Violent games DO NOT in any way invoke violence in a case where the user can differentiate reality from falsality. It's the SAME THING as a regular movie, only interactive. The same generic sensors go off and things of that nature. If you do a google search on Correlation between Violence and Video games you find that there is one, but see correlations do not prove causality. If you look into it more you find that violence in video games does not CAUSE people to become violent. In a case where someone would BECOME violent, a movie would have the EXACT same effect. That person is also mentally ill as they cannot differentiate between reality and falsality.
Similar to music, it does not ever cause people to do things. Ever. Never does it. Not once. People CHOOSE their music, actions they perform are actions they would perform normally.
Evil is subjective. A cat who kills a mouse, but killing was necessary for the cat to live. Is the mouse right in saying that the cat is evil? Or is the cat right in saying it was necesssary and good? niether because it depends on who's perspective you adopt. Nothing is 1 sided.
Here's a website ya'll can poke around on:
http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed450069.html A quote I like: "Attraction to violent action is a cumulative effect of many hours and years of viewing violence on television and in movies by young people who have not developed critical resistance." | |
"Attraction to violent action is a cumulative effect of many hours and years of viewing violence on television and in movies by young people who have not developed critical resistance." Mostly, that entire source is just a heap of information -- written by someone obviously biased against television violence -- designed to support the case of parents that really don't know how to raise their children. I refer to: "Pediatricians warn that media violence can be especially damaging to children under age 8 because they cannot readily tell the difference between real life and fantasy" and to: "(b) lack of interaction with family members or peers who provide mediating influences" I'd also like to point out the following: 'Hepburn, Mary A. "TV Violence: A Medium's Effects Under Scrutiny." SOCIAL EDUCATION 61 (September 1997): 244-249. EJ 554 668. Hepburn, Mary A. VICARIOUS VIOLENCE ON THE SCREEN: A CHALLENGE TO EDUCATORS AND FAMILIES. Chicago: American Bar Association, 2000. ED 443 776.' Interesting how the author cites her own publications as support for her case! I'll do some poking around of my own, when I get some spare time, to see if I can find anything that directly supports my case. Of course, I doubt I'll find anything that won't be just as easily picked through as biased either. =P | |
Actually, I'm going to stop responding to this now because it's basically a fruitless argument anyway. I won't agree that violence is okay in game form, and you won't agree that it isn't. What's the point?
Anyway, I explained my part of why I dislike violence, and that's what started this. I get tired of having my opinions nitpicked anyway. | |
Why not a game where you go around solving people's problems? like you have a guy and he talks to people, and gather's ingformation, then goes on to solve random people in the town's problems. That's actually a good idea... I like to put puzzles in my (single player) games, where you have a string of people that all need something and can give you something in return... the puzzle is to figure out how you can help each person, and how they can then help you with the next person you need to help. A good model to use is the puzzle sequences in Maniac Mansion... which, despite its title and horror movie trappings, is a very non-violent game, where death is rare, and when it doesn't involve hamsters, it occurs off camera. (And, although the game allows you to put the hamster in the microwave, you have to deal with the consequences of the action.) There's people(?) in the mansion who all want something from you before they, and you have to piece together clues to figure out what they want and how to get it for them. | |
Foomer wrote:
You guys? You mean, me? (Being the only violence hater I know.) It's not a phobia. It's a concious dislike for violent things, and I have plenty of reason for it. I'm very sorry for your loss... and I'm very sorry for your friend... but I resent the hell out of your implications, and I think you're doing the world and your own mental well-being a disservice by chasing shadows instead of doing something positive about real violence. You don't like violence... fine. Don't like violence. I'll dislike it right alongside you. I abhor violence. And yet, I play shooting games. I also play racing games. In real life, I don't know how to drive and I wouldn't touch a gun to save my life. When I play these games, I'm not fantasizing about being a racecar driver or blowing people's brains out... when you play Tetris, do you fantasize about dropping blocks from great heights? Give me an immersive game like Half-Life, and yes, I will "project" into the game... but when I'm done, I don't think I'm some scientist forced to defend myself against extradimensional invaders with exotic energy