Not taking antibiotics and not being properly treated for a mental disorder are two ENTIRELY different things. Having an infection does not render you less capable of making rational decisions about your own treatment. Many mental illnesses do - and not just the way-out-there ones, either. Should those people get treatment? Of course. If it's unhealthy for their loved ones to be around them when they're not treated, should those loved ones do what's healthy for themselves? Of course. But saying that you're "disgusted" by something that is a god damned symptom of the illness in and of itself is disgusting.
I believe strongly in equal rights for both genders-but exactly equal. No special favors, no special treatment, no monthly excuse for bad behavior. Men don't get those, so that can hardly be asserted as an "equal" right. It's not "misogynist" to think people of any gender should be held equally accountable for their decisions and behavior.
No, it's misogynistic to ignore biology and claim that accepting it is "special treatment." Do you think that women who have pre-menstrual problems enjoy them? Many women do go on birth control specifically to avoid those problems! But to say, as the grandparent did, that ANY woman who has this problem and is not fixing with through HBC is "negligent" is to completely ignore the fact that for some women it is not treatable or the treatment is worse for them than the condition.
Why is the male experience the default that women must try to match in your scenario? I would say that it's special fucking treatment for a man to expect the women in his life to ignore hormonal problems that he will never have to experience or try to ignore so that they can live up to his ideal. Why does he deserve for her to do that when he will never do it for her?
Yes, there are probably women out there who use their periods as an excuse to act extra bitchy when they don't really need to. Just like there are men who use their wives' premenstrual touchiness as an excuse to cheat on her. Both are examples of unethical behavior. But if you really think that that's the norm instead of an anomaly, you should just go say a little prayer, or thank your lucky stars, or whatever you do that you will never experience the hormonal hell that many women have to deal with on a regular basis. Be glad things aren't equal in that regard.
The fact that you are "disgusted" by the mentally ill who "refuse" to stay on their meds says a whole lot about your levels of ignorance (and douchiness), as does the fact that you think that's a majority opinion. Just keep digging that hole.
Wow, this has to be one of the most misogynistic comments I've ever seen on Slashdot - and that's saying a lot.
Here, I will pretend like you're not a total douche, merely ignorant, and try to explain things politely:
The implant is hormonal birth control. Many women cannot take HBC, or only some HBC, due to extreme side effects such as depression or mood swings, weight gain, and heavy bleeding. Only some women stop getting their period on the implant - up to 20% actually have heavier periods than before. Also, HBC puts you at higher risk of clotting problems (such as heart attacks, strokes, and embolisms), which means that women with other risk factors may want to avoid it. And women on certain medications, such as anti-epileptics, can't use the implant.
Other women may simply prefer other forms of birth control for other reasons. For example, some women actually appreciate getting a "Hey, you're still not pregnant" reminder every month. Some are uncomfortable with getting something implanted in their body. While their preferences may inconvenience you, it is far from "negligent" for them to make that decision for themselves.
Perhaps if you feel you are having to "endure" your significant other, you should let her know that. In those exact words. I'm sure she'll be refreshed by your honesty and see you in a completely new light, and will happily rearrange her biology for your convenience.
Disclaimer: This management method looks like it would be a bitch to scale. Not my fucking problem, thank Cthulu.
IDK, it's pretty much how academia works. Maybe without #2, even (depends on just how embarrassing and in what direction). Some schools only have a couple hundred faculty, but the largest state schools can have a couple thousand, plus other research staff. And all that matters is getting your job done - other than the time you're actually teaching a class, nobody cares where you are or what you're doing at any given moment, so long as your tenure file is nice and fat when they come around to take a look at it.
While you have a point, and professors are more likely to be receptive to this kind of thing, publishing research is really the wrong metaphor here. It's more like a professor with a patentable invention - and these days, the patent almost always goes to the university automatically.
While I agree with you on what the problem is, I disagree with your solution. Yes, having experts around is important, but relying on them exclusively is a mistake - all it takes is a few deceitful "experts" and the whole population is hopelessly misled. Not to mention the fact that you're trying to close the barn door after the cows are gone.
What needs to happen is that we need to wake up and realize that our educational system, which is currently focused on teaching content in most cases, needs to be reworked to focus on giving people the skills to deal with masses of information. Content is no longer the problem - all the content in the world is available at the touch of a button. Now what kids/citizens need is the ability to access, sort, and evaluate that content critically. Because the day of the media experts controlling the flow is over - permanently, barring some major catastrophe that brings down the internet. Knowledge is now created and disseminated in a less hierarchical, two-way (or many-way) street. Our schools are still operating in a one-way, transmission model of knowledge.
