bwahaha . Aahh I enjoyed that . Thank you . <| sep |> really don ' t think so . Looked like his knee was down <| sep |> I think it is often too easy for people to forget they are talking to real people , rather than a complex person who probably has very understandable views and concerns . Indeed , I think it stems from the fact that in school you get taught what answer to give to a question , but rarely what it actually means or why it ' s right . It leads to people collection what to thinks from authority figures they like instead of actually reasoning out their own opinions and thus they struggle to understand when someone gives something which isn ' t the right answer for someone on the other side . I see it as quite a chronic problem in some circles , people get called altright all the time despite quite obviously being fairly left and liberal , simply because they argue against topics that are popular with a lot of the left . studies tend to show slight correlations between things that are correlated with violence , like low empathy and aggressionI ' d be careful drawing that conclusion , low empathy and aggression aren ' t necessarily violent behaviors . They are also competitive behaviours i . e . you don ' t care as much about making someone feel bad for losing when you trying to beat them at a task , and intimidating posturing and the like is more likely to assist you in beating them . There is a big divide between some posturing and actual physical acts though . Speaking as a keen gamer of the old school , it ' s the challenge of the game that is what makes it engaging , not the violence . It ' s why I find murdering a hundred virtual soldiers in CoD or locusts in GoW or whatever dull as hell but a good duel in Quake or Tribes is an unrivaled experience . It ' s the competitive abstraction of games that is great , the violence is incidental and largely irrelevant . I imagine you could also elicit similar responses in people by doing timed physical challenges , be it obstacle courses or cup stacking or whatever . If the person enjoys it and gets into it I expect they will illicit similar responses to the violent video games . You seem to have quite a deep knowledge on all this , are you by any chance working in science or engineering ? Haha , guilty as charged . By qualification I ' m an integrated systems engineer , although I ' ve mostly been working in ITprogramming . I also read way too much in random unrelated fields . I see it in a similar way to using drugs ones and using drugs at extreme levels . Bad example , because of the negative connotations of drugs , but I hope you can see the analogy I am trying to make ? I see what you are saying , but with drugs we can concretely tie the effects back to specific chemical interactions in the body , we know the exact mechanisms with which to attribute the results . This doesn ' t exist for videogamesviolence . And with drugs , one does not grow into a coke fiend just because they enjoy some recreational weed despite what they like to tell you in school to scare kids , there is almost always som other underlying issue that causes it , depression , stress , social pressures etc . Likewise with violent behavior there are so many contributing factors I don ' t even know that it ' s worth putting any effort into investigating video games specifically . I mean , EVERYONE plays videogames and consumes media these days , it ' s such a pervasive factor with such a minor effect most people are perfectly nonviolent after all that it becomes like studying if eating canned fish increases violence or wearing your hair parted left instead of right does etc . Energy is better off begin directed to something useful I think such investigating the effects of contact sports on cognitive function I say this as a Kiwi who grew up with every man and their dog wanting to be in the All Blacks or researching methods of defeating ingroupoutgroup mentalities something quite destructive to cultural cohesion and societal function I think . Trying to find that one shred of evidence to prove that our outrage culture wasn ' t just being retarded as usual just seems a bit pointless to me , especially because even if it was true , we have the tools already to easily overcome it . Might as well just save the time and teach everyone how to recognise when they behave irrationally , and how to behave rationally a useful life skill . I think the one thing I would say , is that while these criticisms are more applicable in social sciences , they certainly apply in Biology . Some parts of biology , definitely . Biology in general is quite a high level science and a lot of it ' s systems are abstracted , but when you start getting down into the organic chemistry part it becomes a lot more concrete . The human body is absurdly complex though , so it kind of has to simplify and abstract some things out of pragmatism . It suffers from being an incomplete science as opposed to a soft one . I always try to correct misconceptions of course , but have you never found yourself realizing that something you thought you knew was incorrect ? Of course , being right is HARD , no question of that , and nobody is perfect . The important part is to be aware that you might be mistaken . I find it good to classify things into beliefs and knowledge . Anything that you haven ' t thoroughly investigated and found to be true with absolute certainty is merely a belief . It ' s why I tend to qualify most of what I say with phrases like it should or likely or probably . As long as you do everything in your power to make the best judgments you can you are doing the right thing . It ' s okay to make mistakes , just as long as you are willing to investigate why the mistake occurred and correct the error so it doesn ' t happen again . If you think something to be true because you lack the information to demonstrate otherwise I ' m not gonna hold it against you , especially if you demonstrate you have done good work trying to provedisprove it . I ' m only gonna have issues if you get presented with information disproving it and continue to believe it anyway . If you make judgments based on beliefs I ' m also not gonna judge you , so long as you demonstrate you are aware it is only a belief and are willing to accept that it might have been the wrong decision based on that . To link this back to the topic , we all KNOW that committing acts of violence against another person is not socially acceptable unless it is in self defense of your own bodily integrity . Thus any decision to commit violence outside of that qualifier is the WRONG decision and should not be made . I guess an argument can be made for temporary insanity , but in terms of the social contract I personally think that it cannot be made an allowable justification as it creates a slippery slope kind of loophole where anyone can absolve themselves by claiming oh , he made me so mad I lost control . It ' s part of why I ' m quite openly harsh on my judgment in this case , it ' s somewhat of a front to psychologically manipulate others into holding themselves to more strict standards in order to help preserve the social contract that allows society to function . I like to think I ' m being crafty pContd . in reply cuz char limit