The distinction I made: "you" is the conscious mind that claims in a slashdot post to be able to distinguish reality from fantasy; "your neurons" is the low-level mechanism by which neuronal pathways are strengthened. There is a real difference between the two.
I agree that the stimuli and responses are very different. I don't think they're COMPLETELY different. Similarities: increased blood pressure, adrenaline, feel of threat, aggression... I think if you dropped a compulsive Counterstrike player into a tense business meeting he would have some crossover. (the falluja case would probably have everything overridden by fear). There have been lots of anecdotes in previous slashdot threads about instinctively checking out the meeting room/street/whatever for cover or sniping positions.
The jury's still out on whether there's a single neuron which fires for "opponent", or whether "opponent" is represented by a pattern over a region of neurons. But the argument is the same in both cases.
Fantasy spilling over to reality IS supported by the bulk of evidence linking violent tv+games to aggression.
Your list of possibilities is interesting. Yes, I'm sure all these things get associated. After a few days of playing Civ4 I fall asleep and dream of grids of squares around cities.
I wouldn't ban chess on grounds of megalomania. Why? Because there isn't literature studying the connection, and because my instinct says the answer will be only a small connection, and because my instinct says that megalomania will have minor actual effects on society. On the other hand, there is lots of literature showing the connection between violent media and individual aggression, and the link from that to negative effects on society seems obvious.
Soldiers? They return home and rely on the conscious control we all have to stop from acting on neuronal associations in inappopriate situations. But the conscious control isn't black and white. It works on levels and probabilities. People with violent neuronal training are more violent than those without.
Are we as a society prepared to accept this? Are we willing to accept a 1.5% more violent society if that's the consequence of allowing violent video games?
I for one don't think it's a worthwhile tradeoff, but I accept that other people disagree.
What I hate is when people say "I'm an adult, I can separate reality from fantasy, violent media doesn't affect me". Not true. It does affect everyone exposed to it.
Question1: are there neurons or other bits of your brain which fire in reponse to fantasy, but not in response to reality? Answer: yes, and when you say that you are consciously aware of the difference, it's through these.
Question2: the low-level local mechanisms that strengthen the channel between neuron1 "violence" and neuron2 "I-kill-him", do these low-level mechanisms use the fantasy/reality center of your brain to decide whether to strengthen that channel? Answer: no, not really. What they'll do is strength the violence=killhim=fantasy bonds in one case, and the violence=killhim bonds in the other.
Question3: If a person has violence=killhim=fantasy bonds strengthened, will the violence=killhim neurons fire together even without input from the fantasy neuron? Answer: yes, to some extent, but not as much as if the brain had been trained with reality.
"I hope you're a lawyer". Silly comment. Legal culpability relates to whether you're of sound mind; as long as you're of sound mind, the behavioural tendencies (like violent media/aggression) don't constitute a legal excuse.
People say that they can separate fantasy from reality. But this misses the point. A brain is a neural network that is exposed to stimuli and makes associations. It sees "opponent" and "me killing him" and the neurons between these two things are strengthened.
If you can separate fantasy from reality, it meens that the neurons linking "opponent" and "me killing him" and "fantasy" are strengthened. Which inevitably spills over onto just the first two.
Maybe you can separate fantasy from reality perfectly well. But can your neurons? -- No.
Acrobat normally OCRs the text even when it stores it as images. So you can still highlight, copy and paste even the picture of text. This is the commonest sort of scanned PDF that I've seen, by far. Why does it store it as images? presumably so the formatting and equations and stuff remain correct.
(Those two unicode characters are the japanese word for sea-squirt.) For me, this kind of basic alphabet support is FAR more important than the far reaches of CSS3.
"once a user clicks on a link from Google News to go to AFP's site they can display banner ads to help pay their costs."
And they source their banner ads from google, presumably? So google makes a profit both ways? I think it's a stupid scheme, a neverending chain of "advertising tax" that every company pays so that only the advertising-services-providers get rich.
"extensivley". "togther". Call me old-fashioned, but I'd at least like a dictionary to spell correctly!
In this case, dictionary.com is basically a pointer to its entry for juxtapose ("To place side by side, especially for comparison or contrast"). This would have been a fairer comparison. Wiki lacks an entry for juxtapose.
I prefer dictionary.com here. It provides a basic, clear definition and is complete. The wiki is not a definition and is not complete. It gives the impression of an author with some limited and arbitrary interests who has written too much about them. Having these ones in such depth serves mainly to emphasise the lack of others.
I do it for free, graciously, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to help. (for whom? for my immediate and extended family, and about thirty friends).
I'm an IT professional. I think computers and software are terrible, hard to use, pointlessly obscure. Free tech support is the least I can do to make up for it.
The best way to limit my burden is through understanding my friends and family, and explaining at a level they want to understand.
(the email scheme in this article requires people to read email from auto-responders).
Who actually reads mail from auto-responders? I don't because they're almost all junk. I get maybe one useful autoresponse out of ten thousand generated by viruses masquerading as me.
