Which still does not confer responsibility. Buying a Sony product should not be taken as an endorsement of everything they do any more than boycotting Sony should send the message that you hate Playstation 3 exclusives (you certainly won't be playing them). Sony is a big company with a lot of activities, and not all of them are objectionable.
If we're really going to fall back on the invisible hand, then the conclusion is not that consumers are responsible for evil, but rather that Sony does more good than evil. Or that people are more evil than good (which I don't believe). Because ultimately the invisible hand assumes that, in aggregate, people will make the right choice and bad behavior will be selected out. So either the theory is flawed and thus not a good basis for determining responsibility, or people are evil and I guess they did deserve to have their personal details shared.
And yet, to my knowledge, no one has posted any information on customers from the other major Sony hacks, and we know about them. If nothing else, they could have claimed to have performed the hack and that they have the proof and then only expose any of it *if* Sony denied it, which they presumably wouldn't do, since it's just going to make them look even worse once the intrusion is proven.
If the point of the hack is just to embarass Sony, they don't need to post customer information on their website. That is potentially hurting real people who are not responsible for Sony's activities. And no, paying for a Sony product does not make you responsible for their activities, particularly when it's you, the customer, who generally gets screwed by such activities.
That's like exposing a wife beater by publishing the names and addresses of all his past wives.
C. IM really confused as to what frame of reference you are using to determine that phaser fire is slower then a bullet.
As I recall, it's not uncommon to be able to actually track the progress of the beam with the naked eye even without a high speed camera. This is true of a bullet at long range (being able to track tracer rounds, for example), but I remember doing this with phasers sometimes when guys were shooting at each other in the same room.
I feel like it improves the pacing of combat. Spending half your time hiding and waiting for weapons to cooldown is kind of boring. On the other hand, it makes no sense in universe for guns to work this way. I'd like to see a compromise with thermal clips *and* weapon cooldowns. So essentially, you'll get so many free thermal refreshes in a mission (and maybe thermal clips themselves are rarer). That would encourage you to use them strategically.... but otherwise, your weapons will cool down on their own in time.
Well...Google Public Data says that our unemployment rate has doubled since 2001 (4.6% in 02/01 and 9.8%), the government had to bail out GM and Chrysler and also bailed out a number of banks. <shrug> We may not be completely sunk, but I think you could argue that the economy of the US has been critically damaged, at least.
By Osama? Why would you count from 2001? It spiked a bit shortly thereafter and then dropped for several years straight before spiking far more dramatically 2008-2009. Remind me again what it was Osama did to hurt our economy in that time frame.
The cost of the PS3 and its games are right on par with the cost of a Xbox and its games. I maybe could accept this lame argument if PS3 games cost an extra $20 or something, but they don't.
According to amazon, the retail price of an equivalent PS3 unit (comparing 250 GB slim models) is 50 bucks more, or the price of about a year of XBL. So that's not technically true. But really, the relative prices are immaterial.
Sony is eating the cost of PSN in an attempt to better compete with the much Xbox Live
Yes, but that money comes from revenue they make from systems and games. You *are* paying for it. It just doesn't appear on your credit card statement every month. It's like buying a lifetime subscription to something.
(which is a much more stable, consistent service with a significant headstart over PSN--but which charges $5 a month). The only thing "subsidizing" PSN is Sony. And this security breach seems to indicate that they were trying to do it on the cheap.
Well yes, they probably were. But that doesn't mean we can't expect it to be a good service. It was advertised as a competitor to XBL with the benefit that you don't need to pay for an ongoing subscription. This was a promise they made to people who were holding that PS3 box in their hands contemplating putting down a chunk of change on gaming console. We paid for this service, we just don't pay for an ongoing subscription. In the long run, we definitely pay *more* for XBL. Maybe we should also expect more. But that's not how I look at it. If they can't provide the same service as Microsoft without charging a subscription, then charge a damn subscription. What was advertised was equivalent service, and that's what I want.
That's not true at all. [...]the infection rate is still very high.
