Originally posted by Ghost375
You're wrong.
Prove it.

Hes anything BUT wrong..

He also most likely has enough sense to know that to "prove it" would be a complete waste of his time AND yours.

SOME of us are more interested in the truth than in being "right" all the time.

Originally posted by johngalt722

If you find this reasoning extreme and ridiculous, I find your reasoning ridiculous and extreme as well. How many people play video games and then think its okay to act them out in real life. Some? Sure, but not enough to justify that video games cause precognitive loading.

Again, this shows poor reasoning.

It matters not how many people play the game and don't commit mass murder. What matters is that people are conditioned through constantly viewing these acts.

If you put someone who is exposed to people's heads being blown off daily from playing a video game, against someone who doesn't have this same exposure..a non goreaholic-video gamer, and you place them in front of a screen which shows someone's head getting blown up, and registers their level of brain activity in regions which show emotional processing, such as the amygdala, I guarantee you the guy who wasn't exposed will show signs of trauma, or extreme emotional distress vs the video gamer.

What does that mean for most people? Not much. They have an intact "conscience", or decent reasoning to back up life experiences filled with ways to properly emotionally process situations.

We're talking about groups of many people, not any one individual. When we're dealing with millions, some will be "defunct". Some will not only become conditioned to not respond so strongly, emotionally, to such a stimuli, but will erroneously start bizarrely reasoning their way into believing that this is okay, or acceptable, or just reality, or whatever that is utterly stupid. It's not to them. Maybe slightly autistic, I dunno. Plenty of abnormalities where this exposure could really screw with someone's head.

That it doesn't happen to the majority of us, doesn't matter. It still screws some people up hardcore. I bet it still messes with us all to an extent that we simply don't accept. You know why? Because we're all sharing this same collective view of what "norm" is, and we don't know any other reality.


*UPDATE*

I'm not at all suggesting that violent games should be banned. Love to civilly bash some people in a game from time to time... but I do think it would be wise for us to explore all possibilities regarding this as a potential vector for idiot-psycho acts.

I think it may be wise to do simple psychological testing after we truly figure out WTH is going on with the human mind... maybe 10-30 years down the line. From there, we can figure out if these individuals should be put in positions of power, or if they should be kept in society, or have exposure to certain stimuli, etc... but we're no where close to doing something like this right now without it leading to tyranny. It's just something to think on here in 2013.

People are violent because it's their choice to do so. Yes games and movies are violent and so are.cartoons and action figures. How about we ban TOY GUNS AND AIRSOFTS hmm? Theirs the preconditioning there.

If people uses video games as an excuse then that's just sad period.

The truth is that some parents can't parenting themselves or their children. Parents if you know your kids may have some sort of disabilities then seek them help, we can't blame the system for everything that we have some control over.

Originally posted by TinkerHaus
Sure, some people play violent video games all day and don't act out in violence - but many people DO act out violently as a result of their lifelong exposure to the glamorization of violence.

Let's not start being dishonest here. You've got the above backwards. I'll fix it for ya:

Most people who play violent video games all day every day don't act out in violence. A very few people DO act out in violence as a result of their exposure to violence in video games.

Those people who do act out have mental issues in one form or another. But you're not going to sit there and falsely protest that out of the millions upon millions of people who play shooters like Call of Duty, or criminalistic games like Grand Theft Auto, that many of them act out in violence because of their "exposure", and that only "some" of them don't act out. That is absolutely inaccurate and absurd.

Originally posted by forgetmenot
I don't think video games, tv, and movies are the problem; I do think obsession with them is a problem in our society. Entertainment can be just that: entertaining. But when you close out everything but that entertainment you're bound to be affected by it. That's not to say, however, that it leads to violence.

If anything I think it leads to impatience; Try making a hardcore gamer wait for anything besides a release date

edit on 3-1-2013 by forgetmenot because: (no reason given)

Ok, let's work on your assumption. Gamers learn impatience.
Doesn't poor impulse control combined with impatience lead to violence?

Impatience itself is a form of poor impulse control, poor self control, so according to your reasoning, the violent games and media lead to poor self control, which leads to being easily angered, which in turn can lead to a conditioned response to anger. Voile! Violent aggression against those who thwart the gamers
"wants and needs".

I agree with the OP on this. At least I agree it's conditioning and desensitizing. It's NOT cause and effect ... but it's making the acts being committed easier I believe.

Like others here, I'm a gamer too. Not so much the last couple years but I was an absolute menace to snipers in Team Fortress (Half Life for those non gamers) for years. Nothing better than a nice head shot when the idiot is off looking another direction. Awww.. I swear I could almost hear the scream of frustration sometimes.

I think the difference today is that during MY formative years when values and the definition of what is truly disturbing and wrong vs. what can be seen in shades of gray and rationalized came when "violent" games consisted of near stick figures in Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple IIc and Police Quest games. I was well out of those age ranges when video game violence with a near true to life levels of detail and graphic level became commonplace.

I can't say how I may have come to see things if I'd been "committing" simulated acts of murder, assassination and beating innocent people to death for score (Grand Theft Auto Series... Postal, Saints Row series .. etc) from single digit ages onward. It *HAS* to do something to make those concepts and visuals carry less impact when seen and DONE that young, day in and day out for years. Most GOOD gamers I know now and have ever known put hundreds upon hundreds upon HUNDREDS of hours into a good game before it goes on the shelf for the next one. 10's of thousands of "frags" or kills ..over those literal weeks of clock hours combined.

I think we'd be foolish to think it has no impact whatsoever. Although to blame them as a CAUSE ...is also too simple an approach, in my view.

Originally posted by grandmakdw
Are TPTB encouraging violent movies, tv and video games to reduce the surplus population?

That would be pretty pointless when all they have to do is put harmful chemicals in our food, drug us up, and withhold cures for multiple ailments from us while watching us die off. Random shootings pale in comparison to the stuff TPTB are actually up to.

Originally posted by sconner755

Originally posted by syrinx high priest
if its operant conditioning, what is the reward given for the desired behavior ?

You get points for shooting and killing.

Classic conditioning.

Why do you think ATS uses stars and flags? It's the gamification of violence. 100% pure variable response conditioning.

no I mean killing people in the real world. operant conditioning is when you are rewarded for the desired behavior to reinforce the behavior and to repeat it

the only reward would be notoriety or fame, but you don't get that from the game, do you ?

Originally posted by TinkerHaus
Your hobby is dulling your conscious

No, it's not. I've played every Call of Duty. I haven't went out and murdered anybody. I've played every Grand Theft Auto since the game first appeared 16 years ago., I don't have any urges to go out and steal a car, or run over people, or any of the criminal activities portrayed in those games.

You can rationalize or theorize about it however you like. But only those who have mental instabilities will be the ones acting out violence because they can't distinguish video game from reality, right from wrong, etc.