Palindrome wrote:
] Decius wrote:
] ] Palindrome wrote:
] ] ] Decius wrote:
] ] ] ] Kill JFK.
] ] ]
] ] ] Why?
] ]
] ] Because you can?
]
] Not good enough. Why?

Of course it is.

Thats why. Because you can.

One of the things that makes new technology compelling is that it enables you to have experiences that you could not have before. Thats what was magical about mechanized flight... About space travel. What computer simulations like GTA or Keyhole have about them is that they enable you to have experiences that weren't just unavailable, but they were either physically impossible or morally reprehensible or deadly. GTA lets you experience the glee of totally escaping from social reality and going on a killing spree, without any of the costs. In that sense its cathartic. They are selling a consequence free environment.

Debates about morality always come down to people drawing lines in the sand and then being offended when others cross them. For the most part we all agree about rational lines in the sand. People who murder are usually sociopaths or mentally ill. Almost all people agree that there is a line in the sand there. There are lines we don't agree about. In some cases, like slavery, those drawing the lines where rational. In other cases, they are wrong.

An easy example is swear words. When I was in high school I was in Drama class and we put on a play. In the play someone said "This Sucks." We put the play on, the kids loved it, and then the next day in school the administrators were all over the place talking about parents complaining about references to "Oral Sex." We were confused. We didn't understand what they were talking about. Eventually one of them had the presence of mind to say that really they were concerned that we used the word "sucks." At that point some of us got it, and others didn't. Eventually everyone figured out that this was a reference to "Oral Sex." We really hadn't considered that before. We used the word to refer to something that was bad. We had no sexual connotation attached to the word.

This was an irrational line to draw. We meant what we meant. Other people had associations in their heads that we didn't have. Its not our fault that they misinterpreted us, nor is it rational to draw a line in the sand that says you can't say the word "sucks" when you are really concerned about "oral sex" and thats not always whats going on when someone uses the word sucks.

Violent video games are the same way. The bad part about killing people is that people die. People who are offended about violent video games are offended because its bad when people die. This is irrational, because people don't actually die in video games. Video games don't have the bad part that you are concerned about. Children understand this implicitly. They know the difference between video games and the real world. Frequently its the adults who don't understand the difference. Unfortunately, Adults are famously bad at recognizing when their children know something that they don't know. They tend to assume that their children are always one step behind them. If culture really worked that way we could never improve upon anything. History would be a constant regression. It is not, and those who think it is are typically confused.

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