laughing at violence.

"I laugh at anyone who calls videogames "provably harmful." Mostly they're fun." --LAGuy

Provably harmful would be something that is proven (by scientific study) to be harmful to a significant number of participants. If a study or series of studies showed (proved) that video games were harmful, would LAGuy still laugh? BTW there are MANY things that are mostly fun but also provably harmful. If LAGuy chooses to unscientifically reject these studies, he will remain quiet or he could explain what specifically is wrong with them and what study he would design.

Understand that Pinker ("science's agent provacateur") gives almost no blame (or credit) to learning or parental modeling in development of violent personality. The nature (only) side of the nature/nurture debate has been seriously wounded by many many studies that do show how important early development is to a person's later personality. For the record I along with most of science are neither nature alone nor nurture alone. Moreover new studies are showing even near Lamarkian changes in genetic expression based on the intrauterine environment. Most importantly, one would have to be fully subscribed to the idea that environment is completely without any affect and thus disavow all sociological studies to use Pinker in one's argument. The argument is not that we are blank slates or that video games are the ONLY cause of violence. The argument is that scientific studies, many of them show that exposure to violence leads to increased violent actions and practicing violent actions does so more dramatically. If this is just one of many factors, it is very possible to have an overall decline in violence while one causative factor is on the rise. Sociologic studies are hard to do it is generally agreed because behavior has many contributing factors. Most such studies aim to control or eliminate confounding variables. Many different studies coming to the same conclusion despite many diverse methodologies strengthens the validity of the results.

LAGuy answers: I noted obsessions with anything can be harmful, but saying many things are provably harmful is silly. If you throw a videogame at someone, that's harmful too, but it's still silly to call it provably harmful for that reason.

These statements make me laugh: "Three Stooges shorts are provably harmful," "Peanut butter [which I admit can kill people] is provably harmful," "Baseball is provably harmful," etc. etc. People who waste our time in political crusades by calling certain things--ESPECIALLY CERTAIN THINGS THAT AMOUNT TO INFORMATION THE BRAIN MUST PROCESS-- "provably harmful"--when the standard is so laughable that you can count just about anything harmful, are essentially caught up in hysteria that make them dangerous to society; i.e., these people are provably harmful. The worst are so-called experts, often acting outside their actual degree of expertise, pretending to know how to cure society's ills and counting on others to respect them for knowledge they not only don't have, but for knowledge they have that is essentially wrong.

Not that it matters, but Pinker is noting others who have reviewed all the relevant research and found the so-called effects so often trumpeted to be either extremely minor or, in fact, non-existent.

He also sees that humans have always been violent, and that violence was a much bigger problem in tribal societies, before comic books, rock and roll and videogames. Anyone with a basic working knowledge of recent events can note the lowering of violence in our society while we got more violent media. Or that Japan has less violence in their society than ours yet has incredbly violent media. Or hundreds of others of examples where things didn't work out as expected by simplistic models. And they can also note the foolishness of those who would prescribe what we should specifically do when they are dealing with phenomena they barely understand. It doesn't matter to them how "muted" some alleged effect is by other factors, they have a blind faith not only that it exists, but that something should be done about it, and in a way they prescribe.

So you're neither nature nor nurture alone. Congratulations, you now agree with absolutely everybody else. As for your point about intrauterine development, since there are no videogames down there, or teenagers playing them, I don't really care. (I won't get into how the claims about "early development"--which are actually strongly disputed--argue strongly against your side, since by those standards, by the time you're playing violent videogames, it's far too late.)

I'm not going to bother to list the prominent flaws of most of the "studies," or the incorrect inferences made about these studies (often from people who either haven't read them or haven't understood them), or the fact that, actually, there are huge disagreements among the studies themselves. I'm also not going to mention that much of the modern soft science that creates these studies comes to conclusions in other areas that AnnArborGuy blithely disagrees with.

I'll just note that, for whatever fuzzy scientific conclusions you can draw from the studies, and the minuscule effect they show compared to other factors (especially considering the vast amount of time wasted concentrating on them), it has almost nothing to do with figuring how to go about dealing with the problem in society, much less through legislation, which requires an entirely different kind of thought process and expertise.

Nevertheless, I still think we can safely conclude that people who make statements such as "videogames are provably harmful," should be laughed at.

PS The title of your post seems a bit misleading.