many seniors (the grandparents of those children), counterfeiting of currency, bank robbery, terrorism, all represent much bigger impacts on society. I think we have some in charge that are anal retentive and ideologically prudish and feel that this is one of the most important things that needs to be addressed. I for one think they are hung up on the little toe of the body politic at the expense of the boils and sores and festering wounds all over. I don't think they are doing their job.
I think this is a red herring, The child pornography industry, while heinous is relatively small, say compared to the forgein woman transported here for prostitution, or identity theft or bank robbery or White Collar crime. It pains me to see people being sold this fear which is way out of proportion to the problem. Case in point, the way Halloween used to be vs what it is today. Parents have to escort their kids and only during daylight, and all because of urban ledgends and maybe one or two incedents in the country. Again an over reaction. Trying to live in a riskless world. It ain't goina happen.
Now I wonder what the effect on your kids are going to be if your identity is stolen and all your money taken and you loose your home and maybe your job and have to live homeless. That would have an sever impact on your children as well, and probably long term and far reaching.
I think that the identify theft and other breakins as well at the botting of innocent peoples computers for illegal or just monitary purposes is a far larger area of crime. If you look at the statistics of how many child pornographers there are vs, say the theft from Sony of tens of thousands of credit cards. It is not a size nor a severity issue but someones decision that this crime is worse than say stealing all of someones money, or killing them, or kidnapping them. I think this is an ideological aberation from those in the FBI. Methinks they protest too much.
Well they tried to supress the people's will during prohibition, and the criminals profited. Here its the police profiting. It's clear that people in general feel the speed limits are artificially low, or certainly lower than they would like. Maybe we should get rid of the IRS and lower all the speed limits to 20mph and just have all the IRS agents man the radar guns.
"There is no place in my head that is confused on this point, either logically or unconsciously. "
Again your view is that your gut is inviable,does not change, is not influenced and will not be influenced in any way by anything ever again because it is you and you are this unchanging thing. I think not. All we have to do is look at the tens of thousands of cases of PTSD to see that the sleep people loose, the fear they have, the flashbacks that they experience are not under conscious control. Events that happened to them or things that they participated in effected them on an unconsious level. Sure your claim that nothing touches you and you have it under control is laudable but does not look at the reality. So this argument of yours that the gaming has no effect is incorrect. Now if you had said, sure gaming has an effect and I have not noticed any shift in my values or perceptions over the years due to the gaming I might think you actually saw there there was a cause and effect that was unseen, but you continue to ignore that. But then that is the fuel for psychologist and psychiatrists, that is what their business is and as I understand it it is very profitable. Well maybe not so much of late because the new insurance rules make it easier for them to just prescribe psyco active drugs instead of even talking to patients. But I digress.
Again, what does the military does to get people to feel its ok to point a gun at people and shoot them is simulate that action through drills and target practice, simulating what is going on. Practicing stabbing and shooting and hitting where no one gets hurt. The second part of the training is to tear down personality, foster obediance to authority and demonize the enemy and provide rewards for obedience and going against the enemy. Violent video games do the simulated training of using the weaponry and some hand to hand and demonize the enemy and provide rewards. If you knew anything about the insidiousness of brain washing and mind control and Rovian propaganda you would know that we are controlable and that you can be moved from here to there in your thought process and values slowly step by step, and like aging, much of the time it takes someone who has not seen you for awhile to tell you you have changed. Often we don't realize it or we justify it, but it does not feel like change, its us, its always been us, we are the same as we were when we were 5. I think not.
"The person who never trained in firearms might punch or kick in that confrontational situation." or if they have not been trained and supported in the idea that violence is a good if not first option then maybe they would not fight but neutralize the situation or leave rather than be confrontational. Actually this is the reaction of someone that has actual fight training because they know the consequnces of their actions more than one that has just played at it. Its the amatures that are the real danger because they do not know what they are doing, why or how.
"Well actually, I devoted much of my last post to unconscious gut reactions." Your point was seemed to indicate that you had a gut reaction was inviolate, unchanged, cast in concrete, your moral compass, the great unchanging hidden inner behaviour map.. I dont think so, your unconsious moral compass is a work in progress changing minute by minute as we act, think, sleep.