So... minor nitpick, but he didn't say it wasn't high, he said it wasn't *as* high. Are you saying that the infection rate is equivalent? I mean, by pure virtue of people looking at more porn on their home computers than work computers, I'd expect it to be lower, even if you don't account for security and firewalls and whatnot that are erected as IT practices.
You get what you pay for. And since you pay, oh, NOTHING for PSN then that's what you deserve to get in compensation. Unless you're PSN Plus user or you have bought PSN games from them that you can't play offline, then STFU. This isn't Xbox Live, this is a free service that Sony generously provides.
And is a major selling point of their PS3 system, which they, last I checked, charge for. I think they charge for the games, too. Are you really trying to argue that PS3 owners have no reasonable expectation that Sony will maintain the service and continue to support their multiplayer experiences? Are you really trying to argue that Sony has no responsibility to its customers with regard to the state of PSN?
The service is part of the package, and a customer has certain expectations of that service when the package is purchased. If you purchase a Kindle, you expect you'll be able to download books to it. That's a key selling point of the Kindle. It doesn't matter that they don't charge for the continued service; that's just how the damn thing is supposed to work. The PS3 is the same way.
If you don't like it, buy an Xbox and pay them $5 a month for the privilege of what Sony gives you for free.
Last I checked, XBL is still up. Look, which way do you want it? Do you want to argue that they are equivalent services and that Sony's is better because it's free or do you want to argue that Sony's service, due to being free, should not be subject to the same expectations as XBL? You seem to want to have it both ways.
Cry me a fucking river. You get your free credit protection, what more do you want for not being able to play your precious video games through a free online service?
(I presume based on the OP's inane whining that they are not paying for PSN+.)
I know what I want. I want to play my video games through an online service. I'm sick of this stupid excuse. Online multiplayer is an advertised feature and an expectation of the system. If you bought a Kindle 3G and suddenly you couldn't download any books to it for a month, do you really think "Yeah, but you don't pay extra for the 3G service" is a valid excuse?
The person who had their card stolen was still heavily inconvenienced by the whole thing. I had my card stolen once and I felt violated. I tried to social engineer the mailing address of the purchased CDs out of an operator, but I failed. Seriously, though, I wanted to show up with a baseball bat and break some kneecaps. I only wish I had had a recourse other than letting the card company take care of it and issue a new card. They may not have wanted to press charges, but I did.
No, not blindly following programming. I've thought this one thru.
Evidently you haven't thought it through enough.
It's like buying Mexican pot. It might get you really nice and high. No problem, right? You paid for it and maybe it's kinda legal or you have a medical prescription or something.
Along the way,however, the Mexican drug cartels-- the people in the delivery chain-- have murdered in hideous ways almost 100,000 people, many of them guilty of only trying to resist being exploited. Some were just in the way.
Yes. And this is because there's an actual market for it. Presumably this would stop if everyone stopped buying it, yes? Well what if people stopped paying for it, but somehow managed to continue consuming it? Would have the same effect, yes? That's the point others are making.
"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.
No. This is kind of frustrating to be honest. My view is that real human beings and facsimiles of fake human beings feel fundamentally different *in my gut*. They don't feel the same in my gut, but I rationalize that it's ok to kill them because they aren't real, thus possibly desensitizing me to the murder of actual people. They feel as different in *my gut* as a person and a styrofoam cup. In order to rebut this argument you must either tell me that the facsimiles of people in GTA actually *do* mean more to me on a gut level than a styrofoam cup or you must show that destroying styrofoam cups would also condition me to be a murderer. I'm snipping the rest of your post, because it's based on a false premise. You have to walk before you can run, and before you can bring up PTSD, you have to show that killing video game facsimiles of people is actually similar, to my unconscious, to killing real people.
"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.
Quite possibly. And maybe they'll do that anyway. Humans already possess these capacities, and there are a number of factors that go into what decision a person makes. But humans have it in them to be violent already regardless of what tool or weapon you put in their hands.
"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..