weapons and experimental military hardware. Yes, violent people play violent games... but so do non-violent people. Why, you ask? Why play Tetris, if you don't have a block fixation? Why play a racing game, if you don't enjoy driving? Why play a flight simulator if you're afraid of heights? Because they all provide an interesting mental challenge. Of course, when someone goes on a reading to senior citizen rampage, the media doesn't dig through their TV cabinet looking for copies of Quake III... doesn't mean they wouldn't find it. Here's a pattern you ought to think about... you don't want to play a game which mentions the word "demons", even if you know that "demon" is just a word being used as a label for a set of numbers, no different than "ork" or "gnome". When people mention the social side of their committed relationships, you complain about explicit sexual talk. You don't think people should play a fantasy game if the abstract goal is represented by violent figures. Have you ever checked to see if your suspension of disbelief has an "off" switch? I'm sure this sounds harsh, but you did say you're not looking for support. | |
Foomer wrote:
[link] That was you stopping your debating with me, not the whole subject. I'll bring up a completely different subject, though: Admittedly, your argument wasn't actually looking bad for you, but you gave up very, very easily -- remember also that backing out of something makes your opponent "win" by default. You had already changed my opinions slightly, you know. Sure, there's no way you could completely reverse my opinions on in-game violence, but that doesn't mean you can't try, and probably succeed in a few areas. I'm already re-evaluating a couple things, and pondering how I'll raise my kids when/if those days arrive. =) If you want people to see your point of view you definitely shouldn't back out until the other side resorts to senseless arguments (at which point it's fairly clear that you've "won"). I've found that unless the other person is obviously wrong (and they know it but won't admit it), arguments never can be finished, but they can be brought to a point where a side of the argument is clearly correct, or at least more correct than the other. ;-) I hate being wrong, I'll admit. I hate losing, and I hate to admit that I'm losing. But I always try to finish what I've started. The fact that none of my projects are deleted, and I fully intend to complete a good deal of them, is testimony to that. =) (And, anyone can mark my words that they will see Battle for Solaris sometime -- maybe not next week, maybe not next month, but sometime in the reasonable but not far future. I won't say soon, however, since that's being presumptuous. ;-P) Another thing that tends to make people annoyed is how you act as though their counter-arguments don't matter. I won't go into major details, though, since that's not the aim of this post. Note: a simple "I can't convince you, you can't convince me" won't work in my experience, because I already tried it, and failed, with Lexy. If I hadn't responded back, I would have alienated myself from a portion of this community, whom I look up to as mentors (fact is, I'm not utterly annoyed with you because I like your personality too much =P). I only managed to save face, and maintain a "good acquaintance" (I wouldn't say "friend" about Lexy, since we don't associate often enough, and it would also be presumptuous) by admitting that I was being stubborn. In this case, neither of us had an argument developed enough to make a legitimate statement as to who was being stubborn when faced with a better argument, or whose opinion on life seemed better in the long run. =| | |
I only managed to save face, and maintain a "good acquaintance" (I wouldn't say "friend" about Lexy, since we don't associate often enough, and it would also be presumptuous) by admitting that I was being stubborn. I'm sure some people are going to feel snubbed when I say this, but I don't associate with anyone on BYOND enough to feel that I could call them friends without being presumptuous myself or devaluing the word "friend." I consider you a good acquaintance whom I admire in some ways and value as a person. | |
Chord wrote:
I can only say one thing, 'evil' makes no sense, 'evil' is the action of impure deeds without motive. Everyone has a motive, stealing because of boredom, killing out of chemical need, vengence, religion, or hatred. Humans do not act without a motive, therefore, 'evil' is nonexistent, correct me if i'm wrong. I'll fight you to the end on this. (AND DON"T EVEN MENTION 'SATAN' OR 'LOKII' OR ANY OF THOSE UNPROVED BEINGS.) Your entire message (I snipped the preceding paragraph because it says much the same) is founded in a fallacy: Moral equivalence. That is, the idea that one value system is eqaul to another, no matter what. A serial killer's value system may think it's right to go around murdering people; that doesn't mean he's right just because he thinks he is, just because he can justify the crime to himself. Although specifics of good and evil do vary by belief, generalities don't. It's wrong to just up and kill someone. If that person is directly threatening you or someone else