Absolute Wuss

[Cranky Old Man]

I presented the proof, as approved by Science and all of his little minions, but you decided that you somehow weren't going to like it anyway. That's not how it works. If I present proof, then you present at least an equal amount of proof, before you can decide to not like my proof. The burden of proof is on you.

Yes, but you never declared what your points was referring to in the first place, and you had five points, while I had four sections.

Yes, that's a nice theory that you've got there about how debating works, but as I can simply choose to not believe in it, you've proven nothing. You can't prove how debating works, unless you bring in outside sources - sources which you don't accept, and I can choose to not accept just as well.

You've never even read the studies I referred to, and you still say that they don't live up to your standards because their circumstances are biased and the control group was too small. You're being completely unreasonable.

Actually, I don't think you're one of the overall majority at all.

1. The problem is it isn't approved by "Science and his minions". Here's an article that proves it's not unanimous.

Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson aren't scientific minions. They're student book-writers who interviewed a lot of kids. They noted that kids who play violent video games also get into 23% more fights, but speculated that violent video games were the effect rather than the cause, and that was the extent of their research: Speculation. They openly admit their so called "studies" aren't enough to draw any conclusions. Instead, they fall back on the old "nobody has proven otherwise", which might have been true four years ago when the book was written, but isn't the case anymore.
What you have there is actual sensational bullshit: A pair of gamers who wrote their opinions and did a bunch of interviews to get biased opinions from other gamers to back them up.

Is it true? No, it could very well be complete bullshit, but so could your evidence.

No, because my evidence includes a controlled medical experiment where the desensitation was actually measured.

You wouldn't ever read a book stating general relativity is falsehood because it is now accepted as truth, whereas the nature of singularities and the big bang are still the subject of heavy debate and so not definite.

So what you're saying is that all science is ruled by what is already "accepted as truth"?

2. I think it was pretty obvious which point I was referring to, because at that point in time there was only one other point I had written. I wouldn't ever refer to a point that came after without stating which one exactly.

1. No.
2. No.
3. Really?
4. Obviously things can still get confusing when you don't know which parts the other person is referring to.

3. It isn't something that can be proven. It's standard practice (there is proof for that) and there's nothing that says it has to work that way. It is the way it is because disproving an unreasonable claim is an uphill battle. You can literally say anything, and I cannot argue with you.

"Standard practice" according to you, perhaps, but that still doesn't prove anything. If you say that others subscribe to your idea, then you can't prove that either. Not without outside sources. It's not an uphill battle - it's not even possible. That's why referring to outside sources is necessary.

4. Look dude, I really have no interest wasting my life hunting down and reading books just to get an idea for what your position is. It really isn't my problem if you can't provide at least a general summary of your points.

What the problem is here, is that you don't want to be wrong, and because you don't want to be wrong, you don't want to read anything on the subject that doesn't support your opinion. You "have an interest" in having your opinion, not in knowing the facts. There are superbrief summaries about these studies on Wikipedia.

Also, now you are being unreasonable because I never accused you of using biased sources at all. That doesn't change the fact that most studies that I've seen are biased with a small sample group (a handful of people that react in a way no sane person would and do something destructive).

Okay, but those don't rule out that good studies can be done.

5. What then, the minority? Honestly, just reading this thread should tell you that your opinion is not the generally accepted one

Yes, in this very topic, consisting of gamers, I might be a minority, but in the bigger picture, there's been a whole hysteria going on for decades now. Are you saying that the reasonability of my claim, varies depending on where I make it?

I just want to say something outside of this particular discussion. It's not my opinion that videogames can never affect people because that is simply untrue. Humans especially children like to imitate what they see and hear if brings them joy in one way or another. Due to PG-13 action movies and military shooters violence is now seen as "cool". If violence is cool, then you can be cool by being violent, right? While this is completely true it has nothing at all to do with real violence. Going back to a movie like Oldboy however, which is a very violent but tragic and sometimes horrific movie, I can't imagine anybody wanting to emulate it. It's realistic, the violence has real impact and is essential to the story and is portrayed the way it truly is in real life: disturbing.

Does it have anything to do with violence then that children and teenagers are more violent? Partially, but I would lay most of the blame on the stylization (which is not that recent admittedly) of violence by the media. That does not mean it affects your brain in a significant way, so that you want to cause real harm to people. Murder is extremely heavy, even the thought affects people and even sometimes makes them sick. I would say murder is less about the actual violence and more about the emotion behind it. And if you no longer feel anything that could be called emotional when killing people you are officially insane, and I would argue have never been sane.

Partly players will get desensitized to violence by simply becoming used to it. For example, large pools of blood is seen as normal in a game, because players usually won't reflect on something as frequently occuring as blood, if it's not all over a scene. In the real world, a mere cups worth of blood should be cause for alarm.
...but partly, the portrayal of something will itself develop a player, so if violence is portrayed as anything else than wrong (i.e. normal or right) then that adds another layer to the player conditioning.