Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Helgoland]

I never thought I'd write something like that, but I think German crime dramas are actually pretty damn good in that regard.

Tatort-five!

[penguinofhonor]

Oh yes you can. There's plenty of examples of philosophical positions where you can recognize your enemies as human and then kill them all.

The "and you certainly can't do this" wasn't just referring to Americans killing lots of Japanese. Part of it was a link to this page on American soldiers mutilating Japanese dead. You can't treat part of someone's body like a souvenir without a significant amount of dehumanization. I don't think that's just a "loser westerner" perspective.

The article reminded me of this Extra Credit on Hatred. They frame their discussion on violence around sadism rather than dehumanization though, and I think they're criticizing a slightly different set of games than this guy is. For example, I don't know if his argument would apply to Hatred - from what I've seen, it doesn't seem to make any effort to tell you that the people you kill deserve it.

But I think that all people should have the opportunity to throw their lives away playing video games, lose everything meaningful to them, and kill themselves in the depths of hellish loneliness. The rights to live, die, and choose and all that.

This might be a little tangential, but I think this becomes less a matter of personal choice as more games are designed to be as addictive and time consuming as possible. Game designers have tried to exploit every corner of human psychology for a buck. It has ruined lives. Anything trying to manipulate consumers can be a danger to them, and I could support some restrictions on games based on the same reasoning that gambling and advertising are regulated. Obviously much of it would be too impractical to regulate (how do you definitively say someone is making their game too time consuming?) but I think there could be some rules for shadier microtransactions like in-game gambling with real money.

[Frumple]

You can't treat part of someone's body like a souvenir without a significant amount of dehumanization. I don't think that's just a "loser westerner" perspective.

You, uh, totally can. It's certainly not common, but dehumanization isn't the only reason a person may take bits and bobs from the fallen. Remembrance, respect, spiritual aspects... the list kind of goes on. There's a point of delineation between acknowledgement of someone's humanity and treatment of their corpse, and you can decide to retain parts of the fallen for reasons that don't involve dehumanization to any degree, nevermind a significant one.

It's one of those examples, but I wouldn't exactly consider Catholic treatment of relics (you know, pieces of saints) a behavior rooted in dehumanization. Kinda' the exact opposite.

Of course, that doesn't mean that much of what was done in the cited case wasn't done out of severe disrespect. Just making the point that that "can't" is misplaced.

[SalmonGod]

But I think that all people should have the opportunity to throw their lives away playing video games, lose everything meaningful to them, and kill themselves in the depths of hellish loneliness. The rights to live, die, and choose and all that.

This might be a little tangential, but I think this becomes less a matter of personal choice as more games are designed to be as addictive and time consuming as possible. Game designers have tried to exploit every corner of human psychology for a buck. It has ruined lives. Anything trying to manipulate consumers can be a danger to them, and I could support some restrictions on games based on the same reasoning that gambling and advertising are regulated. Obviously much of it would be too impractical to regulate (how do you definitively say someone is making their game too time consuming?) but I think there could be some rules for shadier microtransactions like in-game gambling with real money.

I've been saying this for a while...  It's a tricky subject, fraught with slippery slopes... but intentionally designing something to be addicting and then building a business off feeding that addiction should be seen as equivalent to running a lemonade stand with a pinch of heroin as your secret ingredient.  I would totally be on board with the executives at Blizzard being charged on something like selling drugs to children.

[Helgoland]

More like a lemonade stand which sells lemonade that makes you even thirstier.

Oh wait, McDonald's already does that.

And so does any decent pub owner, by offering salty snacks. 'Manipulating the consumer' is much too imprecise to be a useful category. And 'designing something to be addicting' is too, by the way: Complaining about it is all nice and dandy, but just randomly demanding people to be dragged in front of a court on the basis of a crude analogy is not a productive way to go about it. A more productive way would be determining more precisely what the desirable and undesirable effects of such game design are, to identify possible precedents, to weigh advantages and disadvantages of various possible policies...

Ceterum censeo even hard drugs should be legalized, so maybe I'm the wrong person to talk to about criminalizing things just because they're addictive.

[SalmonGod]

It's not the fact that it's addicting.  It's that the consumer doesn't expect it to be addicting.  Not to the extreme that it is.  And manipulation doesn't quite cover what addiction is.  It forces the customer to want to come back to that specific product over and over again for forever.

