211–220 of 593 posts
Kind of sad there isn't much discussion on the positive effects of video games, which can boost reaction time and teach kids critical thinking skills.
The effort and skill required to play a multiplayer game back then may have been part of this.
‘Who’s got a spare terminator?’
My mother specialized in early childhood learning and developmental psychology. She never once blinked when my brother and I played Doom or Wolfenstein, some of the most violent games of their times. We were allowed to play with toy guns and listen to whatever music we wanted including heavy metal (which my father despised.) I asked her about this later in life and her answer was and she laughingly told me "I knew yo…
I live in a Mexican city near to the border with the US, the violence got really bad 10 years ago (some cartels were fighting for the border, now it is a lot calmer). Anyways “Narco culture” has influenced a lot of people (mostly on poor neighborhoods) and therefore it has influenced kids, it’s really sad to see boys playing with guns pretending to be narcos. The government has tried to ban those kinds of toys, I don…
I have noticed that many social science articles posted on Hacker News bring out critical comments about study design, doubts about the strength of the study's conclusions, that kind of thing. This submission, on the other hand, is a link to some kind of gaming news website, which links to an abstract for an article in a Cyberpsychology (?) journal which costs $60 to access, and there is widespread and uncritical agr…
Yes, I think that confirmation bias is very strong here. My rule for analyzing social science articles is pretty simple: If the study contradicts your intuition or understanding of human behavior, it is likely that it does not support the conclusion because of extensive methodological errors or statistical skullduggery. If, on the other hand, the study confirms your intuition or understanding of human behavior, it is…
When there is such heavily biased review of social science papers, it calls the legitimacy of all of them into question.
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I mean, part of this is probably also some degree of us intuitively knowing the answer. If you have a friend group of 10 people, 4 of which regularly work out. You will probably notice that those 4 friends have less body fat and are more toned than the other 6. At that point, if a study came out saying that working out had no impact on body physique, you'd reflexively question the results. That might sound ridiculous…
Intuitively, it's hard to believe that witnessing and using violence doesn't have any negative effect on a person, even if in videogames. I think that rather than asking ourselves "does this have a negative impact?" we should ask "what can I do that has a positive impact?". Personally, I would never work on a game with significant violence. From my point of view, there are so many other things a human being can contr…
That's part of the point of this essay that was on HN last year: "Fortnite and the Good Life," which seems relevant here.
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-convivial-soc...
This is frustrating. Although I understand why this study is helpful, I believe it would have been much more helpful had we been asking a different question. Violence, per se, is not as relevant as the context for that violence. The more revelatory question is not whether 'violent video games do lead to agression' but instead whether they could . If, for example, the protagonist in a video game has an attitude or beh…
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There's some truth here, but it's important not to use anecdotes too much to guide intuition because the sample size is often too small and too biased. For example, I have a group of 10 friends. All 10 of them (including myself) got covid, and we all agree it is no worse than the flu. I mean, yeah, we couldn't smell or taste for a few days, but we all recovered within a week. Therefore... I should reflexively questio…
> There's some truth here, but it's important not to use anecdotes too much to guide intuition because the sample size is often too small and too biased. In a community like HN there's also kind of a "meta-anecdote" that emerges. If there was a link, you'd expect to see at least someone posting an ancedote about how their friend got into violent games and then became violent themselves; instead it's mainly the opposi…
>multiple ancedotes can be more useful than a single one
Sure. But that meta-anecdote based narrative can be highly biased based on the community that forms it.
A forum with an large respresentation of hospital doctors and a forum with a large representation of convenience store owners are going to have completely different meta-anecdote based narratives on whether packing heat is good or bad.
I'm one of those people who is entirely bemused by violent videogames and films (I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be bemused by my pastimes too). I'm not trying to argue to stop anyone doing it, but I would really like to understand it better. Many video games are essentially simulators of things that we're prevented from doing in reality, because of the laws of nature or society. Whether that's dropping…
Part of the equation is that combat is interesting to simulate. It has clear rules ( live or die ), a lot of different ways you can tweak the game design to differentiate ( swords vs guns vs spells vs karate ).
The most popular games are NOT that violent. They simulate combat, but the draw is the competition created by the simulation, not the blood and guts. I can't name a game where "chopping people up" is the primary goal. I'm sure it exists, but I would find it dishonesty to disparage an entire medium because of the work of some niche game developer.
I didn't grow up during a time when you could go out and wander the streets all day and your parents would be OK with that. You had to be home. Having friends over and competing over video games was a great way to pass the time. The game we played the most? Super Smash Bros. Rated E, 0 realistic simulations of violence, about as bad as any slapstick film.
Looking at my children, when my wife stopped them from playing video games, they fought much more. Gaming is the opium of the children!
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'Parents would let us "work it out" if there was a fight.' And now days the school calls the police for minor fights and kids end up with records that can drastically alter their lives in a negative way. I almost wonder if this zero tolerance mindset creates an all-or-nothing mentality in kids when they realize they aren't allowed to defend themselves. And if this mentality (equivocating criminal record and expulsion…
You are mixing 2 different topics. Ramping authoritarianism and policing is one problem. > "allowed to defend themselves" > "punching my bully" ...and this is what most bullies would say. No, bullying cannot be solved by the victims, otherwise it would not be a problem in the first place. Bullying needs to be stopped by the school - and without calling in armed bullies to stop the bullies.
I don't want to victim blame, because they are victims... but it's often enabled by their own character traits. They'll be greatly helped throughout life if they acquire the ability to defend themselves.