I may be uniquely qualified to comment on this, as I spent the last decade of my life, until last October, working closely with Dr. Merzenich on issues of how the brain is altered by reinforced behaviors, and know the details of the testing that has, so far, gone into their program to address age-related cognitive decline.
I love it. We need more scientists on Slashdot. Seriously.
First, let's clear up any thought this would address Alzheimer's. It has nothing to do with neurofibrillary tangles and plaques that define Alzheimers.
No, not the cellular/molecular pathology per se, but the cognitive decline in Alzheimer's is of interest, yes? From the website: "Early-Stage Alzheimer's Disease: We are conducting a pilot study with UCSF in early-stage Alzheimer's disease. This study is currently enrolling participants through the UCSF Memory and Aging Center."
What has been done so far, is to demonstrate that practicing certain types of computer guided behaviors for about an hour a day, every day, can have a fairly enormous impact on age-related cognitive decline. Attention and vigilance in rewarded behaviors, nothing more.
Absolutely. I am not refuting this, rather I am saying that it could be surmised that an equivalent degree of mental exercise doing a number of real world tasks could have the same effect.
And you might wonder where this guy, Merzenich, gets off thinking this...well, here are some resume highlights.
I was not questioning the credentials (or yours for that matter). I was simply pointing out that one does not necessarily need a $500 piece of software to limit age related cognitive decline.
But for certain in the initial short-term, people who have substantially advanced cognitive decline relative to their peers can lose a decade or more of their age-related loss in a several week long training period. And that is worth getting excited about.
I have no doubt. The brain, just like any biological system, gets "better" with use/reinforcement.
we're all familiar with plasticity, eg blind people who acquire acute hearing as a way of coping with their loss by "exercising" the parts of the brain that deal with hearing.
It should also be known that there is negative plasticity as well, such as the type that can be found in epilepsy, retinal degeneration and other neurodegenerative diseases.
There could be some legitimacy behind this program under these principals, couldn't there? If you constantly tax those parts of the brain through these tests, as those who are blind do every day, couldn't you reap the same benefits? Here's a snip of some of the benefits I'm talking about, taken from a clinical study on the subject.
You are absolutely correct, and there is some legitimacy to this. My objection was the lack of disclosure (and being Windows only) as well as pointing out that there are healthier and cheaper ways to accomplish the same results. i.e. One does not have to buy into dumbed down science and fork over $500 to get the same results.
Problem: The linked test only works with Windows...... So, never mind.
Seriously though, this title is in a way, kinda bogus science in that it does not measure brain speed per se, but is more a measure of efficiency (a subtle but important difference). Basic central auditory response curves should be identical for most folks unless there is a processing delay like a developmental abnormality in one of the auditory nuclei or unless there is some pathology like Multiple Sclerosis (MS) which could bias the test and not be indicative of cognitive performance. Also, this test could be biased by damage to the cochlear hair cells that reduce ones frequency perception, but this apparent deficiency would have no real bearing on "brain speed" either.
If they are using this test to determine cognitive impairments such as Alzheimer's Disease, they should have some disclaimers present that explicitly point out that even mild hearing loss could compromise the results of this study among other causes.
And yes..... IAANS (I Am A NeuroScientist).
And it also appears that the author of the software is trying to sell it to "help people reduce the effects of aging", to which I say pffffft! Just stay physically and mentally active. Go running/walking/swimming/riding a bike and read books or hell, for your brain and auditory processing, even play video games (just make sure you get the physical exercise too and please continue to read books/newspapers). All of that is lots cheaper than forking out $500 for this software and likely more effective?
You know.... I think you are absolutely correct. I've had so many Macs, but it must have been my first PowerMac 9600....which would have made it around late 1996 or early 1997 or so. Thanks for the clarification, because as I remember in the dim recesses of my mind the 840av was the one that I had three Radius cards in allowing me to play Hornet with three monitors. Wow....it seems so long ago.
Why would I waste precious GPU processing to process Physics?......I would prefer if nVidia and ATI actually focused on bringing cinematic quality 3D rendering to gaming, instead of just claiming they do.