Luckily, this revolution is underway - but incredibly slowly. Thanks in part to NCLB, making any sort of substantive changes is now even harder than it was twenty years ago. Many of the standards actually are written to include these kinds of skills, but the assessments (which are what really matter) are only written to test the facts. So if you've got, say, a new science curriculum that aims to teach students how to build and test a scientific explanation and support it with substantive arguments - that's very nice, but if the kids don't also learn this list of 100 facts this year you lose. Who cares that, given the right skills, they could go out and find that same information online anytime they want AND be able to evaluate which sites are giving them good information and which are pseudoscience. No, all that matters at the end of the year is whether they can remember those 100 facts at test time.
First, install the update when I shut down the browser. You're not wasting my time then because I'm done using it.
Unless the whole reason you're shutting it down, as is often the case for me, is that FF has been running so long that it's become an enormous memory hog and you need to shut it down then restart it so your system will speed back up. Or you're shutting it down in order to shut down or reboot your entire computer. I agree with the previous commenter, just give us the choice.
I am really amazed at the number of people here who actually think that having or keeping DRM was Apple's choice rather than the record companies' choice at any point in this process. I thought that this was all common knowledge, at least among this crowd. *shakes head*
a) If you'd read the post you're replying to, it has nothing to do with the Europeans currently running Africa and everything to do with the borders they laid down when they did run it and the long-term effects of those borders.
b) they seem to have got over it. Why can't the Africans? And how long, exactly, did it take the Europeans to "get over it"? When was the last time a European country was divided against itself, or contained two ethnic groups that didn't get along? 500 years ago? 200 years ago? 50 years ago? Oh wait... I'm certainly not going to say that Europeans are the source of all of Africa's troubles (simple lack of natural resources is a big culprit that's nobody's fault), but to say they should just "get over" the problems that were caused by Europe when Europe itself isn't all that "over" similar problems makes you sound like an ass.
Okay, we can't possibly know the ramifications 50 years down the line. But there's a big difference between that and "immediately after playing." There are most certainly studies that have followed children over the course of years to see if there was an overall change in their behavior over time.
Oh, so you've read the study and know for a fact that no methodologies were used that can piece apart correlation and causation? And that only immediate reactions were measured, no long-term effects?
Oh boy. I'm going to dispense with the overly-sarcastic opening I was going to use and just address your "arguments," such as they are, one by one, but not in the order you presented them.
If video games have potentially thousands of effects, why would violence be strictly of concern?
Okay, I'm going to try and explain this in the simplest terms possible. The person I was replying to claimed that the study was biased because it did not simply research "What are the effects of video games on children." I said this was absurd because one study cannot capture all of these effects. I specifically did NOT say that every singe potential effect that anyone could possibly imagine is equally worthy of its own study. There are a wide variety of reasons that a researcher would choose one potential effect over another for study - personal bias is one, yes. But others include (but are not limited to) the existence of previous research showing similar effects in a related field, and testing a theoretical framework that would suggest the presence or absence of a particular effect. These theoretical frameworks are generally based on such previous work, but in their infancy might also include some logical thinking and common sense. Which brings us to...
Would testing the influence of video games on the rates of homosexuality make for a good study (cause you know Tetris does have homoerotic undertones)? How about likelihood of video game players to favor volunteer work?
How many violent video games (remember, this study is only on VIOLENT video games, not ALL video games) feature violence, or other factors that have been related to violence in previous studies? How many feature homosexuality, or factors that have been related to violence in other studies? How many feature volunteerism, or other factors that have been related to volunteerism in other studies? I'm guessing the first number will be much higher than the other two. This does not, of course, mean that violent video games cause or are even correlated with violence - but it does mean that one could probably make a sound theoretical argument for studying it. There are probably people out there studying video games and sexuality as well as video games and volunteerism. I myself study video games (and television) and the understanding of scientific practice. You are making a huge mistake in assuming that just because some people study violence, doesn't mean nobody is studying the possible positive effects.
Couldn't violence be completely mitigated by one of the other effects? Couldn't a combination of other effects lead to violence (not specific to video games)?
It's entirely possible. Why don't you go read the 130 studies involved and see if any of them controlled for any of these factors? I'll bet at least a few of them did. Not saying they all do, or do it as well as they could, but this is what these people do for a living.