I think hard drugs should be legalized as well, but on the condition that every hard drug product should be sold with a disclaimer just barely short of "YOU ARE IN VERY SERIOUS DANGER OF FUCKING UP YOUR LIFE IF YOU USE THIS." that's displayed more prominently on the packaging than the name of the product.  It's the absence of that disclaimer that the business should be prosecuted for. 

Game designers have very aggressively employed very powerful psychological effects against their customers, and have not been up front about it, while they rake it in.

If someone buys lemonade, they're most likely doing so for the flavor, not to quench thirst.  I've NEVER had lemonade that was thirst quenching.  And when it makes  them thirsty, they'll drink something else.  There's nothing about the lemonade making them thirsty that forces them to drink more lemonade.  Same with salty snacks in a pub... people like salty snacks.  I like salty snacks.  Yeah, they'll buy more drinks at the pub while they eat salty snacks, but it's not unexpected by anyone with half a brain cell.  And above all, while it may be somewhat manipulative, there's nothing about this practice that forces people to want to come back to that specific pub over and over again.

Lemonade laced with heroin would force the customer to come back and buy that lemonade over and over again, potentially to the point that they would completely wreck their lives to get their hands on it.  That's addiction.  And it should not be sprung on people without warning.

[Frumple]

I... really wouldn't call an overt chemical addiction equal to a psychological addiction. They can both ruin your life, but the mechanics and appropriate treatment are different enough I'd really kinda' say they shouldn't be lumped together in regards to consideration. Spiked lemonaid and pubs really aren't the parallels I'd call good to draw -- your non-video-game equivalents would be stuff like slots or horse races, and probably where you should direct your comparisons.

Addictive games should probably be treated exactly like we treat gambling, because it generally hinges on the exact same things. And... honestly, I'd probably be okay with legalizing age restrictions on any sort of game that heavily relies on ye' old skinner box and whatnot, as opposed to the informal ESRB stuff. We already have vaguely similar financial burdens in place, really, so you'd have equitable treatment of fairly identical entities.

[SalmonGod]

I... really wouldn't call an overt chemical addiction equal to a psychological addiction. They can both ruin your life, but the mechanics and appropriate treatment are different enough I'd really kinda' say they shouldn't be lumped together in regards to consideration. Spiked lemonaid and pubs really aren't the parallels I'd call good to draw -- your non-video-game equivalents would be stuff like slots or horse races, and probably where you should direct your comparisons.

Addictive games should probably be treated exactly like we treat gambling, because it generally hinges on the exact same things. And... honestly, I'd probably be okay with legalizing age restrictions on any sort of game that heavily relies on ye' old skinner box and whatnot, as opposed to the informal ESRB stuff. We already have vaguely similar financial burdens in place, really, so you'd have equitable treatment of fairly identical entities.

It's worth pointing out that there is crossover between psychological and chemical addiction.  As in physiological similarity between the way both operate.  Both have their roots in tampering with the chemical make-up of the brain's natural motivation/reward system.

But yeah, I'll agree that treating it the same as gambling addiction is rather fair.  I did admit it's a sticky matter.  What matters most to me is that game developers should be forced to take some responsibility for the intentional exploitation of psychological addiction.

[EnigmaticHat]

I've always considered it vaguely scary that people who have addictive personalities are like, reliably exploited in capitalist societies.

Like, something bad's gonna happen to you.  Addicted to drugs, gambling, video games, something.  And then you don't have any time or money.

Maybe I'm wrong about how strong predisposition to addiction actually is.  I dunno, I'm not a doctor.

[Leafsnail]

[Twi]

Uh, what?

[Baffler]

Uh, what?

AFL-CIO is an association of labor unions, it stands for American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. Labor unions have a very strong hatred for Scott Walker because he's done his damnedest to do them every bit of insult/injury he can manage.

[Truean]

Addiction is the antithesis of "capitalism."

Capitalism presupposes choices in the face of alternatives to satiate a need or want. Addiction is need never satiated. Addiction promises happiness, but delivers misery. It's a mad doctor administering disease while promising a cure.... Crony Capitalism is rather similar.

To create demand is not to create addiction. Demand is a rational longing, it can be filled. Addiction is irrational craving; it can never be filled. Doughnuts will eventually satisfy your hunger and end it; heroine never will....

Demand convinces customers to come back of their own free will and rational choice. Addiction forces victims to return, forever seeking but never finding relief, that will not come.

