Wait, I'm sorry, biologists make the lesser contribution to medicine when compared to physicists and engineers? You do realize that all of medicine is biology, right?
People in the real Sciences would have been forced to take enough Mathematics and/or Statistics to be able to properly interpret Statistics.
You would think so, if you've never worked with Real Scientists. Most biologists and chemists (can't speak to the other ones) know just enough statistics to get by, and make exactly the kinds of mistakes TFA is describing - there's only so much you can "force" people to learn.
Then there's the whole not being able to tell the difference between causation and correlation. I could go on.
You seriously think this is a common problem in biomedical research? I mean the actual research, not the media spin on it.
But might it be that the same thing would have happened with most -other- forms of shiny-new-fun-toy too ? i.e. that the results are really independent of "gaming" as such ?
Sure, you'd likely see similar behavior with other toys, but why does that make it "independent" of gaming? It seems valid to ask whether a specific toy will lead to a noticeable drop in school performance, no?
And, off the top of my head, I can't really come up with anything that's as big a time-sink as video games. Well TV, obviously, but that's well enough entrenched that it's not a consideration for most parents.
I know we are trying to pretend that this is just demonizing video games in some prejudiced, marginalizing way, but that's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction at this point.
The simple, real-life question is "Is buying a console likely to sufficiently increase the amount of time my kids goof off that it will be reflected in their school performance?". This study is obviously very far from proving such a thing, but really, would it be all that shocking if the answer is "yes"?
As such I don't think the results of the study are valid. I think there are confounding factors that could falsify their theory.
Their theory is that kids who get a game console will spend more time playing it than those who don't. Your arguments are against the interpretation of the results, not their validity.
Ultimately I don't think it is the case that videogames are causally related to school performance at all. Goofing off is, but then people goof off in all sorts of ways.
The way I read it, the study asks a simple question: does merely giving someone a game console cause them to goof off more? The answer seems an obvious "yes" in the short term, and as you mentioned, this particular study doesn't help with the long term implications.
There's nothing really shocking or prejudicial here. If you took a community where television isn't common and gave a random sampling of kids a TV, they would likely spend more time watching TV - I don't really see why this seems so outlandish to a lot of people.
I do agree that doing the study over 4 months isn't very meaningful, though.
They were more limited to the nerdy types, like me. However my observation was that the videogamers tended to be the higher performers. The kids who goofed off by playing videogames when allowed to seemed to do better in school than the kids who goofed off by watching TV or playing sports when allowed to.
Well, yeah, nerds were the ones playing video games and nerds do well in school - that is a classic confounding factor.
The question here isn't whether video games are somehow a "bad" way of goofing off, it's whether owning a console leads to more goofing off. And, come one, are we really going to argue that it doesn't?
"I had a small house of brokerage on Wall Street... many days no business come to my hut, but Jimmy has fear? A thousand times no. I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey strong bowels were girded with strength like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung."
I would think that anyone who would have been using Opera 5 years ago would at least be up to date enough to know that it doesn't have ads anymore.
I don't know, I haven't used Opera in years and I did have a vague Opera-"ad supported" association in the back of my mind. People will naturally expend only so much effort keeping up with marginal web browsers, and first impressions can stick with you for a while. I couldn't, for example, tell you if Konqueror has stopped sucking in the last 5 years (not to pick on Konqueror in particular - just an example).
And yes, I remember the Firebird fiasco, too - six years is not that long a time.
Huge numbers of people being exposed to different cultures can't be a bad thing.
Never said it was, but not being a bad thing is a far cry from actually solving an existing problem. I would also say you are overestimating the extent to which people are actually exposed to different cultures - online communities tend to be pretty homogeneous.
As for Obama, I was alluding to things like the grass-roots efforts and his being the candidate who embraced technology most fully that are at least partially credited with him being elected.
Oh sure, a specific candidate used these tools to get elected, but that's really neither here nor there when talking about technological solutions to social problems.
I don't think it is truly a necessity like shelter and food.
Well, sure, but nothing apart from from shelter and food is a necessity. People tend to claim all sorts of things like clothes, cars, computers as necessities to the way they want to live, but they could always procure food and shelter in ways that don't involve those (yes, even clothes).
Given the general tone of the article, I think this was meant in a business context: if you want to start virtually any type of business these days, having an internet component is a necessity.
Meanwhile Zuckerberg and Tom Anderson and many others made billions on Facebook and Myspace etc. solving exactly those problems.
I have to wonder if he wasn't talking about something more fundamental than "lack of user profiles". Saying that Facebook et al outright "solved" the problem of substituting communication for human contact seems a little short-sighted.
"Computers and networks isolate us from one another."
That quote annoys me about as much as any snide aphorism would, but there's some truth to it, as well.
Yes, somehow the Wikipedia guys think citations add credibility anyway. Because the main idea of Wikipedia is, that everyone is trustworthy to everyone.
The point of Wikipedia is the exact opposite: no one is trustworthy (apart from people you know personally), so you have to be able to judge information on its merits, not its source. This is not limited to Wikipedia.