You misunderstand. I was saying that I have a gut reaction that determines my perspective of something. Committing violence against a friend is an abhorrent idea. Committing violence against a stranger is abhorrent, though perhaps less so. Committing violence against an animal seems disturbing and unpleasant. Committing violence against a person's property seems inappropriate. Committing violence against a facsimile of a real person, seems uncomfortable. Committing violence against a facsimile of a fake person seems like nothing at all. My point is that training yourself to be desensitized to violence against facsimiles of fake people does not seem more profound than training yourself to be desensitized to committing violence against styrofoam cups. They aren't people. There is no place in my head that is confused on this point, either logically or unconsciously. And that is evidenced by my unconscious reaction to them. They don't elicit a reaction that is remotely similar to what a real person elicits.
"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,
No no, you don't get to just point to bad things and claim that they were caused by the effect you describe. If I'm going to put any faith in your theory, you have to come up with some plausible cause and effect. Let's start with me. You say that it has an effect on my unconscious that I do not notice. That's a hypothesis. Now give me something testable. What predictions are made by your hypothesis? How can we test them? In short, why should I give this any credibility? "Bad stuff happens in the world and I personally think the two are related" is not going to cut it.
Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a lunatic, violent crime does continue to decrease, and while rape is a very serious problem, many of these statistics are more a matter of creative definition than anything else. Wonder how high the proportion of men who have been "raped, abused, or beaten" is. I hate "inclusive or".
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.
Sure, ok, but that doesn't suggest to me that your morality is impacted. The person who never trained in firearms might punch or kick in that confrontational situation. That will be less effective, certainly, but it isn't fundamentally more moral.
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.
Well actually, I devoted much of my last post to unconscious gut reactions.
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.
I'm more concerned about children too. But I also think we, as a society, are a bit prone to overreaction with regard to our children. I would agree that their minds are more impressionable, but I don't think they're as fragile as we, as a society, seem to think they are. You're fighting a losing battle if you try to shelter children from every negative influence. You just have to make sure you give them the tools to evaluate what they see and put it in the right context.
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.
Ok, that sounded ominous.... until it occurred to me that if it's an effect I'm not aware of, I'm not sure why I should care about it. Must be a pretty subtle effect. I'll spend my time worrying about the things that affect me in noticeable ways.
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.
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.
I still have yet to hear a single word out of Sony. Had I not seen the Playstation Blog post, I would have known NOTHING about the severity of this issue until it hit all the major news outlets.
Indeed. On the blog, I noticed some apologist in the comment section trying to defend Sony by saying that it takes a long time to send 77 million emails. Tell that to a spammer, I thought.
Maybe this lawsuit will require them to come forward with the steps they *did* take. Up until now, it's largely been speculation. If they locked the door but left open a window, I want to know. And I want to know how open that window was left.
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.
I'm not convinced it's as easy as that. Context plays a huge role, too. I've had times where I noticed a cardboard cut-out out of the corner of my eye, thought it was a real person, and had a very immediate and strong reaction to it that was beyond my control (I hadn't expected there to be a person silently standing there). When I realized it was a cardboard cut-out, my entire perception shifted instantly. It didn't look any different; it just took on an entirely different context, which completely altered my gut feelings about it. I don't have the gut feeling that a pedestrian in GTA is a person.
Why does the gut feeling matter? I honestly believe that most of our morality comes from instinct. We're social animals, hard-wired for compassion, empathy, and cooperation. We want to build relationships. We want to trust and care for others and we want others to trust and care for us. On the other hand, we've evolved an ability to be very violent. There are limited resources at our disposal, and survival is paramount. If we always felt compassion and empathy for everything we encountered, we would be outcompeted by other humans who could do so selectively. So, typically, killing a stranger bothers us less than killing someone we know. Killing an animal bothers us less than killing a stranger. Breaking a vase bothers us less than killing an animal. And so on. The less *genuinely* humanlike something seems, the less of an aversion there is to harming it.
Slashdot Mirror
Which still does not confer responsibility. Buying a Sony product should not be taken as an endorsement of everything they do any more than boycotting Sony should send the message that you hate Playstation 3 exclusives (you certainly won't be playing them). Sony is a big company with a lot of activities, and not all of them are objectionable.
