My Textbook says video games are bad!

[Lexodus]

Well who were they using as the controls?

Frustrated lepers whom became increasingly more agitated that they couldn't play the games properly without digits falling off.

 

[Lexodus]

Well who were they using as the controls?

Frustrated lepers whom became increasingly more agitated that they couldn't play the games properly without digits falling off.

That probably would have indicated that video game play REDUCES violence compared to the control.

Never underestimate the lepers, my friend. They used their fallen limbs (and possibly a bit of magic, too) to beat anyone that was deemed 'too chill' to death, and thus the rest of the subjects were living in perpetual fear of being dragged outside and murdered, so they thought aggravating things to fake the test and save their own lives.

 

[Lexodus]

Well who were they using as the controls?

Frustrated lepers whom became increasingly more agitated that they couldn't play the games properly without digits falling off.

That probably would have indicated that video game play REDUCES violence compared to the control.

Never underestimate the lepers, my friend. They used their fallen limbs (and possibly a bit of magic, too) to beat anyone that was deemed 'too chill' to death, and thus the rest of the subjects were living in perpetual fear of being dragged outside and murdered, so they thought aggravating things to fake the test and save their own lives.

I'm not your friend, buddy!

...though I bet I could wrangle a few lepers to confirm your hypothesis.

Gasp! And there I was, thinking that we were at the 'go to the pub on Saturday and get completely trashed, have a couple of ambiguous moments that could be construed as UHST, but forget the whole thing because we were completely shit-faced' stage. I mean, we've argued for more than a post now!

Wrangling lepers must be fun.

 

[Woem]

In the term "drugs" I understand recreational drugs, otherwise I would call them medicines. There are indeed side-effects on medicines that can cause this unintentional behavior, but that's not what I was referring to. I'm talking about someone abusing alcohol and hitting his wife in a drunken stupor for instance.

That is why I dedicated an entire paragraph exclusively to recreational drugs, and my statements on BAC, that is, Blood Alcohol Level, and date rape. Alcohol has a substantial effect: releasing inhibitions. You could argue that anyone who would hit their wife while drunk would also hit their wife while sober, but this disregards basic psychological experiments in disillusionment and impairment. People have surprisingly pliant and flexible morals, and when the limits are released, they are more willing to do dreadfully bad things. To disregard this is to disregard why many medications work; you mess with neurotransmitters, you get results you wouldn't normally.

I put the question to you: Why would alcohol, which certainly causes anti-inhibition sexually (as we've all learned once we went to a bar), not cause anti-inhibition to harming someone? Why would it have an effect on ONE part of the human brain and not the OTHER?

Then I come back to my initial statement: there is a reason people abuse alcohol, which in term would result in said behavior. And if that person knows he becomes more aggressive when drunk, then what valid reason would there be for him to still become drunk? Let's assume that someone who normally wouldn't hit his wife, has a higher chance of hitting his wife when being drunk. Becoming drunk (or taking any other recreational drug to get a rush) is a conscious act. Most people know very well what dose they need to take before getting to that state.

So if the knowledge that you might hit your wife when drunk isn't enough to keep you from getting drunk, then there's an underlying reason why you would get drunk anyhow and take this "risk". And this underlying reason is what causes the actual aggressive behavior, and not so much the drug itself. You allow yourself to get into that violent state. The drug is just the gun, but it's the user that pulls the trigger.

 

[Lexodus]

Well who were they using as the controls?

Frustrated lepers whom became increasingly more agitated that they couldn't play the games properly without digits falling off.

That probably would have indicated that video game play REDUCES violence compared to the control.

Never underestimate the lepers, my friend. They used their fallen limbs (and possibly a bit of magic, too) to beat anyone that was deemed 'too chill' to death, and thus the rest of the subjects were living in perpetual fear of being dragged outside and murdered, so they thought aggravating things to fake the test and save their own lives.

I'm not your friend, buddy!

...though I bet I could wrangle a few lepers to confirm your hypothesis.

Gasp! And there I was, thinking that we were at the 'go to the pub on Saturday and get completely trashed, have a couple of ambiguous moments that could be construed as UHST, but forget the whole thing because we were completely shit-faced' stage. I mean, we've argued for more than a post now!