"You're fighting a losing battle if you try to shelter children from every negative influence." Agreed. But often you have input in the middle of the process. The places you don't are things like long game playing session in virtual worlds that have their own moral logic, or in multiplayer games, the other players, just like playmate, some are good some are bad, or the youth culture which is a major influence that parents don't see and have little input into. I guess like bad friends, bad video games should probably be remoted as influences where possible.
"I see nothing of substance here. Give me a real reason to be concerned about it, not some vague warning about an insidious effect on our unconscious minds. Give me a meaningful bottom line. Give me a reason to care."
Well let's see Columbine Shooting, Gabriel Giffords and company but according to this survey the shootings in schools has declined http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu/violence-in-schools/national-statistics.html
Hell only 9% of male students in 2007 reported carrying guns in school and only 3% of females. So must not be a problem.
1 out of 3 woman report being raped, abused or beaten in their lifetime
The driving force here is to get revenue from motorists (yes yes your not supose to speed, but cops have better things to do than stop speeders). It is sort of the privatization of what should be a public service. Like hospitals and prisons the profit motive does not make them more efficient, it makes them profit centers and not public service centers and the mission of the two is quite different. We see the same in politics with the Citizens United case fallout. Polititians are becoming profit centers and not public service workers. I think we have to pull back from this behavior or we will all have GPS pedometers and breathing meters to regulate and charge for those services as well.
Information superhighway has not disappeared as yet. There are those of us that value net neutrality and the idea that the internet should be an open resource like highways, available to all, restricted to none. Not cheesy, but apt and carries with it a central idea that is being lost and actively being pushed aside by those technological gold rushers that see dollarsigns everywhere and want to jump all our claims and make us pay for their profit.
But as the military knows, practicing killing makes it easier for someone to kill when the time comes. If you took a bunch of trained military men and untrained (lets say non-hunters) and put them in a situation where you were in a confrontational situation, and guns were provided, Those people who have been trained to project authority with a gun would choose that option more readily as a tool of control, would recognize that as a tool they were familiar with, it would be in their arsenal of tools. Having a tool means that you probably will use it, having a skill or a behavior, it becomes part of your repetoire of actions. And we are talking about things buried in the unconsious, so the logical rational arguments you make I am sure you believe, but you should think about the unseen effects, the below the water level effects of play. I am more concerned for children as they learn things deep and quick, like language, it just seeps in to their heads and is stored at an irrational level. All the arguments people have given me for violent gangster type video games have been rational arguments. Too many people think that is all there is. Its not true. I don't suggest the all dark games are instant and powerful corrupters, but practiing dark things over and over does have an effect over time, an effect we do not control or even are aware of. As I have learned from teaching for years "The lesson taught is never the lesson learned" . Our unconsious is like that student and the fantasy play we partake in is like that lesson. We think that our logic and good intensions control the depth and extent of the effect, and that our logic and rational mind control the boundries of that effect. Good luck with that.
"Why do we like scary movies?" not all of us like scary movies.
It role playing, thats wha you do sometimes when someone wants to train you to say make a sale, or take a job interview or do a job interview, or how to overcome bad habits.. it is a technique certainly and we learn through doing. In a protected envirionment we can extend into roles and behaviors we would be too shy to do in a more edgy envirionment. For adults this is fine, for kids they have less of a defense on walling off fantasy vs reality, in fact much of their learning is practicing with toys and play with friends.
It is not just a virutal world that is the problem, but the reward system build in that is not real, it has an agenda and we learn and adapt behavior while we play and there is not one area of our brain that is exclusively for fantasy play, not one area for logic or judgement. We are excesizing those in a protective envirionment but we are excersizing those. We can't see shifts in moral compass we can't feel them they are in the unconsious part of us. We can claim that we are in control and that the repeated play at killing and stealing is not affecting us but that is silly.
My point was that video games can desenitize you to certain otherwise illeagal, imoral behaviors. If killing and stealing are OK is some venues, then it is easier to move that over to other venues. Some of that gets into anonymity. It has been shown that people who are anomymous will do more cruel and selfish things if they are masked. This is true with video games, It gives and outlet for otherwise bad behavior. For some it gets it out of your system but for kids I think it goes deeper and has a more profound effect. The same with cyber crime.