What you are telling me is the questions the social sciences are conditioned to ask reflect less any discernible data (quite honestly if the social sciences can't differentiate through several different possible responses, it is immature science that should know better than to come to an conclusions on this matter) but merely reinforce cultural norms and stereotypes by the very nature of the questions it asks.
No, that is bullshit that you made up yourself. Please show me where I said that social scientists do not use existing data/studies to formulate their research questions.
I want to give you and parent a hug right now. Being a social scientist on Slashdot feels kinda like being a biologist on a creationism website sometimes.
You have clearly never tried to do social sciences research. Simply asking "What effects to video games have on children?" is FAR too broad a question for any study. Video games potentially have hundreds, thousands of effects. You cannot design a single study that will successfully measure them all. You can't design a GOOD study that measures more than a couple of them at a time. While a super-general study that tries to count a lot of possible effects might be a good idea at the very very beginning of a brand-new line of research, video games have been researched for decades now, and media in general for even longer. We know a good-sized list of things they may affect, there is no reason to try to study more than a couple of those things at a time.
For example, some studies look at video games' effect on spatial reasoning. Are those studies also biased? Must every study measure both propensity to violence AND ability to count items at the periphery of your vision??
This study may be biased (I, like you, have not actually read it yet, so I don't know), but to say it is biased because it asks a valid, researchable question is idiotic.
Thank goodness someone here is sane. No, I don't like that the guy is calling for this to have policy implications either, but I'm not going to condemn the entire study for that.
Pulling out old saws like "correlation doesn't imply causation" doesn't even work here - his meta-analysis includes studies with a variety of methodologies, some of which are designed to piece apart true causation from mere correlation. Nor can you claim that he's only looking at certain types of people (chances are, with 130 studies there's quite a range), or not controlling for other variables (again, 130 studies - probably everything and anything you can imagine has been controlled for in at least one of them). Anyone who wants to attack this guy needs to read the actual paper and make rational decisions based on the actual soundness of his methodology.
The whole cost doesn't have to be bundled into the hardware - the purpose of the wireless access is so you can download games from their store. Charge a few extra bucks per game and you probably more than balance out the cost of transmitting it, especially for smaller old-school games, while keeping the cost well below buying a cartridge in a store.
At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.
You say this as though "hypothesis" were some kind of weasel word, as though they actually do consider it a fact but are just calling it something else to avoid criticism.
Did it ever occur to you that this is precisely what a hypothesis is, and that the correlation =/= causation thing is the very reason that it is considered a hypothesis? I'm sure that these biologists have some vague idea what they're doing. If they thought that they had hard and fast proof they'd be moving this on to the "theory" stage. The very fact that they call it a hypothesis means that they agree with you.
Whatever happened to Prodigy? That was my first internet service. I remember my excitement at finding their ST:TNG message board... and chagrin at discovering that it was mostly full of middle-aged women having fantasies about Brent Spiner. I mean, I had a crush on Data and all, but at 14 I was definitely not interested in a 45-year-old actor in the same way these ladies were.
I assume you mean environmentally-caused or genetic? Because "developmental" and "genetic" are in no way whatsoever opposites of each other or mutually exclusive in the least. Even if you do mean environmental, it's a false dichotomy. Very little is entirely one or the other. It's completely possible that certain genes give you an increased proclivity towards autism, but environmental factors (which can include those before you're born) decide whether or not you really make it onto the spectrum, and how far.
Disclaimer: I know very little about autism, but have read enough about nature vs nurture in general to know that the odds of it being entirely one or the other are very, very low.
I dunno, I've downloaded a couple of those myself and they're even more trouble.
First there's the TCO. Keeping them virus-free is a couple hundred a year, plus if you let your subscription to the Kibble service lapse your Pet will stop functioning completely.
They all come preloaded with Poop.app, which can't be removed but needs constant maintenance. And in my models, at least, this sometimes will randomly upgrade itself to Poop 2.0 (code named Diarrhea) - that's a mess to clean up from your desktop, believe me.
And mine always seem to be blocking my access to the Furniture suite of utilities - there are workarounds, sure, but it's just one more thing to keep in mind.
Don't get me wrong, they have a lot of features that make them very worthwhile, but they're not for everyone!
Eight-year-olds are apparently less picky about their online freedoms than you are. Which is unsurprising, given that if their parents are smart they have pretty limited "freedom" to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
Not taking antibiotics and not being properly treated for a mental disorder are two ENTIRELY different things. Having an infection does not render you less capable of making rational decisions about your own treatment. Many mental illnesses do - and not just the way-out-there ones, either. Should those people get treatment? Of course. If it's unhealthy for their loved ones to be around them when they're not treated, should those loved ones do what's healthy for themselves? Of course. But saying that you're "disgusted" by something that is a god damned symptom of the illness in and of itself is disgusting.