If we're really going to fall back on the invisible hand, then the conclusion is not that consumers are responsible for evil, but rather that Sony does more good than evil. Or that people are more evil than good (which I don't believe). Because ultimately the invisible hand assumes that, in aggregate, people will make the right choice and bad behavior will be selected out. So either the theory is flawed and thus not a good basis for determining responsibility, or people are evil and I guess they did deserve to have their personal details shared.
With the tenants inside, no less! :)
And yet, to my knowledge, no one has posted any information on customers from the other major Sony hacks, and we know about them. If nothing else, they could have claimed to have performed the hack and that they have the proof and then only expose any of it *if* Sony denied it, which they presumably wouldn't do, since it's just going to make them look even worse once the intrusion is proven.
If the point of the hack is just to embarass Sony, they don't need to post customer information on their website. That is potentially hurting real people who are not responsible for Sony's activities. And no, paying for a Sony product does not make you responsible for their activities, particularly when it's you, the customer, who generally gets screwed by such activities.
That's like exposing a wife beater by publishing the names and addresses of all his past wives.
Before the first operation, the professor held a symposium to discuss the procedure, to which senior surgeons and a theologian were invited.
A theologian? What?
Yeah, or until it started doing that spinning wrist thing without loosening its grip first....
Just get a fleshlight attachment. Easy.
C. IM really confused as to what frame of reference you are using to determine that phaser fire is slower then a bullet.
As I recall, it's not uncommon to be able to actually track the progress of the beam with the naked eye even without a high speed camera. This is true of a bullet at long range (being able to track tracer rounds, for example), but I remember doing this with phasers sometimes when guys were shooting at each other in the same room.
It was the dumbest system ever.
I feel like it improves the pacing of combat. Spending half your time hiding and waiting for weapons to cooldown is kind of boring. On the other hand, it makes no sense in universe for guns to work this way. I'd like to see a compromise with thermal clips *and* weapon cooldowns. So essentially, you'll get so many free thermal refreshes in a mission (and maybe thermal clips themselves are rarer). That would encourage you to use them strategically.... but otherwise, your weapons will cool down on their own in time.
They could make that a perk of first class. I'd consider upgrading my tickets.
Well...Google Public Data says that our unemployment rate has doubled since 2001 (4.6% in 02/01 and 9.8%), the government had to bail out GM and Chrysler and also bailed out a number of banks. <shrug> We may not be completely sunk, but I think you could argue that the economy of the US has been critically damaged, at least.
By Osama? Why would you count from 2001? It spiked a bit shortly thereafter and then dropped for several years straight before spiking far more dramatically 2008-2009. Remind me again what it was Osama did to hurt our economy in that time frame.
The cost of the PS3 and its games are right on par with the cost of a Xbox and its games. I maybe could accept this lame argument if PS3 games cost an extra $20 or something, but they don't.
According to amazon, the retail price of an equivalent PS3 unit (comparing 250 GB slim models) is 50 bucks more, or the price of about a year of XBL. So that's not technically true. But really, the relative prices are immaterial.
Sony is eating the cost of PSN in an attempt to better compete with the much Xbox Live
Yes, but that money comes from revenue they make from systems and games. You *are* paying for it. It just doesn't appear on your credit card statement every month. It's like buying a lifetime subscription to something.
(which is a much more stable, consistent service with a significant headstart over PSN--but which charges $5 a month). The only thing "subsidizing" PSN is Sony. And this security breach seems to indicate that they were trying to do it on the cheap.
Well yes, they probably were. But that doesn't mean we can't expect it to be a good service. It was advertised as a competitor to XBL with the benefit that you don't need to pay for an ongoing subscription. This was a promise they made to people who were holding that PS3 box in their hands contemplating putting down a chunk of change on gaming console. We paid for this service, we just don't pay for an ongoing subscription. In the long run, we definitely pay *more* for XBL. Maybe we should also expect more. But that's not how I look at it. If they can't provide the same service as Microsoft without charging a subscription, then charge a damn subscription. What was advertised was equivalent service, and that's what I want.
less likely
That's not true at all. [...]the infection rate is still very high.