If you remember the movie Bonnie and Clyde. they were just good family oriented folks that robbed banks, I remember the scene where his brother I believe asked him why he killed the guard in one heist, he said he forced him to do it. Then it was OK and they got back to the picnic. There you had a family culture that was morally bankrupt, but from the outside you did not see it. You have/had many fine folks in the south that still hate other races (personal experience here informs this fact). All the play is life training like baby lion cubs rolling and swatting, all getting ready for latter in life. I think some of these games are a net negative to society, at least for those that learn the lesson of the game and don't get a firm outside influence of a moral compass. You can say its parenting but I say if the game was not their it would not be an issue, for the kids at least.
I think your position does need defending and I specifically said that I was not anti-video game, just ones that promote killing, maiming, mass murder, theft, you know practicing anti-social or illegal or immoral behavior for fun. Fuzzy wuzzy games are fun, tennis , auto racing,... but there are dark side games that I don't think appropriate for kids, The irony is that the Sony site was hacked by someone playing a hacker game. You know typing in, a virtual world, sneaking around stealing, getting emmense rewards and satifaction from defeating the enemy (firewalls and other security protection). How is that different than playing some of the video games I mentioned. No one got hurt right? just a scoreboard. Well the truth is that behavior hurts real people and I see it as ironic that the video game virtual world would have its virtual cyber world hacked.
I think violent gaming and acting out gangster lifestyle's promote warmer fuzzier feelings towards those moral wastelands. I think it is true that there is a behaviorist component to all games, what is valued what is not, what is rewarded and what is not and that has an affect on you whether you know it or not. "The lesson taught is never the lesson learned" .
But at the same time you are practicing parts of your brain, Leaning what is valued and what is not. Too often the simulation has its own reality. Like the practice of Aikido which has its own build in dissonance where half the time you are practicing defending against unbalanced attacks and the other half you are practicing doing unbalanced attacks so your partner can practice. Here you are simuating a attack , another simuation, but prepares you for a real attack. Not only do you train your muscles but you train your perceptions and thought process on how to react. Those logic and moral circuits in your brain are not seperate from the ones you use in the real world. You may not know it but the game has its effect.
"You don't actually have to kill innocent bystanders unless you " your serious that this is a defense of your position?
" what do you expect in a game about gangsters" I expect no less from a game about gansters. The original point or the Irony of it is that a multiplayer site that has ganster games is hit on by gansters. Not only Ironic but maybe self fullfilling.
I suspect that the ones that hit Sony were not the ones that were alway playing the paramedic.
Good point. We are social animals and we are ominivors (not all of us eat meat). But then that is one of the ways you can justify killing other people, by identifying them as of a different group (ethnic, religious, political, species) then it's OK to kill, right? Killing for food is a different issue. I was talking about sentient beings. Often other groups are talked of as allien creaters, not worthy of life. I just don't think practicing illegal or immoral acts over and over and over and getting rewarded for them has redeeming social value, especially in children. Every thing that is fun (or tastes good) is always good for you.
Good balanced approach to trying to argue mitigating factors to ethical and moral development. The same argument is made by people who do not want to have any responsibility towards global warming or any of its fall out. Granted all the car driving and power station and industrial pollution is not the only thing that causes global warming but is one thing that is under our control. It may be that parental influence is a strong influence. But say your child had a "bad" friend, which is influencing them, you would try to remove that influence from his life. A "bad" video game where the child spends time with (where the parent is not there to advise at every step what is right and wrong) where the game has its own morality and rewards for certain behavior and punishes for others, it has an influence on the child. I think we need to remove bad influences from developing minds where we can. Why should a parent have another "bad" influence to have to counter with all the other "bad" examples of behavior out there.
Certainly I am not anti-video game. Maybe anti-morally bankrupt video game. You know "Grand Theft Auto" or any game that gives you 10 ways to kill and mame or steal or pillage, human or other species. I just think you have to overcome some natural prohibitions on killing in your intellectual side to actually do and enjoy those games. The kill or be killed mentality practiced on the killing fields say daily fosters good social behaviors. There are good competitive video games that foster positive social skills. I don't think you can argue that these games are neutral when it comes to behavioral traning.