Citations don't add credibility, they add context.
The problem, my dear anonymous coward, is that we want entertainment, not art.
Well, that's your problem, isn't it? (small side note: all movies are art, pretty much by definition)
But we don't expect to go to a scifi movie and have what might as well be 2 hours of David Lynch jerking off in front of the audience
I was going to say something about that being akin to going to a Kurtzman and Orci movie and not expecting the plot to be a pile of stupid, but fair enough, in 1984 that was a pretty valid complaint.
I don't claim to enjoy or even understand David Lynch's "art", but I can recognize when a movie based on a very awesome book is "crap".
So, wait, is it art or is it "art"? You're really vacillating between the "it's not what I enjoy" and "everything I don't understand is shit" positions.
"Dune" is probably the greatest 20th-century science fiction novel. It is, for better or worse, unfilmable.
When did geeks start treating "unfilmable" as some sort of badge of honor, and using it interchangeably with "I liked the book, so I will pooh-pooh any attempt at adaptation"?
Gravity's Rainbow is (probably) unfilmable, Dhalgren is (very likely) unfilmable, it's a function of how the books are written, not a synonym for "really-really good". And there is absolutely nothing about Dune that makes it unfilmable.
Then again I don't get why everyone's dumping on the Lynch version, I thought it was a great film (if a bit cheesy in places).
Oh, and greatest sci-fi novel of the 20th century? Puh-lease.
Yes, the Dow rebounded after last year's disaster, but in the last month it's been tanking.
I'm curious (really am), if you believe that last month's 4% decrease is leading to the collapse of the market system (and, by extension, American society as we know it), does it really matter what anyone does with their money? Shouldn't we all just be stocking up on canned beans and ammo?
Slashdot Mirror
In the grown-up world you reward results, not effort.
So what is it in the business of?
Disproof.
Wait, I'm sorry, biologists make the lesser contribution to medicine when compared to physicists and engineers? You do realize that all of medicine is biology, right?
People in the real Sciences would have been forced to take enough Mathematics and/or Statistics to be able to properly interpret Statistics.
You would think so, if you've never worked with Real Scientists. Most biologists and chemists (can't speak to the other ones) know just enough statistics to get by, and make exactly the kinds of mistakes TFA is describing - there's only so much you can "force" people to learn.
Then there's the whole not being able to tell the difference between causation and correlation. I could go on.
You seriously think this is a common problem in biomedical research? I mean the actual research, not the media spin on it.
But might it be that the same thing would have happened with most -other- forms of shiny-new-fun-toy too ? i.e. that the results are really independent of "gaming" as such ?
Sure, you'd likely see similar behavior with other toys, but why does that make it "independent" of gaming? It seems valid to ask whether a specific toy will lead to a noticeable drop in school performance, no?
And, off the top of my head, I can't really come up with anything that's as big a time-sink as video games. Well TV, obviously, but that's well enough entrenched that it's not a consideration for most parents.
I know we are trying to pretend that this is just demonizing video games in some prejudiced, marginalizing way, but that's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction at this point.
The simple, real-life question is "Is buying a console likely to sufficiently increase the amount of time my kids goof off that it will be reflected in their school performance?". This study is obviously very far from proving such a thing, but really, would it be all that shocking if the answer is "yes"?
Because I doubt playing text heavy RPG or adventure games has a negative influence on reading.
You just really confused everyone under the age of 25.
As such I don't think the results of the study are valid. I think there are confounding factors that could falsify their theory.
Their theory is that kids who get a game console will spend more time playing it than those who don't. Your arguments are against the interpretation of the results, not their validity.
Ultimately I don't think it is the case that videogames are causally related to school performance at all. Goofing off is, but then people goof off in all sorts of ways.
The way I read it, the study asks a simple question: does merely giving someone a game console cause them to goof off more? The answer seems an obvious "yes" in the short term, and as you mentioned, this particular study doesn't help with the long term implications.
There's nothing really shocking or prejudicial here. If you took a community where television isn't common and gave a random sampling of kids a TV, they would likely spend more time watching TV - I don't really see why this seems so outlandish to a lot of people.
I do agree that doing the study over 4 months isn't very meaningful, though.
They were more limited to the nerdy types, like me. However my observation was that the videogamers tended to be the higher performers. The kids who goofed off by playing videogames when allowed to seemed to do better in school than the kids who goofed off by watching TV or playing sports when allowed to.
Well, yeah, nerds were the ones playing video games and nerds do well in school - that is a classic confounding factor.
The question here isn't whether video games are somehow a "bad" way of goofing off, it's whether owning a console leads to more goofing off. And, come one, are we really going to argue that it doesn't?
So, the damn summary specifically says that this is not a correlation study.
I'm going to assume you chose to play the PS3 instead of reading it...
Just like the point of going to the moon was to go to the moon, not to bring back moon rocks.
Well, ideally we wanted diamonds, or sherbet.
