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Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

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Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#341

Post by adamsea »

ajuc wrote: post #277
aidenn0 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it a different way, the people who grew up to be violent individuals are probably not posting on HN, nor working at companies with people who post on HN, so the fact that everybody on HN isn't violent, despite playing violent video games is only weak evidence against there being a correlation. In fact, I would be surprised for there to be zero correlation (even assuming there is no causation), as it is a reaso…

How about the fact that gaming grew by every metric by orders of magnitude between 80s and now and violent crime dropped by half of more everywhere in the world. If the effect was even 0.01 with growth by 10000% we would have noticed.

I mean it’s either good science or it isn’t.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#342

Post by yters »

mywittyname wrote: post #126
umvi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably confirmation bias. Same reason a study with positive outcomes about coffee/alcohol/gay parenthood/gender reassignment/ are not criticized as much as a study on the same topic that had negative outcomes. We want certain things to be true so we (consciously or not) avoid criticizing studies bolstering what we want to be true and harshly criticize studies we want to be false. I like to think science always…

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…

I read a story in the recent past about a 30 some year old constant gamer who lived in his parents' house who shot and killed his mother for messing with his gaming console. There is some anecdata for you.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#343

Post by eeZah7Ux »

giantg2 wrote: post #193
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"No, bullying cannot be solved by the victims, otherwise it would not be a problem in the first place." How do you think that works if zero tolerance policies punish the aggressor and victim equally, essentially preventing the victim from defending themself? And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever. I was bullied once. Ev…

> if zero tolerance policies punish the aggressor and victim equally

I never said that. Please don't make up strawmans.

> And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever.

I never said that.

> I was bullied once. Eventually I fought back and gave the kid a bloody nose. Guess what - he was nicer to me and to other kids too. Prior to that he had no empathy. That experience changed him. I know others with similar experiences too.

Funny how I only hear the "stood up to bullies succesfully" story and never the other ones. See my other comment.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#344

Post by SkyBelow »

yazboo wrote: post #80

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…

No surprise. Even among scientists there is an issue where the level of critical review a paper gets is largely dependent upon how agreeable the findings are to the person reviewing it. This is a reason that even science isn't fully trustable in areas where personal beliefs are very strongly held.

For one fun field, look at the level of criticism papers in parapsychology (the study of the paranormal) and compare it to if they get more criticism or not than the average paper in psychology. There is a particularly fun study (which I do not recall the name of) where two scientists teamed up, one who thought parapsychology was a true field and one who thought it was fake. They worked together on the same experiment and each produced results that agreed with them, but neither could find a flaw in the other's methodology or results (other than they disagree with their own results).

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#345

Post by kbenson »

umvi wrote: post #170
mywittyname wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> Therefore... I should reflexively question covid studies saying how dangerous it is because in my own experience it's not even worth making a fuss over?

Should you question them? Yes.

Should you let your own experience and that of a few people around you override what you see to be a rigorous statistical study because you questioned it and looked into it? No. If you look into it and have serious questions about the rigor of the study? Maybe. Is that the case in the Covid studies? Probably not.

Whether this is about Covid or anything else, the important thing is to be able to asses information as it comes in and reassess your position based on the data available to you. Anecdotal data is invaluable and used by everyone every day to make decisions prior to receiving good outside rigorous data, because for many things we don't have good outside rigorous data.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#347

Post by giantg2 »

rgblambda wrote: post #338
giantg2 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older homes do tend to be more sturdy. Still, are the interior doors more durable than the external doors? Are the ceilings secure? Could be easy enough to go into the attic (either with access or by force) and come down in the room in under 5 minutes. Of course if the motive is to kill the occupant then the aggressor could bring tools to defeat the construction.

This has become quite entertaining. >>Still, are the interior doors more durable than the external doors? Yes. >> Could be easy enough to go into the attic (either with access or by force) and come down in the room in under 5 minutes. Locate the entrance to the attic. Then the room I am in, despite not knowing the layout to the house. Then smash a hole in the ceiling. Then climb through said hole without getting stuc…

It is quite interesting. I'm failing to see how you could be missing my point.

>>Still, are the interior doors more durable than the external doors?

"Yes."

I doubt this. They might be equal, but I doubt the exterior door would be weaker than the interior one. It's simply not logical.

"Locate the entrance to the attic. Then the room I am in, despite not knowing the layout to the house. Then smash a hole in the ceiling. Then climb through said hole without getting stuck. Without me noticing. In under 5 minutes."

Who said the entrance had to be located? If you can smash it down, why not up? (And who said smash? If their motive is to kill you, they may have brought tools, as I said before.) Who said you wouldn't need to notice?

The point is that there are weaknesses in any house. Maybe houses in your area aren't drywall, but attackers can adapt their tools and tactics to address whatever is common in that area. It's really not as hard as people think.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#348

Post by jchw »

Miner49er wrote: post #326
jchw wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assertion that violent video games cause violence is pretty non-sensical to begin with given that violent media already existed before video games. It’s just another way to push censorship. You see a lot less criticism when the same thing is done for pornography and eroticism, even though there is no real hypothesis for why it would be any different.

Well violent media and violent video games can both cause violence? Just cause violent media already existed doesn't mean violent video games don't still cause violence.

Why would we be concerned about video games and not cinema? All of the sudden, violent media is concerning when it happens to align with a generational gap?

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#349

Post by Thorrez »

seangrogg wrote: post #331
mywittyname wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To take this even further, with the increasing popularity of games, if violent video games were linked to violence itself we should theoretically see pronounced numbers of streaming personalities (at least those involved in competitive games, which trend towards violence as a win condition) engaged in violent acts. Gaming communities such as Twitch, competitive game conferences such as Evo, events such as Riot's worl…

> And while they may get heated their debates about PlayStation vs XBox are about as likely to result in fatalities as the programming community's vim vs emacs or tabs vs spaces debates.

I can think of 2 incidents in the gaming community off the top of my head which led to fatalities. The SWATing of Andrew Finch, and the Jacksonville Landing shooting (that was an NFL game convention though, so it's debatable whether the game was violent). I certainly haven't heard anything like that about text editors or coding styles, but then maybe the number of gamers is higher than the number of programmers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacksonville_Landing_shooting

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#350

Post by adamredwoods »

seangrogg wrote: post #331
mywittyname wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To take this even further, with the increasing popularity of games, if violent video games were linked to violence itself we should theoretically see pronounced numbers of streaming personalities (at least those involved in competitive games, which trend towards violence as a win condition) engaged in violent acts. Gaming communities such as Twitch, competitive game conferences such as Evo, events such as Riot's worl…

There is evidence of gaming personalities committing suicide.

There is evidence of gamers doxxing, and even worse, swatting.

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