No not superior, sad really, sad for the loss, sad for the fact that someone feels that that type of behavior is acceptible, sad when I see a 6 year old friends son cutting people appart with a sword with no sense of what he is doing or how it may be affecting his moral compass. What is that big popular game "Grand Theft Auto"? now thats a title that inspires accepting that there is no moral impact to gamming.
That is exactly my point. The patent system with regard to the Academic world fosters turning it into a world of protected territories which I believe does not foster the progress of idea's or technologies. And I agree it should be the teachers and staff that get good money, not the administrators.
Very insightful, and I agree that this does foster innovation, but the idea that you may not be able to use that idea without paying a royalty, if the patent holder agrees to license your technology. I suspect there are a lot of scans of the patent DB to see what ideas have just passed into the public domain and can thereby be used without legal entanglements.
Your kidding, increase patents by 20 years. Since they are usually corporate owned for the most part that is just keeping a monopoly going rather than fostering innovation. The idea that giving a temporary monolpoly is to exchange for teaching your art to the world I think is a nice idea, but the truth I think is really that you get the temporary monopoly in exchange for making as much profit as you can, or if someone else uses your idea, get royalties as much as you can, making those derivative works more expensive, a sort of tarriff on competition.
I have on occasion lamented that I did not get involved with online gaming. Well maybe it was for the best. As we know the gaming where you run around killing and maiming and destroying promotes good character.
Slashdot Mirror
He's Lying
"Children are generally innocent and are much less capable of identifying and defending themselves against threats"
I have read several articles suggesting that actually not innocent but un-socialized and that the importance of imparting social and moral values in children is important because there may be less hard wired specific patterns than general tendencies. We only need to look to other cultures to see how the social values are taught and accepted, say the desirablility, nay necessity of honor killings for sexual transgressions or the hint of sexual transgressions in some parts of the world. So it may be important to control the message and the training for children for a very different reason than they are innocent. But regardless decisions that we make as adults on behaviors are and should be individual rights. We recognize that children do not have enough experience nor moral ethical training that is locked in to make those judgements. Once they do, then we judge them on their actions and if those actions are too outside of the current norms then we arrest and imprison them. But I think that in the U.S. that the priorities are out of whack. The FBI should be looking at the overall crime scene and making a judgement about impact on the country and its citizens, all of them. It seems that organized crime, the illicit drug trade, white collar crime that steals the end of life quality of life for so many seniors (the grandparents of those children), counterfeiting of currency, bank robbery, terrorism, all represent much bigger impacts on society. I think we have some in charge that are anal retentive and ideologically prudish and feel that this is one of the most important things that needs to be addressed. I for one think they are hung up on the little toe of the body politic at the expense of the boils and sores and festering wounds all over. I don't think they are doing their job.
I think this is a red herring, The child pornography industry, while heinous is relatively small, say compared to the forgein woman transported here for prostitution, or identity theft or bank robbery or White Collar crime. It pains me to see people being sold this fear which is way out of proportion to the problem. Case in point, the way Halloween used to be vs what it is today. Parents have to escort their kids and only during daylight, and all because of urban ledgends and maybe one or two incedents in the country. Again an over reaction. Trying to live in a riskless world. It ain't goina happen.
Now I wonder what the effect on your kids are going to be if your identity is stolen and all your money taken and you loose your home and maybe your job and have to live homeless. That would have an sever impact on your children as well, and probably long term and far reaching.
I think that the identify theft and other breakins as well at the botting of innocent peoples computers for illegal or just monitary purposes is a far larger area of crime. If you look at the statistics of how many child pornographers there are vs, say the theft from Sony of tens of thousands of credit cards. It is not a size nor a severity issue but someones decision that this crime is worse than say stealing all of someones money, or killing them, or kidnapping them. I think this is an ideological aberation from those in the FBI. Methinks they protest too much.
Well they tried to supress the people's will during prohibition, and the criminals profited. Here its the police profiting. It's clear that people in general feel the speed limits are artificially low, or certainly lower than they would like. Maybe we should get rid of the IRS and lower all the speed limits to 20mph and just have all the IRS agents man the radar guns.