This is not to say demand is entirely voluntary, but it is fairly honest, if one is honest with one's self. Calamity is part of life, and the key is legitimately offering a possible solution. The car mechanic fixes your automobile's crash, the plumber unclogs your pipes, and the doctor diagnoses you with the actual intention of treatment if possible. The heroin dealer gives you the first hit free, knowing all the others will more than pay for it, that there will be many others, and that hurt, not help, is what he is really selling. That is, the drug dealer does not solve problems, he creates and compounds them....

I have seen mothers literally sell their children for crack. I have seen once happy couples fall to pieces over meth. I have seen the most promising futures impaled on a heroin needle. I have seen life savings gambled away. Through many a twisted and misguided philosophies, humanity seeks respite from woe and rest in happiness. It looks in all the wrong places. Be it chemical, psychological, or more often a mixture of the two in most cases, addiction never delivers happiness, but instead creates misery in spades.

[Reelya]

Tobacco and acohol companies are more interesting in a critique of capatalism vs addiction. Saying heroin dealers as the antithesis is a little too neat and easy, since we can just call for more police crackdowns on dealers, so it doesn't get to the nuances of the matter. It's like highlighting only the worst serial killers when advocating for tougher sentencing for all crime. For nicotine, there is interesting research about the effect of nicotine and schizophrenia. There's evidence that many users are self-medicating to mask symptoms of mental illness. You can say that they should be getting treatment, but that misses the point that professional treatment at a reasonable price isn't available to these people in the market, whereas nicotine is. So it is entirely a market economy thing. We can't divorce addiction from capitalism after all.

http://www.schizophrenia.com/nicotine.benefits.htm

The interest in nicotine’s therapeutic potential started in the 1980s. Several population based studies found that smokers had lower rates of Parkinson’s disease than nonsmokers. Epidemiolo­gists also validated what many mental health practitioners have long noticed: The smoking rate among people with schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorders is far higher than average. It’s widely believed that people with certain mental health problems are self-medicating with cigarettes because the nicotine helps their minds function better.

Even for cigarettes you can find some evidence of a need that's being met that is not being met anywhere else. I think that to say addictive drugs at every point of the process are without any value whatsoever, is not correct. Plenty of medication is addictive. There's also research from rats who became addicted to morphine in lab studies. Giving the rats more things to occupy their attention reduced the number who went back to the morphine, even after they were addicted. So the morphine addiction was actually filling some need to a degree - made clear by the fact that the mere existence of more fun alternatives caused many rats to stop taking it. So, even opiate addiction can be shown to be the subjectively least-bad of a number of alternatives at some point in time.

As for gambling as an addiction and not a demand, that one is more tenuous than even drugs. What about playing the stock market, or being addicted to buying shoes, or video game addiction? Or porn addiction? Or those people who can't stop buying stuff to hoard? When we have a very button-down idea of "demand" that excludes the bulk of the world's economic spending, then the whole argument about what is or is not "demand" falls apart.

When you define "proper demand" as anything that doesn't wreck your life, then of course "demand" is harmless and doesn't wreck your life, because that's how you defined it. Whereas all harmful things people want to spend money on are "not demand". The whole thing sounds a bit ... circular logic. Basically saying harmful things are harmful, and not-harmful things ... aren't. That's not really news and doesn't tell us anything.

[scriver]

Tobacco and acohol companies are more interesting in a critique of capatalism vs addiction. Saying heroin dealers as the antithesis is a little too neat and easy, since we can just call for more police crackdowns on dealers, so it doesn't get to the nuances of the matter. It's like highlighting only the worst serial killers when advocating for tougher sentencing for all crime. For nicotine, there is interesting research about the effect of nicotine and schizophrenia. There's evidence that many users are self-medicating to mask symptoms of mental illness. You can say that they should be getting treatment, but that misses the point that professional treatment at a reasonable price isn't available to these people in the market, whereas nicotine is. So it is entirely a market economy thing. We can't divorce addiction from capitalism after all.

http://www.schizophrenia.com/nicotine.benefits.htm

The interest in nicotine’s therapeutic potential started in the 1980s. Several population based studies found that smokers had lower rates of Parkinson’s disease than nonsmokers. Epidemiolo­gists also validated what many mental health practitioners have long noticed: The smoking rate among people with schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorders is far higher than average. It’s widely believed that people with certain mental health problems are self-medicating with cigarettes because the nicotine helps their minds function better.

So the good doctors  in the commercials wasn't lying after all. Smoking is good for your health!