with imminent violence, then killing them may well be okay, morally. If their threat is more indirect, it's a lot harder to fit a condition where it's acceptable to harm them. I won't get into specific cases on this one because it's a waste of time, but from a common-sense perspective we all have to accept this. It's an accepted common-sense moral principle that a person who's doing nothing to harm you, but just going about their daily business, is not to be killed. Terrorism violates that principle. It elelvates all people in a group to the status of combatants, whether they are or not. This mindset makes it permissible in the eyes of those who hold it to attack innocents, on the basis that they're not really innocents because, well, they're Jews. Or they're wearing blue. Or they're carrying a radio. Or they have green eyes. It's possible for a terrorist to hyper-rationalize the killing of anyone by finding contrived excuses to lump them into a group that's working against them; but just because you can rationalize something doesn't mean it's not evil--nor does it mean it is. Common-sense morality derives from this simple idea: That a person should have the right to choose to live out their life in peace, recognizing that all their actions have consequences, so that if they choose a path in which they'll be generally left free to go about their business, they have a right to expect that routine not to be harmed or made unfree by the will of others. That is, if you go about robbing banks, you should expect to get caught and go to jail; but if you work at your job and pay your bills, you shouldn't have to fear for your life every day. This is a very general principle, but the bottom line is that some people want to cause trouble and some don't. Depending on what the former does, it can probably be classed as "evil" or at least "bad". Let's take a simple example: Rape. I'm sure if you tried, you could find some rare, extreme case where an aggressor was actually provoked, and pushed beyond the bounds of rational thought. But that exception aside, in every case, rape is pure evil. It's absolutely indefensible. Without common-sense morality, it'd be impossible for any humans to live together. If 99 people believe all violence is evil but the 100th thinks he can slaughter his neighbors for sandwich meat, that 100th guy is evil. It's okay to say that. Moral equivalence gains the appearance of logic when you look at a couple of large populations. But numbers don't lend strength to the argument; if 1 person eschewed all violence and the 99 made him the centerpiece at a luau, the 99 are still evil. If 500 million people believe they just want to raise the kids in peace and go about life, and 500 million others think the first group should be killed in a long campaign of genocide, the second group is still wrong. Someone else on this thread said evil is subjective; I'll paraphrase that and say it's partially subjective. Some things are always and forever wrong. Other things are wrong (or right, or acceptable) most of the time but not in some special circumstances. Different religions, or different denominations of the same religion, might have different gods or different taboos. Fair enough. Most Hindus think eating meat is evil; they're entitled to that belief, but they'd better not try to force it on me. That's a subjective evil, where one culture raises livestock for food and another reveres the animals as souls hoping for a better reincarnation. An objective evil is when you set off a bomb in a school. Lummox JR | |
Evil can not possbly exist, in the eyes of some, the rich americas are 'evil', just because they allow their women to show skin and their people to eat pork. Others see the middle easterners as 'evil' because their armies are notorious for blowing [feces] up and themselves with it. Pork and skin... destroying property and life. Pork and skin... destroying property and life. Gosh, you've got me convinced! Those terrorists are really no more evil than us Americans! Yes, it's all a matter of perspective. You know what? Perspectives can be wrong. If you're standing right next to a small hill and looking at mountains in the distance, the mountains look smaller than the hill. That's a matter of perspective, too. Is the hill actually bigger? No. I can only say one thing, 'evil' makes no sense, 'evil' is the action of impure deeds without motive. Everyone has a motive, stealing because of boredom, killing out of chemical need, vengence, religion, or hatred. Humans do not act without a motive, therefore, 'evil' is nonexistent, correct me if i'm wrong. I'll fight you to the end on this. You're right, humans don't do anything without a motive. What you're failing to understand is that it is the motives themselves which are good or evil. Killing someone who's trying to take your life is not an evil act... killing the same person because you want to be famous is. Your motive is boredom and selfishness... how is throwing away someone else's life in a moment of boredom not an evil act? You're trying to assign your own definition to the word evil and then saying that nothing in this world can fulfill that definition. Guess what? I can prove that jet propulsion is a physical impossibility if I redefine "jet propulsion" to mean "going backwards and forwards and sideways at the same time at infinite velocity." I can prove that you were never born if I say that "born" means "thrown from the top of the Grand Canyon, only to be miraculously rescued by a family of unusually strong carrier pigeons." | |