I believe strongly in equal rights for both genders-but exactly equal. No special favors, no special treatment, no monthly excuse for bad behavior. Men don't get those, so that can hardly be asserted as an "equal" right. It's not "misogynist" to think people of any gender should be held equally accountable for their decisions and behavior.
No, it's misogynistic to ignore biology and claim that accepting it is "special treatment." Do you think that women who have pre-menstrual problems enjoy them? Many women do go on birth control specifically to avoid those problems! But to say, as the grandparent did, that ANY woman who has this problem and is not fixing with through HBC is "negligent" is to completely ignore the fact that for some women it is not treatable or the treatment is worse for them than the condition.
Why is the male experience the default that women must try to match in your scenario? I would say that it's special fucking treatment for a man to expect the women in his life to ignore hormonal problems that he will never have to experience or try to ignore so that they can live up to his ideal. Why does he deserve for her to do that when he will never do it for her?
Yes, there are probably women out there who use their periods as an excuse to act extra bitchy when they don't really need to. Just like there are men who use their wives' premenstrual touchiness as an excuse to cheat on her. Both are examples of unethical behavior. But if you really think that that's the norm instead of an anomaly, you should just go say a little prayer, or thank your lucky stars, or whatever you do that you will never experience the hormonal hell that many women have to deal with on a regular basis. Be glad things aren't equal in that regard.
The fact that you are "disgusted" by the mentally ill who "refuse" to stay on their meds says a whole lot about your levels of ignorance (and douchiness), as does the fact that you think that's a majority opinion. Just keep digging that hole.
And yet how many men expect their girlfriends/wives to pump themselves full of hormones so that their ovaries temporarily stop working?
Wow, this has to be one of the most misogynistic comments I've ever seen on Slashdot - and that's saying a lot.
Here, I will pretend like you're not a total douche, merely ignorant, and try to explain things politely:
The implant is hormonal birth control. Many women cannot take HBC, or only some HBC, due to extreme side effects such as depression or mood swings, weight gain, and heavy bleeding. Only some women stop getting their period on the implant - up to 20% actually have heavier periods than before. Also, HBC puts you at higher risk of clotting problems (such as heart attacks, strokes, and embolisms), which means that women with other risk factors may want to avoid it. And women on certain medications, such as anti-epileptics, can't use the implant.
Other women may simply prefer other forms of birth control for other reasons. For example, some women actually appreciate getting a "Hey, you're still not pregnant" reminder every month. Some are uncomfortable with getting something implanted in their body. While their preferences may inconvenience you, it is far from "negligent" for them to make that decision for themselves.
Perhaps if you feel you are having to "endure" your significant other, you should let her know that. In those exact words. I'm sure she'll be refreshed by your honesty and see you in a completely new light, and will happily rearrange her biology for your convenience.
LMAO
The sad part is that the commenter above you was actually serious.
Disclaimer: This management method looks like it would be a bitch to scale. Not my fucking problem, thank Cthulu.
IDK, it's pretty much how academia works. Maybe without #2, even (depends on just how embarrassing and in what direction). Some schools only have a couple hundred faculty, but the largest state schools can have a couple thousand, plus other research staff. And all that matters is getting your job done - other than the time you're actually teaching a class, nobody cares where you are or what you're doing at any given moment, so long as your tenure file is nice and fat when they come around to take a look at it.
While you have a point, and professors are more likely to be receptive to this kind of thing, publishing research is really the wrong metaphor here. It's more like a professor with a patentable invention - and these days, the patent almost always goes to the university automatically.
While I agree with you on what the problem is, I disagree with your solution. Yes, having experts around is important, but relying on them exclusively is a mistake - all it takes is a few deceitful "experts" and the whole population is hopelessly misled. Not to mention the fact that you're trying to close the barn door after the cows are gone.
What needs to happen is that we need to wake up and realize that our educational system, which is currently focused on teaching content in most cases, needs to be reworked to focus on giving people the skills to deal with masses of information. Content is no longer the problem - all the content in the world is available at the touch of a button. Now what kids/citizens need is the ability to access, sort, and evaluate that content critically. Because the day of the media experts controlling the flow is over - permanently, barring some major catastrophe that brings down the internet. Knowledge is now created and disseminated in a less hierarchical, two-way (or many-way) street. Our schools are still operating in a one-way, transmission model of knowledge.