Because there is more to computer graphics than simply playing games. Lots of people use computers to model graphics for everything from building airplanes to modeling combustion and nuclear weapons research. GPU's actually are fairly sophisticated computing platforms and can assist tremendously in helping to offload some of the computational load required by intensive modeling.
This will be critically important as programs start to push particle and geometry modeling. I remember back when I had my Quadra 840av in 1993, I popped a couple of Wizard 3dfx Voodoo cards in it when they first started supporting SLI and the performance benefits were noticeable. Of course we were all hoping for the performance to continue to scale, but 3Dfx started getting interested in other markets including defense and then were bought by Nvidia making me wonder if SLI would ever really take off. It's nice to see that the technology is still around and flourishing.
What about private non-profit groups, like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?
Those are important and we should all be grateful for their generosity. However, they contribute only a very, very small percentage of the overall amount of money that goes into bioscience research. The nice thing about private groups is that they can direct research funding that are close to their own interests, but there are lots of research projects that go un-addressed. For instance, many private foundations want to direct research toward applied projects that are close to their desires, whereas with many traditionally funded research agencies like the NIH, NSF and other sources, researchers can propose their own research ideas which can have novel and innovative results that reveal new insights.
I think your response shows the deceptiveness and self-centered greed that characterizes special interests.
If you can call my concern for science funding a "special interest" then so be it, but there is nothing deceptive about it. And I find it difficult to understand how you could call my concern for science, education and international progress self-centered.
What you call 'reduced funding' is actually increased funding at a lower rate of growth.
I fail to see how you can see this and this this as simply lower rates of growth. But maybe that's the new math that the Bush administration was talking about.
In an era were federal spending is out of control I would have hoped that growth in the NIH budget could be restrained more.
What would you rather have federal funding spent on? If we are going to be "taxed" at the rates that the Bush administration seems to feel are acceptable, would you not rather have the money go to science funding rather than subsidizing companies like Halliburton?
My guess is that the damage being done is similarly illusory.
Well, our lab has been doing OK, but the 20% cut that many NIH funded labs have endured this year has meant the loss of a significant number of highly skilled jobs that return money in tax revenues. I personally know eleven jobs that have been eliminated as a result of these cuts and beyond that, there are a significant number of positions that could not be filled to begin with. We were planning on hiring two additional positions alone, but are now having to work doubly hard to find the funding we had been already promised in our current budget to hire those two positions.
Because of the intrinsically political nature of taxpayer funding. The current administration only has the power to halt stem-cell research (for example), because it's government money.
Sure, that is a problem and a risk, but what do you suggest is a reasonable alternative for funding basic science research that will benefit a range from the individual to a wider society?
Additionally, it could be argued that a countries security is in large part based upon its ability to bring its combined intellectual capabilities to bear on problems great and small. So, why would it not benefit society to fund basic science again?
Re:private research then becomes worth more
on
On the Future of Science
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
A lack of government research should actually open up doors for private research.
I should point out that when basic research is privatized, there will be much less incentive for rare medical defects to be investigated. If there is not an economic incentive, then the work would not be done. It should also be mentioned that there are many profound discoveries and improvements of understanding of basic science that have been made as a result of the investigation of rare genetic defects. These discoveries have been applicable to other more general problems as a result and would never have been made if the basic science research had not been funded.
So, you could write off much of our understanding of the molecular biology of genetics which took some years for companies to even understand how to exploit for profit. Where would we be do you think if there were no government funding of basic science research?
I see it as far more problematic that we now expect the taxpayer to be the main source of funding for basic research.
Why not? It has been fairly conclusive that taxpayer investment in basic science research has paid off handsomely in terms of return on investment going back to the 1940's.
It is also interesting to note that over two thirds of federally funded research agencies are seeing Presidentially projected decreases in funding through 2011. This is what I am talking about with respect to commitments to science and education.