So... minor nitpick, but he didn't say it wasn't high, he said it wasn't *as* high. Are you saying that the infection rate is equivalent? I mean, by pure virtue of people looking at more porn on their home computers than work computers, I'd expect it to be lower, even if you don't account for security and firewalls and whatnot that are erected as IT practices.
You get what you pay for. And since you pay, oh, NOTHING for PSN then that's what you deserve to get in compensation. Unless you're PSN Plus user or you have bought PSN games from them that you can't play offline, then STFU. This isn't Xbox Live, this is a free service that Sony generously provides.
And is a major selling point of their PS3 system, which they, last I checked, charge for. I think they charge for the games, too. Are you really trying to argue that PS3 owners have no reasonable expectation that Sony will maintain the service and continue to support their multiplayer experiences? Are you really trying to argue that Sony has no responsibility to its customers with regard to the state of PSN?
The service is part of the package, and a customer has certain expectations of that service when the package is purchased. If you purchase a Kindle, you expect you'll be able to download books to it. That's a key selling point of the Kindle. It doesn't matter that they don't charge for the continued service; that's just how the damn thing is supposed to work. The PS3 is the same way.
If you don't like it, buy an Xbox and pay them $5 a month for the privilege of what Sony gives you for free.
Last I checked, XBL is still up. Look, which way do you want it? Do you want to argue that they are equivalent services and that Sony's is better because it's free or do you want to argue that Sony's service, due to being free, should not be subject to the same expectations as XBL? You seem to want to have it both ways.
Cry me a fucking river. You get your free credit protection, what more do you want for not being able to play your precious video games through a free online service?
(I presume based on the OP's inane whining that they are not paying for PSN+.)
I know what I want. I want to play my video games through an online service. I'm sick of this stupid excuse. Online multiplayer is an advertised feature and an expectation of the system. If you bought a Kindle 3G and suddenly you couldn't download any books to it for a month, do you really think "Yeah, but you don't pay extra for the 3G service" is a valid excuse?
Sony is giving you a free service that you didn't pay anything for.
I paid $600 for it. It came as part of a bundle with some hardware.
Awww, that's cute. A person who thinks a low user ID counts for something ;)
The person who had their card stolen was still heavily inconvenienced by the whole thing. I had my card stolen once and I felt violated. I tried to social engineer the mailing address of the purchased CDs out of an operator, but I failed. Seriously, though, I wanted to show up with a baseball bat and break some kneecaps. I only wish I had had a recourse other than letting the card company take care of it and issue a new card. They may not have wanted to press charges, but I did.
No, not blindly following programming. I've thought this one thru.
Evidently you haven't thought it through enough.
It's like buying Mexican pot. It might get you really nice and high. No problem, right? You paid for it and maybe it's kinda legal or you have a medical prescription or something.
Along the way,however, the Mexican drug cartels-- the people in the delivery chain-- have murdered in hideous ways almost 100,000 people, many of them guilty of only trying to resist being exploited. Some were just in the way.
Yes. And this is because there's an actual market for it. Presumably this would stop if everyone stopped buying it, yes? Well what if people stopped paying for it, but somehow managed to continue consuming it? Would have the same effect, yes? That's the point others are making.
"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.
No. This is kind of frustrating to be honest. My view is that real human beings and facsimiles of fake human beings feel fundamentally different *in my gut*. They don't feel the same in my gut, but I rationalize that it's ok to kill them because they aren't real, thus possibly desensitizing me to the murder of actual people. They feel as different in *my gut* as a person and a styrofoam cup. In order to rebut this argument you must either tell me that the facsimiles of people in GTA actually *do* mean more to me on a gut level than a styrofoam cup or you must show that destroying styrofoam cups would also condition me to be a murderer. I'm snipping the rest of your post, because it's based on a false premise. You have to walk before you can run, and before you can bring up PTSD, you have to show that killing video game facsimiles of people is actually similar, to my unconscious, to killing real people.
"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.