"I had a small house of brokerage on Wall Street... many days no business come to my hut, but Jimmy has fear? A thousand times no. I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey strong bowels were girded with strength like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung."
So, it's massive, ridiculously expensive, and useless?
Why, this thing could replace the Segway as the most popular mode of transportation!
I would think that anyone who would have been using Opera 5 years ago would at least be up to date enough to know that it doesn't have ads anymore.
I don't know, I haven't used Opera in years and I did have a vague Opera-"ad supported" association in the back of my mind. People will naturally expend only so much effort keeping up with marginal web browsers, and first impressions can stick with you for a while. I couldn't, for example, tell you if Konqueror has stopped sucking in the last 5 years (not to pick on Konqueror in particular - just an example).
And yes, I remember the Firebird fiasco, too - six years is not that long a time.
Huge numbers of people being exposed to different cultures can't be a bad thing.
Never said it was, but not being a bad thing is a far cry from actually solving an existing problem. I would also say you are overestimating the extent to which people are actually exposed to different cultures - online communities tend to be pretty homogeneous.
As for Obama, I was alluding to things like the grass-roots efforts and his being the candidate who embraced technology most fully that are at least partially credited with him being elected.
Oh sure, a specific candidate used these tools to get elected, but that's really neither here nor there when talking about technological solutions to social problems.
I don't think it is truly a necessity like shelter and food.
Well, sure, but nothing apart from from shelter and food is a necessity. People tend to claim all sorts of things like clothes, cars, computers as necessities to the way they want to live, but they could always procure food and shelter in ways that don't involve those (yes, even clothes).
Given the general tone of the article, I think this was meant in a business context: if you want to start virtually any type of business these days, having an internet component is a necessity.
He claimed that "information, better communications, and electronic programs" could never "cure social problems" (tell Obama that).
Are there many examples of social problems that have been cured by "information, better communications, and electronic programs"?
(I'm not sure what Obama has to do with anything)
Meanwhile Zuckerberg and Tom Anderson and many others made billions on Facebook and Myspace etc. solving exactly those problems.
I have to wonder if he wasn't talking about something more fundamental than "lack of user profiles". Saying that Facebook et al outright "solved" the problem of substituting communication for human contact seems a little short-sighted.
"Computers and networks isolate us from one another."
That quote annoys me about as much as any snide aphorism would, but there's some truth to it, as well.
Particle physicists have basically been fucking with us for years, haven't they?
Yes, exactly, because publish-subscribe did not exist before Twitter.
1.26 microseconds is "sensationalist" now? Man, the standards for sensationalism on slashdot are really slipping.
I wonder how many people that do not use the web interface, but have gmail accounts, will not even know they are exposed.
Both of them.
Do they even make POP/IMAP clients anymore?
Looking forward to liver-stealing lesbians coming to slashdot.
Also, "a phenomena" - seriously?
From a logical perspective, it's completely valid. From an ethical perspective, it's completely appalling.
From a pedophilia perspective, it's completely arousing.
Yes, somehow the Wikipedia guys think citations add credibility anyway. Because the main idea of Wikipedia is, that everyone is trustworthy to everyone.
The point of Wikipedia is the exact opposite: no one is trustworthy (apart from people you know personally), so you have to be able to judge information on its merits, not its source. This is not limited to Wikipedia.
Citations don't add credibility, they add context.
The problem, my dear anonymous coward, is that we want entertainment, not art.
Well, that's your problem, isn't it? (small side note: all movies are art, pretty much by definition)
But we don't expect to go to a scifi movie and have what might as well be 2 hours of David Lynch jerking off in front of the audience
I was going to say something about that being akin to going to a Kurtzman and Orci movie and not expecting the plot to be a pile of stupid, but fair enough, in 1984 that was a pretty valid complaint.
I don't claim to enjoy or even understand David Lynch's "art", but I can recognize when a movie based on a very awesome book is "crap".
So, wait, is it art or is it "art"? You're really vacillating between the "it's not what I enjoy" and "everything I don't understand is shit" positions.
"Dune" is probably the greatest 20th-century science fiction novel. It is, for better or worse, unfilmable.
When did geeks start treating "unfilmable" as some sort of badge of honor, and using it interchangeably with "I liked the book, so I will pooh-pooh any attempt at adaptation"?
Gravity's Rainbow is (probably) unfilmable, Dhalgren is (very likely) unfilmable, it's a function of how the books are written, not a synonym for "really-really good". And there is absolutely nothing about Dune that makes it unfilmable.
Then again I don't get why everyone's dumping on the Lynch version, I thought it was a great film (if a bit cheesy in places).
Oh, and greatest sci-fi novel of the 20th century? Puh-lease.
Yes, the Dow rebounded after last year's disaster, but in the last month it's been tanking.
I'm curious (really am), if you believe that last month's 4% decrease is leading to the collapse of the market system (and, by extension, American society as we know it), does it really matter what anyone does with their money? Shouldn't we all just be stocking up on canned beans and ammo?