Luckily, this revolution is underway - but incredibly slowly. Thanks in part to NCLB, making any sort of substantive changes is now even harder than it was twenty years ago. Many of the standards actually are written to include these kinds of skills, but the assessments (which are what really matter) are only written to test the facts. So if you've got, say, a new science curriculum that aims to teach students how to build and test a scientific explanation and support it with substantive arguments - that's very nice, but if the kids don't also learn this list of 100 facts this year you lose. Who cares that, given the right skills, they could go out and find that same information online anytime they want AND be able to evaluate which sites are giving them good information and which are pseudoscience. No, all that matters at the end of the year is whether they can remember those 100 facts at test time.
First, install the update when I shut down the browser. You're not wasting my time then because I'm done using it.
Unless the whole reason you're shutting it down, as is often the case for me, is that FF has been running so long that it's become an enormous memory hog and you need to shut it down then restart it so your system will speed back up. Or you're shutting it down in order to shut down or reboot your entire computer. I agree with the previous commenter, just give us the choice.
I am really amazed at the number of people here who actually think that having or keeping DRM was Apple's choice rather than the record companies' choice at any point in this process. I thought that this was all common knowledge, at least among this crowd. *shakes head*
b) they seem to have got over it. Why can't the Africans? And how long, exactly, did it take the Europeans to "get over it"? When was the last time a European country was divided against itself, or contained two ethnic groups that didn't get along? 500 years ago? 200 years ago? 50 years ago? Oh wait... I'm certainly not going to say that Europeans are the source of all of Africa's troubles (simple lack of natural resources is a big culprit that's nobody's fault), but to say they should just "get over" the problems that were caused by Europe when Europe itself isn't all that "over" similar problems makes you sound like an ass.
Okay, we can't possibly know the ramifications 50 years down the line. But there's a big difference between that and "immediately after playing." There are most certainly studies that have followed children over the course of years to see if there was an overall change in their behavior over time.
Oh, so you've read the study and know for a fact that no methodologies were used that can piece apart correlation and causation? And that only immediate reactions were measured, no long-term effects?
Oh boy. I'm going to dispense with the overly-sarcastic opening I was going to use and just address your "arguments," such as they are, one by one, but not in the order you presented them.
If video games have potentially thousands of effects, why would violence be strictly of concern?
Okay, I'm going to try and explain this in the simplest terms possible. The person I was replying to claimed that the study was biased because it did not simply research "What are the effects of video games on children." I said this was absurd because one study cannot capture all of these effects. I specifically did NOT say that every singe potential effect that anyone could possibly imagine is equally worthy of its own study. There are a wide variety of reasons that a researcher would choose one potential effect over another for study - personal bias is one, yes. But others include (but are not limited to) the existence of previous research showing similar effects in a related field, and testing a theoretical framework that would suggest the presence or absence of a particular effect. These theoretical frameworks are generally based on such previous work, but in their infancy might also include some logical thinking and common sense. Which brings us to...
Would testing the influence of video games on the rates of homosexuality make for a good study (cause you know Tetris does have homoerotic undertones)? How about likelihood of video game players to favor volunteer work?
How many violent video games (remember, this study is only on VIOLENT video games, not ALL video games) feature violence, or other factors that have been related to violence in previous studies? How many feature homosexuality, or factors that have been related to violence in other studies? How many feature volunteerism, or other factors that have been related to volunteerism in other studies? I'm guessing the first number will be much higher than the other two. This does not, of course, mean that violent video games cause or are even correlated with violence - but it does mean that one could probably make a sound theoretical argument for studying it. There are probably people out there studying video games and sexuality as well as video games and volunteerism. I myself study video games (and television) and the understanding of scientific practice. You are making a huge mistake in assuming that just because some people study violence, doesn't mean nobody is studying the possible positive effects.
Couldn't violence be completely mitigated by one of the other effects? Couldn't a combination of other effects lead to violence (not specific to video games)?
It's entirely possible. Why don't you go read the 130 studies involved and see if any of them controlled for any of these factors? I'll bet at least a few of them did. Not saying they all do, or do it as well as they could, but this is what these people do for a living.
What you are telling me is the questions the social sciences are conditioned to ask reflect less any discernible data (quite honestly if the social sciences can't differentiate through several different possible responses, it is immature science that should know better than to come to an conclusions on this matter) but merely reinforce cultural norms and stereotypes by the very nature of the questions it asks.