Hey Otter. Thanks for the response. It would be a mistake to say he threw huge increases in the NIH funding. In reality, he chose to follow the Clinton NIH funding plan for 2002-2003, but then started restricting increases in bioscience funding only to start reducing funding with this years budget in just about every basic science arena in favor of increases in applied research.... in particular weapons research. Obtained from your same reference.
Nobody has claimed it was a funding crisis however. One might be more correct in saying that the priorities of this administration are what is at issue.
People and companies will do research so long as it remains profitable to do so.
Ahhhh, spoken like a person who has no real understanding of the history of science. Are you aware that essentially *all* applied scientific knowledge and applications are derived from basic science research? Nuclear power, the Internet, genetics, medicine, and more. Applied research that corporations and private companies are interested in is generally applied research that is only made possible after the basic science work has been done.
Also, on what do you make this prediction that it'd take 10 years to repair the "damage" anyways?
This is based on the number of existing grants that have been failed to be renewed from senior investigators due to reduced funding, the number of jobs that have been eliminated by even recent cuts this year (many labs have had their grants cut by 20% this year alone), and the number of post-docs that have failed to achieve more permanent academic positions in the past few years.
An honest question: What exactly makes you assume the next century of scientific advancement will happen in America?
This is actually a really, really good question. My answer would be that the NIH has historically been the leading funding source for bioscience in the world. Also, it is important to note that the NIH *does* fund research in other countries as well... However, it is also important to note that other countries are stepping up and the number of published papers in bioscience being published in other countries are on the increase. The next century is difficult to predict, but it would be safe to say that even over the next decade, the US will continue to dominate bioscience work and funding. The question is whether or not we have a commitment to maintain our lead in bioscience past this decade into the rest of the century.
This will be interesting considering that the current administration has for the first time in 30 years, reduced the funding of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and not allowed its budget to keep up with inflation and shows their lack of commitment to bioscience research. I predict this damage will take at least 10 years to repair.
Sure, from a geek perspective, this is mildly interesting, but not cool as we have known all along that there are no real fundamental architecture differences that would preclude this from happening..... so, I have a hard time understanding exactly why everybody seems so obsessed about this. I switched from Windows to the MacOS not because of the hardware, but because of the OS, so why would I want to run Windows on my Mac? And no, I don't care about all the games that are available on Windows.... no time these days.
The one place where I could see an advantage would be to run the occasional software package available on Windows, because under a dual boot environment, I am still prevented from sharing data between the OS's in a facile manner. So what would be impressive, is a transparent translation shell for OS X (like Virtual PC), supported natively in the OS that would allow me run apps, to cut and paste between environments and read/write to/from shared space without having to resort to separately booting or partitioning.
I am not saying that guns are the root of violence. They are simply a means to violence. The real root causes are like you say, socio-economic ones. The solution is to help people feel less disenfranchised because when you have something to live for, there are more costs to violence. For many, while they are not actually calculating the metrics, violence becomes cost effective. Give 'em something to loose.
So this "hardest thing was to get people to pull the trigger" is plain bullshit.
OK. So, imagine this scenario..... You are deployed to some central African country, say....Liberia. You are on patrol and come under fire. Your squad takes cover instinctively to orient and determine source of fire. While under fire, a 12 year old boy comes around the corner and levels a battle rifle at you........ this is a 12 year old boy...... Do you fire immediately? Do you hesitate? This is a real world scenario and even battle hardened SPECOPS guys have to train for it these days.
Thanks for your service by the way. Just keep that scenario in mind before you spout off.
In other words, people have a natural resistance to killing another human being.
Exactly. "The moment of truth" is a euphemism that is used as part of the training to further separate the soldier from the possible reality/finality. One of the major problems that any civilized society has however, is the re-indoctrination of soldiers back into civilian life after having those soldiers serve in combat. It is a real psychological/social/medical issue that many of our troops are having to face right now.
You give me the creeps. I hope I'm not the only one.
