Games and Music, the New Book Burning 218
It seems that a Newport News, VA pastor finally got around to reading Fahrenheit 451 and has decided that it was a good idea. Despite several studies claiming the contrary, Rev. Richard Patrick is blaming violent video games and music for crimes that he say has affected 90% of his congregation in one way or another.
He'll be starting with the Bible then? (Score:4, Insightful)
He is not the government... (Score:5, Insightful)
Individual responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot made me do it!
Re:read the interview (Score:5, Insightful)
All these people getting their panties in a twist about some kids being influenced should spend more time educating individuals, not attacking the availability of role models, no matter where you go you'll find good ones and bad ones.
If parents can't educate their kids to the point where the kids are so easily influenced then the solution is not to attack the people that are being followed.
It's not like these rappers have mind control or anything like that.
Crime is new (Score:4, Insightful)
still its in bad taste Re:read the interview (Score:4, Insightful)
furthermore i doubt he was thinking of this in terms of a clever free speech statement, rather he made a poorly thought out statement using unnecessarily loaded words.
Why do people still interview reverends? (Score:1, Insightful)
Millions work on Sunday. Nobody believes in stoning adulterous women to death (and those who do are obvious nut cases).
If they want a preacher's opinion, why don't they just get any generic sermon of theirs and replace the words "Elvis' hip gyrations..." or "(such and such) destructive cultural phenomenon" with whatever the current 'evil' is?
Like gay marriage. Take most preacher's rants on that, pick one, and use it as a template to get their opinion on new developments without even asking them.
Its time we jettisoned faith as a guiding force in this country, and everywhere.
Re:read the interview (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all the same thing, some conservative nitwit gets scared of something new, and they try to ban it instead of understanding it. It's a real shame we keep falling for it.
Re:someone needs to read the original article (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone want to claim that the Turner Diaries or Mein Komf never influenced anybody to act in a less than pleasant way?
Who hasn't heard someone say that this or that book has changed their life?
There is nothing wrong with saying "I don't think kids should play violent video games"
Just as there is nothing wrong saying that "I don't think people should eat meat".
This is only a problem when people try and make them illegal.
There is a huge difference between dislike and censorship. I don't want my kids reading the Turner diaries but I don't want them outlawed.
Saying that music and video games can not effect people is the same as saying that no form of art can effect anybody for good or evil.
Re:Individual responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as my credentials helping people, I certainly do not need to wave my resume at an anonymous coward.
What's a shepperd without sheep? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:read the interview (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:read the interview (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The difference is the context (Score:3, Insightful)
And if that's not what you're suggesting I don't understand the point of the last line of your post, other a somewhat more topical (though no more useful) "kids these days" complaint.
Re:Crime is new (Score:3, Insightful)
Cool - so since people died before guns were invented, guns aren't dangerous? Or since people got cancer before radium was discovered, it's OK to stand in the reaction chamber of a nuclear reactor? I don't agree that video games and music are the source of all of society's problems - I'm not even sure I'm convinced that they are the source of any of society's problems. However, just because those problems existed before video games and rap music doesn't prove (or even suggest) that video games and rap music aren't contributing to those problems.
Re:read the interview (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:All you need to know (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as evidence for video games causing violent behavior, there have been a couple of studies now that show an increase in aggression immediately following the play of violent video games. So yes, there is evidence, but not enough to even start to take any conclusions from it.
I believe what someone sees will influence what they do. That's the whole basis for advertising. There's no reason to expect video games to be the exception to that rule. How much does a violent video game affect a normal, sane human being? Probably not that much, but it does affect them. It certainly needs further study.
Re:read the interview (Score:4, Insightful)
Go away until you do.
Re:read the interview (Score:1, Insightful)
And don't tell me "they get obnoxious when they don't have TV, it's the easiest way for me to cope". You're a parent, nobody expects you to be 100% sane. You decided to have kids, so now you can decide to deal with your consequences.
It's an amazing thing, responsibility.
Re:read the interview (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also amazing to me how you make the leap to assume I don't do any of these things. Believe me, I try - but when your kids spend 7 hours in school and several more hours doing homework and being online, you're competing against a lot.
Re:read the interview (Score:4, Insightful)
If you look at the electoral votes in all the states in the various elections, the majority of most are between 51% and 55%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004#Election_results [wikipedia.org]
In 21 states the difference was less than 10%, and its this red state/blue state electoral college delineation that I believe is a huge polarizing factor on the country and isn't good for our political system.
Re:read the interview (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do people only ever seem to mention the glorification of violence when it comes to music or video games? the other day I saw the new "Indiana Jones" film - and it had parts where grisly deaths were actual comedic elements, and the entire cinema laughed out loud.
On the other hand, even in very violent video games or rap music, the violence is usually portrayed as something dark and sinister - not as a punch-line to a joke.
Personally, I find the use of violence as comedy in Tv and films to be much more disturbing that its use in video games and rap music. It's much more contextualized in the music and video games, while in the film/TV mediums it often appears to be entirely gratuitous. Yet the moral crusaders appear to be more concerned about showing boobies or saying "fuck" than they are about the consequence-free violence.