No, that is bullshit that you made up yourself. Please show me where I said that social scientists do not use existing data/studies to formulate their research questions.
I want to give you and parent a hug right now. Being a social scientist on Slashdot feels kinda like being a biologist on a creationism website sometimes.
You have clearly never tried to do social sciences research. Simply asking "What effects to video games have on children?" is FAR too broad a question for any study. Video games potentially have hundreds, thousands of effects. You cannot design a single study that will successfully measure them all. You can't design a GOOD study that measures more than a couple of them at a time. While a super-general study that tries to count a lot of possible effects might be a good idea at the very very beginning of a brand-new line of research, video games have been researched for decades now, and media in general for even longer. We know a good-sized list of things they may affect, there is no reason to try to study more than a couple of those things at a time.
For example, some studies look at video games' effect on spatial reasoning. Are those studies also biased? Must every study measure both propensity to violence AND ability to count items at the periphery of your vision??
This study may be biased (I, like you, have not actually read it yet, so I don't know), but to say it is biased because it asks a valid, researchable question is idiotic.
From the TFA:
The study was published today in the March 2010 issue of the Psychological Bulletin, an American Psychological Association journal.
Unfortunately, it's not up on their website yet or I'd link you right to the paper.
Oh wait, actually he has a preprint up on his own website. For free.
Thank goodness someone here is sane. No, I don't like that the guy is calling for this to have policy implications either, but I'm not going to condemn the entire study for that.
Pulling out old saws like "correlation doesn't imply causation" doesn't even work here - his meta-analysis includes studies with a variety of methodologies, some of which are designed to piece apart true causation from mere correlation. Nor can you claim that he's only looking at certain types of people (chances are, with 130 studies there's quite a range), or not controlling for other variables (again, 130 studies - probably everything and anything you can imagine has been controlled for in at least one of them). Anyone who wants to attack this guy needs to read the actual paper and make rational decisions based on the actual soundness of his methodology.
Oh shit, you mean Apple's just using this thing to make money? Alert the tech blogs!
The whole cost doesn't have to be bundled into the hardware - the purpose of the wireless access is so you can download games from their store. Charge a few extra bucks per game and you probably more than balance out the cost of transmitting it, especially for smaller old-school games, while keeping the cost well below buying a cartridge in a store.
At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.
You say this as though "hypothesis" were some kind of weasel word, as though they actually do consider it a fact but are just calling it something else to avoid criticism.
Did it ever occur to you that this is precisely what a hypothesis is, and that the correlation =/= causation thing is the very reason that it is considered a hypothesis? I'm sure that these biologists have some vague idea what they're doing. If they thought that they had hard and fast proof they'd be moving this on to the "theory" stage. The very fact that they call it a hypothesis means that they agree with you.
Whatever happened to Prodigy? That was my first internet service. I remember my excitement at finding their ST:TNG message board... and chagrin at discovering that it was mostly full of middle-aged women having fantasies about Brent Spiner. I mean, I had a crush on Data and all, but at 14 I was definitely not interested in a 45-year-old actor in the same way these ladies were.
I assume you mean environmentally-caused or genetic? Because "developmental" and "genetic" are in no way whatsoever opposites of each other or mutually exclusive in the least. Even if you do mean environmental, it's a false dichotomy. Very little is entirely one or the other. It's completely possible that certain genes give you an increased proclivity towards autism, but environmental factors (which can include those before you're born) decide whether or not you really make it onto the spectrum, and how far.
Disclaimer: I know very little about autism, but have read enough about nature vs nurture in general to know that the odds of it being entirely one or the other are very, very low.
I dunno, I've downloaded a couple of those myself and they're even more trouble.
First there's the TCO. Keeping them virus-free is a couple hundred a year, plus if you let your subscription to the Kibble service lapse your Pet will stop functioning completely.
They all come preloaded with Poop.app, which can't be removed but needs constant maintenance. And in my models, at least, this sometimes will randomly upgrade itself to Poop 2.0 (code named Diarrhea) - that's a mess to clean up from your desktop, believe me.
And mine always seem to be blocking my access to the Furniture suite of utilities - there are workarounds, sure, but it's just one more thing to keep in mind.
Don't get me wrong, they have a lot of features that make them very worthwhile, but they're not for everyone!
Eight-year-olds are apparently less picky about their online freedoms than you are. Which is unsurprising, given that if their parents are smart they have pretty limited "freedom" to begin with.