I am sorry you feel that way. I myself am not a soldier, but a scientist now and I would hope that you could reserve judgement for when you truly understand a person. Many of our soldiers are simply carrying out their jobs and doing what they are trained to do. It's a job. If you have a problem with their job, then talk to the people that direct soldiers and deliver the policy and strategy that sends soldiers to work.
I never supported the argument but I have to wonder if it is in fact true.
I will tell you that it is in fact, true. Desensitizing people to violence can be accomplished virtually. However, there are no statistics that relate a person's likely hood of committing violence after playing video games (which is what the question they anti game people are talking about). The real problem with violence is the availability of small arms. They are everywhere in the world and are actually much easier/cheaper to obtain in third world countries than they are here in the US and in many parts of the world, violence is so endemic that one does not worry about hesitation. People will simply pull the trigger with no hesitation and no remorse. Yes, violence is a problem here in the US, but there are other parts of the world that are almost Clockwork Orange in their ultraviolence.
A 5.1 Surround System with a subwoofer set on high should fix that problem.
Trust me..... No Surround system I have EVER seen will simulate the experience of standing next to/behind/infront of/below a M60 when that sucker goes off. You feel it as much as you hear and see it. The German contingent that trained with us also had an equivalent H&K that is unbelievably loud and fearsome. Even more so than the SAW. Even the combined fire of a squad with small 5.56mm based platforms (M4 and M249) can make for some pretty impressive sound sight and smell. Nothing I have ever seen can simulate that.
When I did small arms training, one of the hardest things to do (for the Corps at least) was to get people to pull the trigger at the moment of truth. There is a built in hesitation that people have to shooting others. So, training typically starts off with standard targets and then progresses to targets of humans in silhouette, then for close quarters battle training, targets become more realistic looking.
Using CG generated images helps significantly by enhancing the realism and lowering the threshold of resistance to "trigger pull".
What computers cannot teach however, is the NOISE and physical presence of a firefight.
Slashdot Mirror
I may be uniquely qualified to comment on this, as I spent the last decade of my life, until last October, working closely with Dr. Merzenich on issues of how the brain is altered by reinforced behaviors, and know the details of the testing that has, so far, gone into their program to address age-related cognitive decline.
I love it. We need more scientists on Slashdot. Seriously.
First, let's clear up any thought this would address Alzheimer's. It has nothing to do with neurofibrillary tangles and plaques that define Alzheimers.
No, not the cellular/molecular pathology per se, but the cognitive decline in Alzheimer's is of interest, yes? From the website: "Early-Stage Alzheimer's Disease: We are conducting a pilot study with UCSF in early-stage Alzheimer's disease. This study is currently enrolling participants through the UCSF Memory and Aging Center."
What has been done so far, is to demonstrate that practicing certain types of computer guided behaviors for about an hour a day, every day, can have a fairly enormous impact on age-related cognitive decline. Attention and vigilance in rewarded behaviors, nothing more.
Absolutely. I am not refuting this, rather I am saying that it could be surmised that an equivalent degree of mental exercise doing a number of real world tasks could have the same effect.
And you might wonder where this guy, Merzenich, gets off thinking this...well, here are some resume highlights.
I was not questioning the credentials (or yours for that matter). I was simply pointing out that one does not necessarily need a $500 piece of software to limit age related cognitive decline.
But for certain in the initial short-term, people who have substantially advanced cognitive decline relative to their peers can lose a decade or more of their age-related loss in a several week long training period. And that is worth getting excited about.
I have no doubt. The brain, just like any biological system, gets "better" with use/reinforcement.
only windows users have brains???? I'm not sure because I am a mac user.
:-)
If it makes you feel any better, this neuroscientist also prefers a Mac.
we're all familiar with plasticity, eg blind people who acquire acute hearing as a way of coping with their loss by "exercising" the parts of the brain that deal with hearing.
It should also be known that there is negative plasticity as well, such as the type that can be found in epilepsy, retinal degeneration and other neurodegenerative diseases.