If you think too hard... - I reckon it's a brainwave sensor. Some games will require you to be calm or excited to gain special powers or pass a bad guy. There might be "meditation" levels in beat-em-ups.
Something's not right...
After every article that suggests game-players may be subconsciously influenced by their games, we're supposed to reply with outrage that "I can easily distinguish games from reality."
"wikipedia is designed around the original intent of the Internet".
I think wikipedia is the SMTP of the Internet -- an idea that seemed good at the time, in a world of generally nice people, but in retrospect is too naive and is abused by spammers into being unuseful.
My article above was not flamebait, not a troll. I honestly don't believe that IE is an unsafe tool when you run it with appropriate security settings.
Here's a promise. Reply to this message and give me a web-page which you claim will automatically install malware. I'll visit the page and make screenshots/movie out of it. I'll make a webpage with the results.
If the slashdot groupthink is correct, then my computer will be infested with malware and I'll have to reinstall it from scratch and it will serve me right. If I am correct, then my computer will remain fine.
(When people post links to apparently dangerous sites, I ALWAYS follow them, and have not yet had anything bad happen to me.)
I've been using IE since Win95 (with the Proxomitron and with security/privacy set to high). And I've *NEVER* had a single spyware installation. When people talk about web pages that install spyware, I visit them to see what it's like, and nothing happens.
All the complaints about IE security? I reckon they can be solved by the user having some common sense. And that common sense is to raise the security/privacy levels, not to install Firefox.
Windows: if the user drags-and-drops a file then it can report incorrect antivirus/firewall settings.
Linux: if the user downloads-and-runs the following script then it can report incorrect antivirus/firewall settings:
#!/bin/sh
echo "Your antivirus and firewall are functioning and up to date."
Since about 2002, windows by default sets up "automatic updates". Downloads patches in the background. Puts an icon in the taskbar once they're ready to install, and pops up a balloon that says "click here to install". This automatic update was present since Win95, just not default. Requires rebooting about once every other month.
There's no umask. However, a security setting does exist which prevents you running any but a pre-approved list of executables. (this isn't turned on by default.)
Slashdot Mirror
The distinction I made: "you" is the conscious mind that claims in a slashdot post to be able to distinguish reality from fantasy; "your neurons" is the low-level mechanism by which neuronal pathways are strengthened. There is a real difference between the two.
I agree that the stimuli and responses are very different. I don't think they're COMPLETELY different. Similarities: increased blood pressure, adrenaline, feel of threat, aggression... I think if you dropped a compulsive Counterstrike player into a tense business meeting he would have some crossover. (the falluja case would probably have everything overridden by fear). There have been lots of anecdotes in previous slashdot threads about instinctively checking out the meeting room/street/whatever for cover or sniping positions.
The jury's still out on whether there's a single neuron which fires for "opponent", or whether "opponent" is represented by a pattern over a region of neurons. But the argument is the same in both cases. Fantasy spilling over to reality IS supported by the bulk of evidence linking violent tv+games to aggression. Your list of possibilities is interesting. Yes, I'm sure all these things get associated. After a few days of playing Civ4 I fall asleep and dream of grids of squares around cities. I wouldn't ban chess on grounds of megalomania. Why? Because there isn't literature studying the connection, and because my instinct says the answer will be only a small connection, and because my instinct says that megalomania will have minor actual effects on society. On the other hand, there is lots of literature showing the connection between violent media and individual aggression, and the link from that to negative effects on society seems obvious.
Soldiers? They return home and rely on the conscious control we all have to stop from acting on neuronal associations in inappopriate situations. But the conscious control isn't black and white. It works on levels and probabilities. People with violent neuronal training are more violent than those without. Are we as a society prepared to accept this? Are we willing to accept a 1.5% more violent society if that's the consequence of allowing violent video games? I for one don't think it's a worthwhile tradeoff, but I accept that other people disagree. What I hate is when people say "I'm an adult, I can separate reality from fantasy, violent media doesn't affect me". Not true. It does affect everyone exposed to it.
Question1: are there neurons or other bits of your brain which fire in reponse to fantasy, but not in response to reality? Answer: yes, and when you say that you are consciously aware of the difference, it's through these. Question2: the low-level local mechanisms that strengthen the channel between neuron1 "violence" and neuron2 "I-kill-him", do these low-level mechanisms use the fantasy/reality center of your brain to decide whether to strengthen that channel? Answer: no, not really. What they'll do is strength the violence=killhim=fantasy bonds in one case, and the violence=killhim bonds in the other. Question3: If a person has violence=killhim=fantasy bonds strengthened, will the violence=killhim neurons fire together even without input from the fantasy neuron? Answer: yes, to some extent, but not as much as if the brain had been trained with reality.
"I hope you're a lawyer". Silly comment. Legal culpability relates to whether you're of sound mind; as long as you're of sound mind, the behavioural tendencies (like violent media/aggression) don't constitute a legal excuse.
Yes, Computational Neuroscience was a component of my undergraduate degree, and I studied this area for my masters in Philosophy of Science.
