Posted by Temporal at 2005/08/11 04:48:22 CDT
http://gr.bolt.com/articles/violence/violence.htm
Eat that, Jack Thomson.
The Truth about Violent Video Games
| 2005/08/11 08:20:51 CDT by dave |
His argument doesn't prove much. The intoduction of increasingly realistic video games did not cause the drop in juvenile violent crime. That was caused by legalized abortion (scarily, in this case pre-emtive death sentences really did eliminate a lot of crime). Stephen Levitt has a very interesting paper on it on his site at http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf. Personally I think that realistic violent video games increase the rate of school shootings by allowing unpopular kids to rehearse the idea of killing lots of people, and then pretend that they are still in the video game when they carry it out. Not that I think that we should ban violent video games, clearly the problem in this case is that we are giving losers access to guns.
| 2005/08/11 11:42:18 CDT by Temporal |
The article never claimed that violent video games reduced violent crime. The point was only that there is no violent crime epidemic, contrary to what anti-video-game people claim. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
IMO, horrific crimes are just going to happen, and there's nothing you can do to eliminate them altogether. Columbine will happen from time to time. Terrorism will also happen. The problem isn't always fixable, and it certainly isn't worth the extreme measures that politicians often like to suggest. Unfortunately there are some crazy people in this world, and they will find ways to cause damage.
| 2005/08/11 18:46:20 CDT by Mojo |
we had that page already come, and while its awesome: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393310728
LA times had a good editorial about this:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-johnson27jul27,0,1432940.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Though these also came up and were a good read (though about teen pregnacy)
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/healthcare/a/teenbirthsdrop.htm
http://www.agi-usa.org/media/nr/2004/02/19/
| 2005/08/12 01:33:02 CDT by mattsteg |
Quote from dave:
His argument doesn't prove much.
It pretty clearly sets up limitations on what point it's trying to make and makes that point quite well.
Quote from dave:
The intoduction of increasingly realistic video games did not cause the drop in juvenile violent crime.
No one is claiming it did.
Quote from dave:
That was caused by legalized abortion (scarily, in this case pre-emtive death sentences really did eliminate a lot of crime). Stephen Levitt has a very interesting paper on it on his site at http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf. Personally I think that realistic violent video games increase the rate of school shootings by allowing unpopular kids to rehearse the idea of killing lots of people, and then pretend that they are still in the video game when they carry it out. Not that I think that we should ban violent video games, clearly the problem in this case is that we are giving losers access to guns.
I'm not sure how you can sit back with a straight face, deride an article for attempting to make a point that it makes no attempt to make, then fire off statements with no logical backing whatsoever (i.e. wildly speculating on the effect of violent school shootings with no evidence whatsoever). Bad form.