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Originally Posted by starworks5
well, firstly there are a couple dumbasses that i know that like playing video games with guns. who happened to buy an ak-47 for fun. and started shooting the neighbors chickens. they also happened to like heavy metal
also a friend of mine who is a guitarist who decided that he liked drugs alot, and went into a downward spiral until he hit bottom.....
trust me...... they do... maybe not you...
for me i live by one ideal, which is BE RESPONSIBLE. if there is just one thing that i wished that all children were taught. that would be it.
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I feel like there is a disconnect in your argument there between necessary and sufficient causes of those negative behaviors. In other words, playing violent video games is a sufficient cause of behavior like shooting neighbors chickens etc but not necessary. There are plenty of people who engage in such behaviors and never touch a video game, let alone a violent one. There are also (obviously) TONS of people who play violent video games and never do anything violent in their own lives.
I read an interesting article a while back that argued that people who vent their anger and such through the playing of violent video games are actually LESS likely to vent such emotions in real life. It's pretty easy to square this with the fact that most violent crime has dropped quite noticibly in most of the US over the past 10 years, the exact period during which the number and violence of video games has been on a massive increase.
Its kind of like the whole marjuana-use-leads-to-cocaine-use gateway theory. That concept derives from a study whereby habitual cocaine users were asked if they had tried marijuana prior to cocaine. The number of users who reported using marijuana first was divided by the number who said they'd tried cocaine first, eg:
x = (# coke users who tried MJ first) / (# coke users who tried coke first)
Now, since MJ is WAY more heavily used than coke, and people are more likely to try it before cocaine obviously the number was very large (anything with a small denominator!
). This was used to say "Use of marijuana is likely to lead to cocaine use" when in fact what the numbers REALLY say is that "Cocaine users are more likely to have already tried marijuana" which is completely different.
Similiarly with video games. Plenty of people play violent games and never do anything violent. A small number of people play violent video games and do something violent. Another large number of people do violent stuff and never play video games. I dont see there being a causal relationship there.
Whew sorry for the long post!
one flew over the cokoo's nest
) about something like; declining marine ecosystems, sociological consequences of economic devolopment (or lack thereof), or about policitacl reformation. and someone interrupts me mid conversation to talk about how "jacko narrowly escaped getting his azzhole being turned into mashed potatoes"