There could be some legitimacy behind this program under these principals, couldn't there? If you constantly tax those parts of the brain through these tests, as those who are blind do every day, couldn't you reap the same benefits? Here's a snip of some of the benefits I'm talking about, taken from a clinical study on the subject.
You are absolutely correct, and there is some legitimacy to this. My objection was the lack of disclosure (and being Windows only) as well as pointing out that there are healthier and cheaper ways to accomplish the same results. i.e. One does not have to buy into dumbed down science and fork over $500 to get the same results.
Problem: The linked test only works with Windows...... So, never mind.
Seriously though, this title is in a way, kinda bogus science in that it does not measure brain speed per se, but is more a measure of efficiency (a subtle but important difference). Basic central auditory response curves should be identical for most folks unless there is a processing delay like a developmental abnormality in one of the auditory nuclei or unless there is some pathology like Multiple Sclerosis (MS) which could bias the test and not be indicative of cognitive performance. Also, this test could be biased by damage to the cochlear hair cells that reduce ones frequency perception, but this apparent deficiency would have no real bearing on "brain speed" either.
If they are using this test to determine cognitive impairments such as Alzheimer's Disease, they should have some disclaimers present that explicitly point out that even mild hearing loss could compromise the results of this study among other causes.
And yes..... IAANS (I Am A NeuroScientist).
And it also appears that the author of the software is trying to sell it to "help people reduce the effects of aging", to which I say pffffft! Just stay physically and mentally active. Go running/walking/swimming/riding a bike and read books or hell, for your brain and auditory processing, even play video games (just make sure you get the physical exercise too and please continue to read books/newspapers). All of that is lots cheaper than forking out $500 for this software and likely more effective?
You know.... I think you are absolutely correct. I've had so many Macs, but it must have been my first PowerMac 9600....which would have made it around late 1996 or early 1997 or so. Thanks for the clarification, because as I remember in the dim recesses of my mind the 840av was the one that I had three Radius cards in allowing me to play Hornet with three monitors. Wow....it seems so long ago.
Why would I waste precious GPU processing to process Physics? ......I would prefer if nVidia and ATI actually focused on bringing cinematic quality 3D rendering to gaming, instead of just claiming they do.
Because there is more to computer graphics than simply playing games. Lots of people use computers to model graphics for everything from building airplanes to modeling combustion and nuclear weapons research. GPU's actually are fairly sophisticated computing platforms and can assist tremendously in helping to offload some of the computational load required by intensive modeling.
This will be critically important as programs start to push particle and geometry modeling. I remember back when I had my Quadra 840av in 1993, I popped a couple of Wizard 3dfx Voodoo cards in it when they first started supporting SLI and the performance benefits were noticeable. Of course we were all hoping for the performance to continue to scale, but 3Dfx started getting interested in other markets including defense and then were bought by Nvidia making me wonder if SLI would ever really take off. It's nice to see that the technology is still around and flourishing.
What about private non-profit groups, like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?
Those are important and we should all be grateful for their generosity. However, they contribute only a very, very small percentage of the overall amount of money that goes into bioscience research. The nice thing about private groups is that they can direct research funding that are close to their own interests, but there are lots of research projects that go un-addressed. For instance, many private foundations want to direct research toward applied projects that are close to their desires, whereas with many traditionally funded research agencies like the NIH, NSF and other sources, researchers can propose their own research ideas which can have novel and innovative results that reveal new insights.
I think your response shows the deceptiveness and self-centered greed that characterizes special interests.
If you can call my concern for science funding a "special interest" then so be it, but there is nothing deceptive about it. And I find it difficult to understand how you could call my concern for science, education and international progress self-centered.
What you call 'reduced funding' is actually increased funding at a lower rate of growth.
I fail to see how you can see this and this this as simply lower rates of growth. But maybe that's the new math that the Bush administration was talking about.
In an era were federal spending is out of control I would have hoped that growth in the NIH budget could be restrained more.
What would you rather have federal funding spent on? If we are going to be "taxed" at the rates that the Bush administration seems to feel are acceptable, would you not rather have the money go to science funding rather than subsidizing companies like Halliburton?