Wrangling lepers must be fun.

It is until their bits fall off.

Which 'bits' we talking here?

 

[Lexodus]

Which 'bits' we talking here?

All of them.

Ah. On that note? has anyone ever tried superglue-ing a leper to see what happens?

 

[Woem]

Then I come back to my initial statement: there is a reason people abuse alcohol, which in term would result in said behavior. And if that person knows he becomes more aggressive when drunk, then what valid reason would there be for him to still become drunk? Let's assume that someone who normally wouldn't hit his wife, has a higher chance of hitting his wife when being drunk. Becoming drunk (or taking any other recreational drug to get a rush) is a conscious act. Most people know very well what dose they need to take before getting to that state.

So if the knowledge that you might hit your wife when drunk isn't enough to keep you from getting drunk, then there's an underlying reason why you would get drunk anyhow and take this "risk". And this underlying reason is what causes the actual aggressive behavior, and not so much the drug itself. You allow yourself to get into that violent state. The drug is just the gun, but it's the user that pulls the trigger.

This COMPLETELY disregards such things as being doped, which HAVE been extensively studied. For example, date rape drugs and ecstasy have an inhibition reducing effect equal or greater than alcohol. People who are unknowingly given drugs act EXACTLY THE SAME as those who KNOWINGLY use drugs, in their regards to side effects. There were a string of rather severe attacks by women on men in Baltimore caused by ecstasy doping lowering inhibitions. Most of the girls had no idea they were drugged, and had no prior history.

Are you going to argue the user pulls the trigger when they don't even know they have a gun in their hand? It isn't ALWAYS a conscious act, and even if it WAS, that does not diminish the effect the drug has. You are attributing an underlying condition when it is PROVEN by simple statistical analysis that the likelihood of every such subject in the sample size having the SAME reaction is so small as to be infinitesimal. If the only similarity is the drug and the action, and we can (and have) done double blind tests, then you simply cannot deny that the drug is the cause, not some internal motivation. The position is simply untenable.

My example was about intentional alcohol abuse, not about unintentional spiked drinks. All I hear you say is that we are all unconscious people at the will and whim of external factors. Man is a conscious being, able to make his own decisions. One of those decisions is using/abusing recreational drugs, which can have said effects. What I'm saying is that in these cases it's not the drugs that makes people act this way, but it's their underlying intent.

Here's just one typical example of what I'm talking about: Beaten up, throttled & raped, by my drunk husband [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20031123/ai_n12880266/].

To quote the article:

Georgina said: "Daniel is clever and he will try to prove to a lot of people that he is a model prisoner so that he will be allowed to leave prison after just 28 months.

She describes her husband as a clever man, able to play a model prisoner for a lengthy period of 28 months, so he's also clever enough to know what he's capable of doing in full drunk status. And yet he continues to do so. No matter how you twist it, it is an intentional act. The reason for this destructive behavior however (for instance an abusive childhood, to take a cliche example) is the underlying cause. Again, it's not the alcohol that made him rape and beat his own wife.

And that's really the last thing I have to say about this. If you want to continue with your oblivious excuses for the poor innocent man, then you are free to do so without my input.

 

[asinann]

"Dating violence is where a person in a relationship feel intimated by their partner, whether physically or mentally. Why do these things happen? They are widely because of drugs, video games, and abuse."

Sue the school district, the publisher and the writer of the book.

They have no factual evidence to support that video games cause anything.

And in this country that's the only way to get them to correct it.

 

[Sol_HSA]

I was reading my health textbook today and it says that the majority or dating violence and shootings happen due to people playing video games.

Do you guys think they should put stuff like that in textbooks?

ISBN or it didn't happen.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

But you cannot deny the data and the evidence that we have tirelessly acquired. It is very easy to blame all alcoholics on their own underlying mindsets; it is very hard to realize our culture contributes to their addictive and self destructive behavior. But that is what the data shows.

2 things
1) "We"?
2) Source please.

Psychology is one of the softer sciences, so if we can upgrade it to statistics or even biochemistry, I'd be more willing to accept it over blind sampling.

Your subject group, for example, seems to be people who would normally be in a highly aggressive state from the start, otherwise why would they be drinking?