Semaj wrote:
The thing is, I'm not calling anything evil unless a higher holy being just happens to come to earth ring my doorbell and say, "WILLY!! Don't pee on the toilet seat, thats evil!". Well, I don't know if holy beings will stop by to tell you that peeing on the toilet seat is evil, but if you don't learn it on your own, sooner or later you'll learn it the hard way, from the big angry dude who was next in line to use the toilet. Thus is morality passed from generation to generation. | |
Semaj wrote:
Ok, for one thing evil shouldn't even be judged by human beings, has a mystical being been around earth in the past 100 years telling people this and that are evil? No. Evil shouldn't even be judged by humans because it only leads to unjust wars, because there cannot be a just war its just impossible until we are certain what is evil and what is not. Human nature tells us what is evil, but most of the time human nature is wrong, so does human nature give us the right to declare something "evil" and to go out and kill the evil thing? The answer again is no. We think evil is an act of sin, which it probably is, but are we so totally sure what is sin or not? When this world was created, and if it was created by some almighty powerful being, don't you think he might of set up some rules for the most intelligent creatures to abide by? The thing is, I'm not calling anything evil unless a higher holy being just happens to come to earth ring my doorbell and say, "WILLY!! Don't pee on the toilet seat, thats evil!". What we think of as evil, we think of because of because its our human nature, and human nature is not to be trusted. Therefore, we should not say anything is evil. that's your point, right? We also declare things as bad because our human nature tells us so. But, as you stated, human nature cannot be trusted, so we can't even say things are bad. If we don't view anything as bad/evil, then we can do whatever we want, because no one has the authority to tell us what we're doing is wrong. So does that mean I can go make the C00LesT DBZ GaME EvaH mADE!!!!!111 Cuz Its GoNA B Da B3sT MY P33PZ!!!!!1 sure, it'll violate copyright laws, and be a really awful game, but you must all play it because you cannot say its bad! MUHAHAHAHAHA. You will be unable to criticize my horrendous stolen work and forced to play it for hours upon hours. Your fingers will go numb clicking on punching bags! You will be eternally confused by My MAd TipINg SKILLZ, DUDEZ! And you will be unable to resist! | |
First, stitisics can be bent to serve any perpose. Second, life has vilonce. As in the cat exsample, my cat is an inside cat and has rarly been out side and we keep a clean house so it has rarly seen a mouse. But one time this one mouse got out and she hunted it down. Did i teach her to hunt that mouse? No it was part of her Genes. Not only did she hunt it down, she also played with it till she killed it then for about an hour she carryed it around in her mouth. And she was calm for about 5 or so hours after and i have a realy hiper cat. She normaly claws on me, plays and what not like cats do. She is expressing vilence right there and is barly hurting me, no more than wresling. When i play games like C&C Renegade, gore(real games name), and Dues Ex, i vent. Its only natural to want vilonce, but if we do not vent these gasses of evil(sound like a nick name for a fart) than our house will explode. So dont attack my games, hssss hssss. So really, you dont have to make a bloody game, but realize that the world might be worce without them.
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Yes, against real violence, but there has been no direct connection between violence in the news and violent video games. You can't always assume a causal connection. No one has been able to tell (that I know of) whether violent video games cause people to be violent or whether violent people tend to be drawn to violent video games. Similar situation with scientists. Less scientists tend to be religious. Is it that science makes people less religious or less religious people are drawn to science?
As far as the cat thing, cats in the wild (at least large ones) groom eachother and petting seems to be a manifestation of that. A wild cat won't let you pet it because it doesn't know or trust you but it will let other cats that it knows "pet it." You're simply letting it get to know you, not teaching it some new behavior. This is just by observations, I've never read anything on it but it just makes sense to me...
What if the person with the knife was just some brainwashed kid who was sent by a crime boss? Would you just hit the kid with the crowbar and wait for the next kid to be sent to also hit with a crowbar? Then hit the next kid sent with a crowbar? Or would you go and try to get the crime boss before he could send anymore kids with knives?