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0 pointschiefalchemist5y ago0 comments

Has any _one_ of those things been proven to be dangerous? Not really.

Has the collective impact of multiple violences been studied?

Put another way: Will a mouthful of soda do you in? Not really. But multiply that exposure to sugar across different drinks and processed foods multiple times per day and before you know there's an obesity crisis. But the mouthful of soda is proven to be safe.

We are what we consume - physically, emotionally, intellectually, and so on. That's been confirmed time and again as well.

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esperent5y ago

In the absence of studies, you could look at different cultures to see whether this holds up. For example, in most European countries, levels of violence are very low, and the likelihood/desire for an average person to own a weapon is also low (aside from hunters/the Swiss). Compare this to the US where violence is comparatively more common and gun ownership is high.

Do Europeans consume large amounts of violent media? As a European, I can tell you the answer is yes. I don't know how much compared to the US, but I basically grew up on violent video games and I have a large number of friends who love horror films that depict far, far worse than anything in a game I ever played. I suspect the media we consume is pretty similar to the media in the US. And yet, less violence. So, an obvious hypothesis is that the tendency to enact violence comes from elsewhere in culture than media.

The best suggestion I've come across is from Pinker's History of Violence book. He suggests that levels of violence correlate with an "honor culture" - as in, godfather style "you disrespected my mother now I gotta kill your brother", to varying degrees. In the US, especially ex-confederate states, an honor culture still persists, while in Europe and northern US states we have progessed to a "law and order" culture with correspondingly lower levels of violence. If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading the book. It gives a much better description of this topic than I can here, and once you've spent some time thinking about it, hopefully, you'll come to recognize that blaming media for violence is shallow thinking. Communities and culture cause violence, or prevent it. Media is just fantasy.

chiefalchemistOP5y ago

Some thoughts to add:

- What of the USA's willingness to use war as a proxy for foreign policy? Is not war a collective "enforcement" of violence? So much so that the masses have become numb and/or blind to war? Why is the USA _so much_ more violent? Because we have more guns? Point being, let's be clear, violence takes many forms.

- What if there are long term effects? What if the children of a player of violent video games are more effected? Maybe the parents are less likely to discipline for acts of toddler violence? What happens when that child grows up?

- The study looked at a particular group of kids, _10 y/o and up_. In terms of development, that's relatively late. The affect of violence on say 5 y/o's could be different, perhaps very.

- It's important to note that this "study" made no mention - at least in the non-pay material available about sample size. How they assessed violence vs non, and so on. The data collected also appears to be self-reported. Read: red flag. But confirmation bias runs strong on HN, yes?

- That said, the article does say:

"Participants were assessed through various behavioral characteristics such as aggression, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and prosocial behavior."

To be clear, the study doesn't connect violence to video games for the sample. However, it also fails to mention whether there are other less positive outcomes (e.g., increase in depression, obesity, or something else).

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