Re:The difference is the context (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:read the interview (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like someone who has no f-ing idea what they are talking about. Have you ever raised a child??? Wait, I see further down in your post that you haven't -- so I would recommend a little less high-and-mighty preaching to someone who *has* been there and done that.
Yeah, you can be a Nazi in your own home if you want, but all that will do is push the child farther away. It's a fact of life: when kids hit their teenage years, they will interact more with their peers than their parents (unless you live on a homestead a bajillion miles from anywhere and homeschool your kids). The teenage years are when your kids begin to act like individuals, and stop taking advice from their parents. Overall, this is a good thing -- it's when adult traits like responsibility and the highly touted "ability to think for yourself" begin to develop, but like most learning processes, much of that development comes from screwing up and dealing with the aftermath. A parent's job at this point is to let kids make the mistakes that will help them learn while trying to prevent the mistakes that will cause them serious (i.e. legal/safety/etc.) problems.
The parent post is correct -- your kids will spend a lot more time talking to their friends and being on-line. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a simple fact of life that this is a delicate time in the relationship between parent and child, and as such, it requires a lot of wisdom and judgment from the parent. You can stop them from interacting so much with their friends, but the result will most likely be worse than the problem you are trying to solve. Parents will be in competition with other influences -- many of which aren't so good for their childrens' well-being -- but taking your advice and being an absolute authoritarian is probably the worst thing you can do.
Re:Environmental neurotoxicity increases crime rat (Score:3, Insightful)
Water has a toxicity level too and can cause death by brain swelling [about.com]. I'm also assuming it would be very uncomfortable to get to the point where one's ingested too much water as with fluoride.
And I believe that if one died from fluoride toxicity before dying of water toxicity, there's something else wrong.
Your comment about hydrofluoric acid in the stomach [nih.gov] was interesting, so I looked it up. Since the stomach naturally uses hydrochloric acid in digestion, I looked up what swallowing [nih.gov] it would do. Apparently, the same thing as hydrofluoric acid.
Large doses of things tend to harm us. Smaller doses may actually help us, directly or indirectly. Yet the alarmists aren't trying to ban water or food or electricity. Could it be that they're even willing to admit that some things have nuanced applications?
No, there's rally not (Score:3, Insightful)
The one that sticks out the best in my mind was one that found just that: People got more hyped up and "aggressive" (thought that wasn't well defined) after playing a violent game. Ok... Except the test was garbage. For the violent game they chose the original Unreal Tournament (keep in mind this study was done just a few years ago) and for the non-violent game they chose... Myst. Yes, that's right, Myst.
Man, I could probably find two games with less in common, but it would take effort. They really weren't testing violent vs non-violent in that case, they were testing competitive vs non-competitive, and fast paced vs slow paced. Gee, no surprise that people might get hyped up by UT and nearly put to sleep by Myst.
A proper test would be to take a more modern game, say UT3 at this point, and set it up so that one group plays a violent style of game and another group plays a non-violent style. For example have both groups play CTF, but one plays normal CTF with guns that blow people up, the other plays a freeze tag version where guns just freeze you in place (and your team can thaw you and such). That would control for most other variables other than violence and non-violence.
However there's two problems with that:
1) Most behavioural science researchers understand little about technology and less about games. I can go on and on with examples from my undergraduate studies.
2) A large number of researchers have an outcome in mind and, on purpose or subconsciously, they design the experiment to give that outcome.
So, the data at this point is basically worthless. I have yet to see a study where there was any sort of good control and measurement done.
Re:read the interview (Score:3, Insightful)
Once they take off the "PSA" ads and allow a little open discussion. Unfortunately, it's a nice little feedback loop once you get the "drugs are bad" message repeated over and over sans opposition for a generation or two.
Even as someone who would like sane permission-- or even a start toward open, fair study and debate-- on less harmful recreational drugs, the constant anti-marijuana sentiment from one side, and the marginalization of the opposition within the public media makes even me feel like I'd be doing something "wrong" in advocating or even voting for relaxation. To the back of my mind, it's almost as if even if it came to a vote, voting to legalize softer drugs would be illegal in and of itself. It's not a rational thought, just a niggling, back-of-the-brain unsettling feeling brought about by a soft-but-steady background noise of anti-drug repetition.
Re:read the interview (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the very successful people I know use drugs, among them marijuana. Such people are usually operating at a very high level where they are expected to take risks, and sometimes even fail. I can speculate that these people are prone to use drugs (including party-pills, cigarettes, coffee and alcohol as well as illicit substances) to stay awake, enhance their confidence, and de-stress after a hard day, and of course because they have the disposable income to afford them - but it could be that their drug use or the corresponding cost of it is what caused them to be so successful. I can't say for sure what part drugs played in their success...
In the same way, you can't possibly know whether your friend was drawn to drugs as a way to self-medicate and mitigate the symptoms of her condition. Your friend may have been borderline schizophrenic before she started smoking pot, and delayed the inevitable by smoking constantly, or her marijuana use may simply be absolutely unrelated.
I know many people who smoke pot (whereas you profess to only know one), and not a single person I know of has behaved in a way that would suggest, or been diagnosed with a mental illness - therefore I deduce that pot-smoking can protect you from mental illness using a far more convincing sample size than yours - it doesn't mean my conclusion is any less baseless than yours.
Re:read the interview (Score:2, Insightful)