"There is no place in my head that is confused on this point, either logically or unconsciously. "
Again your view is that your gut is inviable,does not change, is not influenced and will not be influenced in any way by anything ever again because it is you and you are this unchanging thing. I think not. All we have to do is look at the tens of thousands of cases of PTSD to see that the sleep people loose, the fear they have, the flashbacks that they experience are not under conscious control. Events that happened to them or things that they participated in effected them on an unconsious level. Sure your claim that nothing touches you and you have it under control is laudable but does not look at the reality. So this argument of yours that the gaming has no effect is incorrect. Now if you had said, sure gaming has an effect and I have not noticed any shift in my values or perceptions over the years due to the gaming I might think you actually saw there there was a cause and effect that was unseen, but you continue to ignore that. But then that is the fuel for psychologist and psychiatrists, that is what their business is and as I understand it it is very profitable. Well maybe not so much of late because the new insurance rules make it easier for them to just prescribe psyco active drugs instead of even talking to patients. But I digress.
Again, what does the military does to get people to feel its ok to point a gun at people and shoot them is simulate that action through drills and target practice, simulating what is going on. Practicing stabbing and shooting and hitting where no one gets hurt. The second part of the training is to tear down personality, foster obediance to authority and demonize the enemy and provide rewards for obedience and going against the enemy. Violent video games do the simulated training of using the weaponry and some hand to hand and demonize the enemy and provide rewards. If you knew anything about the insidiousness of brain washing and mind control and Rovian propaganda you would know that we are controlable and that you can be moved from here to there in your thought process and values slowly step by step, and like aging, much of the time it takes someone who has not seen you for awhile to tell you you have changed. Often we don't realize it or we justify it, but it does not feel like change, its us, its always been us, we are the same as we were when we were 5. I think not.
"The person who never trained in firearms might punch or kick in that confrontational situation." or if they have not been trained and supported in the idea that violence is a good if not first option then maybe they would not fight but neutralize the situation or leave rather than be confrontational. Actually this is the reaction of someone that has actual fight training because they know the consequnces of their actions more than one that has just played at it. Its the amatures that are the real danger because they do not know what they are doing, why or how.
"Well actually, I devoted much of my last post to unconscious gut reactions."
Your point was seemed to indicate that you had a gut reaction was inviolate, unchanged, cast in concrete, your moral compass, the great unchanging hidden inner behaviour map.. I dont think so, your unconsious moral compass is a work in progress changing minute by minute as we act, think, sleep.
"You're fighting a losing battle if you try to shelter children from every negative influence."
Agreed. But often you have input in the middle of the process. The places you don't are things like long game playing session in virtual worlds that have their own moral logic, or in multiplayer games, the other players, just like playmate, some are good some are bad, or the youth culture which is a major influence that parents don't see and have little input into. I guess like bad friends, bad video games should probably be remoted as influences where possible.
"I see nothing of substance here. Give me a real reason to be concerned about it, not some vague warning about an insidious effect on our unconscious minds. Give me a meaningful bottom line. Give me a reason to care."
Well let's see Columbine Shooting, Gabriel Giffords and company but according to this survey the shootings in schools has declined http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu/violence-in-schools/national-statistics.html
Hell only 9% of male students in 2007 reported carrying guns in school and only 3% of females. So must not be a problem.
1 out of 3 woman report being raped, abused or beaten in their lifetime
http://www.rescue.org/campaign/wakeup-congress?ms=gg_nonb_zzz_zzzz_pm_zzzzzz&gclid=CJzbjbuFwKgCFcm8KgodMU69wg
Gun violence per state.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state
The driving force here is to get revenue from motorists (yes yes your not supose to speed, but cops have better things to do than stop speeders). It is sort of the privatization of what should be a public service. Like hospitals and prisons the profit motive does not make them more efficient, it makes them profit centers and not public service centers and the mission of the two is quite different. We see the same in politics with the Citizens United case fallout. Polititians are becoming profit centers and not public service workers. I think we have to pull back from this behavior or we will all have GPS pedometers and breathing meters to regulate and charge for those services as well.