My guess is that the damage being done is similarly illusory.
Well, our lab has been doing OK, but the 20% cut that many NIH funded labs have endured this year has meant the loss of a significant number of highly skilled jobs that return money in tax revenues. I personally know eleven jobs that have been eliminated as a result of these cuts and beyond that, there are a significant number of positions that could not be filled to begin with. We were planning on hiring two additional positions alone, but are now having to work doubly hard to find the funding we had been already promised in our current budget to hire those two positions.
So, no.... There is no illusion about it.
Because of the intrinsically political nature of taxpayer funding. The current administration only has the power to halt stem-cell research (for example), because it's government money.
Sure, that is a problem and a risk, but what do you suggest is a reasonable alternative for funding basic science research that will benefit a range from the individual to a wider society?
Additionally, it could be argued that a countries security is in large part based upon its ability to bring its combined intellectual capabilities to bear on problems great and small. So, why would it not benefit society to fund basic science again?
A lack of government research should actually open up doors for private research.
I should point out that when basic research is privatized, there will be much less incentive for rare medical defects to be investigated. If there is not an economic incentive, then the work would not be done. It should also be mentioned that there are many profound discoveries and improvements of understanding of basic science that have been made as a result of the investigation of rare genetic defects. These discoveries have been applicable to other more general problems as a result and would never have been made if the basic science research had not been funded.
So, you could write off much of our understanding of the molecular biology of genetics which took some years for companies to even understand how to exploit for profit. Where would we be do you think if there were no government funding of basic science research?
I see it as far more problematic that we now expect the taxpayer to be the main source of funding for basic research.
Why not? It has been fairly conclusive that taxpayer investment in basic science research has paid off handsomely in terms of return on investment going back to the 1940's.
It is also interesting to note that over two thirds of federally funded research agencies are seeing Presidentially projected decreases in funding through 2011. This is what I am talking about with respect to commitments to science and education.
Hey Otter. Thanks for the response. It would be a mistake to say he threw huge increases in the NIH funding. In reality, he chose to follow the Clinton NIH funding plan for 2002-2003, but then started restricting increases in bioscience funding only to start reducing funding with this years budget in just about every basic science arena in favor of increases in applied research.... in particular weapons research. Obtained from your same reference.
Nobody has claimed it was a funding crisis however. One might be more correct in saying that the priorities of this administration are what is at issue.
People and companies will do research so long as it remains profitable to do so.
Ahhhh, spoken like a person who has no real understanding of the history of science. Are you aware that essentially *all* applied scientific knowledge and applications are derived from basic science research? Nuclear power, the Internet, genetics, medicine, and more. Applied research that corporations and private companies are interested in is generally applied research that is only made possible after the basic science work has been done.
Also, on what do you make this prediction that it'd take 10 years to repair the "damage" anyways?
This is based on the number of existing grants that have been failed to be renewed from senior investigators due to reduced funding, the number of jobs that have been eliminated by even recent cuts this year (many labs have had their grants cut by 20% this year alone), and the number of post-docs that have failed to achieve more permanent academic positions in the past few years.
An honest question: What exactly makes you assume the next century of scientific advancement will happen in America?
This is actually a really, really good question. My answer would be that the NIH has historically been the leading funding source for bioscience in the world. Also, it is important to note that the NIH *does* fund research in other countries as well... However, it is also important to note that other countries are stepping up and the number of published papers in bioscience being published in other countries are on the increase. The next century is difficult to predict, but it would be safe to say that even over the next decade, the US will continue to dominate bioscience work and funding. The question is whether or not we have a commitment to maintain our lead in bioscience past this decade into the rest of the century.
the new century will be the century of Biology;
This will be interesting considering that the current administration has for the first time in 30 years, reduced the funding of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and not allowed its budget to keep up with inflation and shows their lack of commitment to bioscience research. I predict this damage will take at least 10 years to repair.