Quite possibly. And maybe they'll do that anyway. Humans already possess these capacities, and there are a number of factors that go into what decision a person makes. But humans have it in them to be violent already regardless of what tool or weapon you put in their hands.
"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..
You misunderstand. I was saying that I have a gut reaction that determines my perspective of something. Committing violence against a friend is an abhorrent idea. Committing violence against a stranger is abhorrent, though perhaps less so. Committing violence against an animal seems disturbing and unpleasant. Committing violence against a person's property seems inappropriate. Committing violence against a facsimile of a real person, seems uncomfortable. Committing violence against a facsimile of a fake person seems like nothing at all. My point is that training yourself to be desensitized to violence against facsimiles of fake people does not seem more profound than training yourself to be desensitized to committing violence against styrofoam cups. They aren't people. There is no place in my head that is confused on this point, either logically or unconsciously. And that is evidenced by my unconscious reaction to them. They don't elicit a reaction that is remotely similar to what a real person elicits.
"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,
No no, you don't get to just point to bad things and claim that they were caused by the effect you describe. If I'm going to put any faith in your theory, you have to come up with some plausible cause and effect. Let's start with me. You say that it has an effect on my unconscious that I do not notice. That's a hypothesis. Now give me something testable. What predictions are made by your hypothesis? How can we test them? In short, why should I give this any credibility? "Bad stuff happens in the world and I personally think the two are related" is not going to cut it.
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
Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a lunatic, violent crime does continue to decrease, and while rape is a very serious problem, many of these statistics are more a matter of creative definition than anything else. Wonder how high the proportion of men who have been "raped, abused, or beaten" is. I hate "inclusive or".
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.
Sure, ok, but that doesn't suggest to me that your morality is impacted. The person who never trained in firearms might punch or kick in that confrontational situation. That will be less effective, certainly, but it isn't fundamentally more moral.
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.
Well actually, I devoted much of my last post to unconscious gut reactions.
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.
I'm more concerned about children too. But I also think we, as a society, are a bit prone to overreaction with regard to our children. I would agree that their minds are more impressionable, but I don't think they're as fragile as we, as a society, seem to think they are. You're fighting a losing battle if you try to shelter children from every negative influence. You just have to make sure you give them the tools to evaluate what they see and put it in the right context.
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.
Ok, that sounded ominous.... until it occurred to me that if it's an effect I'm not aware of, I'm not sure why I should care about it. Must be a pretty subtle effect. I'll spend my time worrying about the things that affect me in noticeable ways.
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.
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.
I still have yet to hear a single word out of Sony. Had I not seen the Playstation Blog post, I would have known NOTHING about the severity of this issue until it hit all the major news outlets.
Indeed. On the blog, I noticed some apologist in the comment section trying to defend Sony by saying that it takes a long time to send 77 million emails. Tell that to a spammer, I thought.
Maybe this lawsuit will require them to come forward with the steps they *did* take. Up until now, it's largely been speculation. If they locked the door but left open a window, I want to know. And I want to know how open that window was left.
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.
I'm not convinced it's as easy as that. Context plays a huge role, too. I've had times where I noticed a cardboard cut-out out of the corner of my eye, thought it was a real person, and had a very immediate and strong reaction to it that was beyond my control (I hadn't expected there to be a person silently standing there). When I realized it was a cardboard cut-out, my entire perception shifted instantly. It didn't look any different; it just took on an entirely different context, which completely altered my gut feelings about it. I don't have the gut feeling that a pedestrian in GTA is a person.
Why does the gut feeling matter? I honestly believe that most of our morality comes from instinct. We're social animals, hard-wired for compassion, empathy, and cooperation. We want to build relationships. We want to trust and care for others and we want others to trust and care for us. On the other hand, we've evolved an ability to be very violent. There are limited resources at our disposal, and survival is paramount. If we always felt compassion and empathy for everything we encountered, we would be outcompeted by other humans who could do so selectively. So, typically, killing a stranger bothers us less than killing someone we know. Killing an animal bothers us less than killing a stranger. Breaking a vase bothers us less than killing an animal. And so on. The less *genuinely* humanlike something seems, the less of an aversion there is to harming it.