Information superhighway has not disappeared as yet. There are those of us that value net neutrality and the idea that the internet should be an open resource like highways, available to all, restricted to none. Not cheesy, but apt and carries with it a central idea that is being lost and actively being pushed aside by those technological gold rushers that see dollarsigns everywhere and want to jump all our claims and make us pay for their profit.
But as the military knows, practicing killing makes it easier for someone to kill when the time comes. If you took a bunch of trained military men and untrained (lets say non-hunters) and put them in a situation where you were in a confrontational situation, and guns were provided, Those people who have been trained to project authority with a gun would choose that option more readily as a tool of control, would recognize that as a tool they were familiar with, it would be in their arsenal of tools. Having a tool means that you probably will use it, having a skill or a behavior, it becomes part of your repetoire of actions. And we are talking about things buried in the unconsious, so the logical rational arguments you make I am sure you believe, but you should think about the unseen effects, the below the water level effects of play. I am more concerned for children as they learn things deep and quick, like language, it just seeps in to their heads and is stored at an irrational level. All the arguments people have given me for violent gangster type video games have been rational arguments. Too many people think that is all there is. Its not true. I don't suggest the all dark games are instant and powerful corrupters, but practiing dark things over and over does have an effect over time, an effect we do not control or even are aware of. As I have learned from teaching for years "The lesson taught is never the lesson learned" . Our unconsious is like that student and the fantasy play we partake in is like that lesson. We think that our logic and good intensions control the depth and extent of the effect, and that our logic and rational mind control the boundries of that effect. Good luck with that.
"Why do we like scary movies?" not all of us like scary movies.
It role playing, thats wha you do sometimes when someone wants to train you to say make a sale, or take a job interview or do a job interview, or how to overcome bad habits.. it is a technique certainly and we learn through doing. In a protected envirionment we can extend into roles and behaviors we would be too shy to do in a more edgy envirionment. For adults this is fine, for kids they have less of a defense on walling off fantasy vs reality, in fact much of their learning is practicing with toys and play with friends.
It is not just a virutal world that is the problem, but the reward system build in that is not real, it has an agenda and we learn and adapt behavior while we play and there is not one area of our brain that is exclusively for fantasy play, not one area for logic or judgement. We are excesizing those in a protective envirionment but we are excersizing those. We can't see shifts in moral compass we can't feel them they are in the unconsious part of us. We can claim that we are in control and that the repeated play at killing and stealing is not affecting us but that is silly.
My point was that video games can desenitize you to certain otherwise illeagal, imoral behaviors. If killing and stealing are OK is some venues, then it is easier to move that over to other venues. Some of that gets into anonymity. It has been shown that people who are anomymous will do more cruel and selfish things if they are masked. This is true with video games, It gives and outlet for otherwise bad behavior. For some it gets it out of your system but for kids I think it goes deeper and has a more profound effect. The same with cyber crime.
If you remember the movie Bonnie and Clyde. they were just good family oriented folks that robbed banks, I remember the scene where his brother I believe asked him why he killed the guard in one heist, he said he forced him to do it. Then it was OK and they got back to the picnic. There you had a family culture that was morally bankrupt, but from the outside you did not see it. You have/had many fine folks in the south that still hate other races (personal experience here informs this fact). All the play is life training like baby lion cubs rolling and swatting, all getting ready for latter in life. I think some of these games are a net negative to society, at least for those that learn the lesson of the game and don't get a firm outside influence of a moral compass. You can say its parenting but I say if the game was not their it would not be an issue, for the kids at least.
Yah like the global warming lie or Obama's birth certificate, oh wait the globe is warming, even in Kenya.
I think your position does need defending and I specifically said that I was not anti-video game, just ones that promote killing, maiming, mass murder, theft, you know practicing anti-social or illegal or immoral behavior for fun. Fuzzy wuzzy games are fun, tennis , auto racing, ... but there are dark side games that I don't think appropriate for kids, The irony is that the Sony site was hacked by someone playing a hacker game. You know typing in, a virtual world, sneaking around stealing, getting emmense rewards and satifaction from defeating the enemy (firewalls and other security protection). How is that different than playing some of the video games I mentioned. No one got hurt right? just a scoreboard. Well the truth is that behavior hurts real people and I see it as ironic that the video game virtual world would have its virtual cyber world hacked.