Sure, from a geek perspective, this is mildly interesting, but not cool as we have known all along that there are no real fundamental architecture differences that would preclude this from happening..... so, I have a hard time understanding exactly why everybody seems so obsessed about this. I switched from Windows to the MacOS not because of the hardware, but because of the OS, so why would I want to run Windows on my Mac? And no, I don't care about all the games that are available on Windows.... no time these days.
The one place where I could see an advantage would be to run the occasional software package available on Windows, because under a dual boot environment, I am still prevented from sharing data between the OS's in a facile manner. So what would be impressive, is a transparent translation shell for OS X (like Virtual PC), supported natively in the OS that would allow me run apps, to cut and paste between environments and read/write to/from shared space without having to resort to separately booting or partitioning.
Absent, of course, are any details as to how they will accomplish it when they are the party out of power in Congress.
;-)
Hey, that has not stopped the party currently in power from jumping into things where they had no plan either.
I am not saying that guns are the root of violence. They are simply a means to violence. The real root causes are like you say, socio-economic ones. The solution is to help people feel less disenfranchised because when you have something to live for, there are more costs to violence. For many, while they are not actually calculating the metrics, violence becomes cost effective. Give 'em something to loose.
So this "hardest thing was to get people to pull the trigger" is plain bullshit.
OK. So, imagine this scenario..... You are deployed to some central African country, say....Liberia. You are on patrol and come under fire. Your squad takes cover instinctively to orient and determine source of fire. While under fire, a 12 year old boy comes around the corner and levels a battle rifle at you........ this is a 12 year old boy...... Do you fire immediately? Do you hesitate? This is a real world scenario and even battle hardened SPECOPS guys have to train for it these days.
Thanks for your service by the way. Just keep that scenario in mind before you spout off.
In other words, people have a natural resistance to killing another human being.
Exactly. "The moment of truth" is a euphemism that is used as part of the training to further separate the soldier from the possible reality/finality. One of the major problems that any civilized society has however, is the re-indoctrination of soldiers back into civilian life after having those soldiers serve in combat. It is a real psychological/social/medical issue that many of our troops are having to face right now.
You give me the creeps. I hope I'm not the only one.
I am sorry you feel that way. I myself am not a soldier, but a scientist now and I would hope that you could reserve judgement for when you truly understand a person. Many of our soldiers are simply carrying out their jobs and doing what they are trained to do. It's a job. If you have a problem with their job, then talk to the people that direct soldiers and deliver the policy and strategy that sends soldiers to work.
I never supported the argument but I have to wonder if it is in fact true.
I will tell you that it is in fact, true. Desensitizing people to violence can be accomplished virtually. However, there are no statistics that relate a person's likely hood of committing violence after playing video games (which is what the question they anti game people are talking about). The real problem with violence is the availability of small arms. They are everywhere in the world and are actually much easier/cheaper to obtain in third world countries than they are here in the US and in many parts of the world, violence is so endemic that one does not worry about hesitation. People will simply pull the trigger with no hesitation and no remorse. Yes, violence is a problem here in the US, but there are other parts of the world that are almost Clockwork Orange in their ultraviolence.
A 5.1 Surround System with a subwoofer set on high should fix that problem.
Trust me..... No Surround system I have EVER seen will simulate the experience of standing next to/behind/infront of/below a M60 when that sucker goes off. You feel it as much as you hear and see it. The German contingent that trained with us also had an equivalent H&K that is unbelievably loud and fearsome. Even more so than the SAW. Even the combined fire of a squad with small 5.56mm based platforms (M4 and M249) can make for some pretty impressive sound sight and smell. Nothing I have ever seen can simulate that.
When I did small arms training, one of the hardest things to do (for the Corps at least) was to get people to pull the trigger at the moment of truth. There is a built in hesitation that people have to shooting others. So, training typically starts off with standard targets and then progresses to targets of humans in silhouette, then for close quarters battle training, targets become more realistic looking.
Using CG generated images helps significantly by enhancing the realism and lowering the threshold of resistance to "trigger pull".
What computers cannot teach however, is the NOISE and physical presence of a firefight.