People say that they can separate fantasy from reality. But this misses the point. A brain is a neural network that is exposed to stimuli and makes associations. It sees "opponent" and "me killing him" and the neurons between these two things are strengthened.
If you can separate fantasy from reality, it meens that the neurons linking "opponent" and "me killing him" and "fantasy" are strengthened. Which inevitably spills over onto just the first two.
Maybe you can separate fantasy from reality perfectly well. But can your neurons? -- No.
Acrobat normally OCRs the text even when it stores it as images. So you can still highlight, copy and paste even the picture of text. This is the commonest sort of scanned PDF that I've seen, by far. Why does it store it as images? presumably so the formatting and equations and stuff remain correct.
Nothing works in firefox. Try doing File-Open on a filename with japanese characters. Gives a "file-not-found" error.
Sigh. Wake me up when firefox lets me link to my (international-alphabet) filenames, for index-files on my hard disk:
a >
<a href="sea-squirt%20(ホヤ).jpg">hoya</
(Those two unicode characters are the japanese word for sea-squirt.) For me, this kind of basic alphabet support is FAR more important than the far reaches of CSS3.
"once a user clicks on a link from Google News to go to AFP's site they can display banner ads to help pay their costs."
And they source their banner ads from google, presumably? So google makes a profit both ways? I think it's a stupid scheme, a neverending chain of "advertising tax" that every company pays so that only the advertising-services-providers get rich.
"extensivley". "togther". Call me old-fashioned, but I'd at least like a dictionary to spell correctly!
In this case, dictionary.com is basically a pointer to its entry for juxtapose ("To place side by side, especially for comparison or contrast"). This would have been a fairer comparison. Wiki lacks an entry for juxtapose.
I prefer dictionary.com here. It provides a basic, clear definition and is complete. The wiki is not a definition and is not complete. It gives the impression of an author with some limited and arbitrary interests who has written too much about them. Having these ones in such depth serves mainly to emphasise the lack of others.
I do it for free, graciously, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to help. (for whom? for my immediate and extended family, and about thirty friends).
I'm an IT professional. I think computers and software are terrible, hard to use, pointlessly obscure. Free tech support is the least I can do to make up for it.
The best way to limit my burden is through understanding my friends and family, and explaining at a level they want to understand.
(the email scheme in this article requires people to read email from auto-responders). Who actually reads mail from auto-responders? I don't because they're almost all junk. I get maybe one useful autoresponse out of ten thousand generated by viruses masquerading as me.
If you think too hard... - I reckon it's a brainwave sensor. Some games will require you to be calm or excited to gain special powers or pass a bad guy. There might be "meditation" levels in beat-em-ups.
I don't want an integrated download manager. That way leads to bloatware. I'm happy using a third-party external download manager (GetRight).
it's briefer, to the point
it doesn't use judgemental adjectives
it has purely facts; no philosophy
Something's not right... After every article that suggests game-players may be subconsciously influenced by their games, we're supposed to reply with outrage that "I can easily distinguish games from reality."
"wikipedia is designed around the original intent of the Internet". I think wikipedia is the SMTP of the Internet -- an idea that seemed good at the time, in a world of generally nice people, but in retrospect is too naive and is abused by spammers into being unuseful.
OK, I've put my settings up on this page:
http://www.wischik.com/lu/malware/
If there are any other settings I should mention, please reply to this message.
My article above was not flamebait, not a troll. I honestly don't believe that IE is an unsafe tool when you run it with appropriate security settings. Here's a promise. Reply to this message and give me a web-page which you claim will automatically install malware. I'll visit the page and make screenshots/movie out of it. I'll make a webpage with the results. If the slashdot groupthink is correct, then my computer will be infested with malware and I'll have to reinstall it from scratch and it will serve me right. If I am correct, then my computer will remain fine. (When people post links to apparently dangerous sites, I ALWAYS follow them, and have not yet had anything bad happen to me.)
I've been using IE since Win95 (with the Proxomitron and with security/privacy set to high). And I've *NEVER* had a single spyware installation. When people talk about web pages that install spyware, I visit them to see what it's like, and nothing happens. All the complaints about IE security? I reckon they can be solved by the user having some common sense. And that common sense is to raise the security/privacy levels, not to install Firefox.
I use IE (set security & privacy to high), and The Proxomitron. I've never *EVER* had an adware/spyware infection. And it blocks out ads as well.
Windows: if the user drags-and-drops a file then it can report incorrect antivirus/firewall settings.
Linux: if the user downloads-and-runs the following script then it can report incorrect antivirus/firewall settings:
#!/bin/sh
echo "Your antivirus and firewall are functioning and up to date."
Since about 2002, windows by default sets up "automatic updates". Downloads patches in the background. Puts an icon in the taskbar once they're ready to install, and pops up a balloon that says "click here to install". This automatic update was present since Win95, just not default. Requires rebooting about once every other month. There's no umask. However, a security setting does exist which prevents you running any but a pre-approved list of executables. (this isn't turned on by default.)