I think violent gaming and acting out gangster lifestyle's promote warmer fuzzier feelings towards those moral wastelands. I think it is true that there is a behaviorist component to all games, what is valued what is not, what is rewarded and what is not and that has an affect on you whether you know it or not. "The lesson taught is never the lesson learned" .
But at the same time you are practicing parts of your brain, Leaning what is valued and what is not. Too often the simulation has its own reality. Like the practice of Aikido which has its own build in dissonance where half the time you are practicing defending against unbalanced attacks and the other half you are practicing doing unbalanced attacks so your partner can practice. Here you are simuating a attack , another simuation, but prepares you for a real attack. Not only do you train your muscles but you train your perceptions and thought process on how to react. Those logic and moral circuits in your brain are not seperate from the ones you use in the real world. You may not know it but the game has its effect.
"You don't actually have to kill innocent bystanders unless you " your serious that this is a defense of your position?
" what do you expect in a game about gangsters" I expect no less from a game about gansters. The original point or the Irony of it is that a multiplayer site that has ganster games is hit on by gansters. Not only Ironic but maybe self fullfilling.
I suspect that the ones that hit Sony were not the ones that were alway playing the paramedic.
Good point. We are social animals and we are ominivors (not all of us eat meat). But then that is one of the ways you can justify killing other people, by identifying them as of a different group (ethnic, religious, political, species) then it's OK to kill, right? Killing for food is a different issue. I was talking about sentient beings. Often other groups are talked of as allien creaters, not worthy of life. I just don't think practicing illegal or immoral acts over and over and over and getting rewarded for them has redeeming social value, especially in children. Every thing that is fun (or tastes good) is always good for you.
Good balanced approach to trying to argue mitigating factors to ethical and moral development. The same argument is made by people who do not want to have any responsibility towards global warming or any of its fall out. Granted all the car driving and power station and industrial pollution is not the only thing that causes global warming but is one thing that is under our control. It may be that parental influence is a strong influence. But say your child had a "bad" friend, which is influencing them, you would try to remove that influence from his life. A "bad" video game where the child spends time with (where the parent is not there to advise at every step what is right and wrong) where the game has its own morality and rewards for certain behavior and punishes for others, it has an influence on the child. I think we need to remove bad influences from developing minds where we can. Why should a parent have another "bad" influence to have to counter with all the other "bad" examples of behavior out there.
Certainly I am not anti-video game. Maybe anti-morally bankrupt video game. You know "Grand Theft Auto" or any game that gives you 10 ways to kill and mame or steal or pillage, human or other species. I just think you have to overcome some natural prohibitions on killing in your intellectual side to actually do and enjoy those games. The kill or be killed mentality practiced on the killing fields say daily fosters good social behaviors. There are good competitive video games that foster positive social skills. I don't think you can argue that these games are neutral when it comes to behavioral traning.
No not superior, sad really, sad for the loss, sad for the fact that someone feels that that type of behavior is acceptible, sad when I see a 6 year old friends son cutting people appart with a sword with no sense of what he is doing or how it may be affecting his moral compass. What is that big popular game "Grand Theft Auto"? now thats a title that inspires accepting that there is no moral impact to gamming.
That is exactly my point. The patent system with regard to the Academic world fosters turning it into a world of protected territories which I believe does not foster the progress of idea's or technologies. And I agree it should be the teachers and staff that get good money, not the administrators.
Very insightful, and I agree that this does foster innovation, but the idea that you may not be able to use that idea without paying a royalty, if the patent holder agrees to license your technology. I suspect there are a lot of scans of the patent DB to see what ideas have just passed into the public domain and can thereby be used without legal entanglements.
Your kidding, increase patents by 20 years. Since they are usually corporate owned for the most part that is just keeping a monopoly going rather than fostering innovation. The idea that giving a temporary monolpoly is to exchange for teaching your art to the world I think is a nice idea, but the truth I think is really that you get the temporary monopoly in exchange for making as much profit as you can, or if someone else uses your idea, get royalties as much as you can, making those derivative works more expensive, a sort of tarriff on competition.
I have on occasion lamented that I did not get involved with online gaming. Well maybe it was for the best. As we know the gaming where you run around killing and maiming and destroying promotes good character.