We Are Training Our Kids to be Killers

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Zips wrote..

How do you, or he, know that there was "hesitation" pre-WWI but absolutely none now? Exactly.



And no, games did not train you to defend yourself if someone was about to shoot you. This is normal human instinct. Do you think the Neanderthals just sat back and took a beating from their fellow 'man'? Say you ignore that too, and I can see you doing it. But then, Neanderthals just attacked others without much provocation. I guess they trained on videogames.

By and large I agree with your arguments Zips, but I'll take exception to this one point: that it's natural and normal to react to violence by using anything up to lethal force to protect ourselves. Let me tie in the next quote before proceeding:

ALT+F4 wrote..

Just curious. Are you a gun owner? Have you ever held a loaded firearm in your hand and felt its awesome and irrevocable destructive potential?



It's easy to blather about being willing to shoot someone when you're just talking out of your ass; a little more thought goes into a statement like that when you truly understand the moral, legal and psychological implications.

I am a gun owner, I have held on a number of occasions various types of loaded weapons, and while I don't get this same feeling holding my hunting rifle, a pair of Colt .45s definitely gives me exactly the feeling you described. And honestly, it's frightening, enough so that I can't even point them at another human being when they're unloaded with the slide racked open.



One of the primary points that the book On Killing makes is how absolutely unnatural it is for people to kill others, even in self defense. Without any sort of conditioning, most people will respond to violence with either posturing, submitting or running away -- attacking in return is a fairly uncommon response for someone who is not routinely exposed to violence.



The author did a lot of research into firing rates among combatants in wars starting with WWI and continuing through Vietnam. There are a lot of reports from commanders about their men merely shooting over their enemies' heads in an attempt to "posture," basically trying to intimidate your foe without actually harming them.



In the course of the research done, a few factors were found that contribute to someone's willingness to kill another person. Factors included things such as:

• your distance from target (closer = less likely to fire)
  
  
• proximity to the authority ordering you to shoot
  
  
• social/racial separation (dehumanization factors)

...just to name a few. After our problems in WWI, the military started trying to use racial separation (killing Japs and Krauts and Whops) to increase firing rates, but still only around 20% were pulling the trigger with intent to kill. The author says that distance plays a huge factor, and generally aircraft crew were always willing to drop bombs on targets who's faces they could not see.



Between Korea and Vietnam, the US military looked at classical and operant training scenarios in psychology and applied them to their conditioning for US soldiers. Circle targets were replaced with human silhouettes, and in the sniper program they even put melons behind targets' heads so our snipers would be accustomed to seeing spray from their bullet's impact.



Instant, reflexive shooting was the goal. Target pops up, shoot the target, target drops and you get praise for success, reinforcing that shooting was the right thing to do even to a subconscious level.



I could go on about this, but the end result of our troops spending a lot of time immersed in the idea of violence in a training environment where no one had any real intent to kill was that the deadly firing rate went up astronomically -- something like a jump from 20% in WWII to 85% in Vietnam.



Will games make a normal, healthy kid run outside and start shooting for no reason? No. Will being immersed in violence erode a person's natural resistance to harming other human beings? Absolutely. You don't even have to be a kid for that to be true -- it's just that the effect is hugely, disproportionately magnified in children.



I definitely recommend the book I mentioned to anyone interested in educating themselves on the issue from a psychology standpoint. I don't agree with all of the author's conclusions, but the data and studies alone carry a lot of weight that you can easily draw your own (and likely similar) conclusions from.



One question if anyone is still reading this... is there any real difference between M and NC-17 ratings in video games? I know in a movie theatre parents can still get their kids into an R-rated movie but not an NC-17 one... but since video games are more for the at-home realm, doesn't enforcement once again fall on the shoulders of parents?

[Thortok2000]

Zips wrote..

How do you, or he, know that there was "hesitation" pre-WWI but absolutely none now? Exactly.

He didn't talk about pre-WWI, he talked about WWI and since, a study that proves that training someone to kill before they ever have to kill causes less hesitation the first time they get ready to kill. In a way, that's only common sense, to be trained for something makes you better at it. However, just because you're trained to do something doesn't mean you'll do it. It just means you'll be better at it should you actually do it.



The phrase "training our kids to kill" is not the same as "mindwashing our kids into becoming killers". I didn't see the difference before, but now I do. Kids and people that play these games become better killers, even if they never kill, they're better at it than they would've been if they hadn't played the game.



The same is true for racing games helping to improve my driving skills. I learned to drive a lot faster than most of the people in my driver's ed class because I had played video games.

And no, games did not train you to defend yourself if someone was about to shoot you. This is normal human instinct. Do you think the Neanderthals just sat back and took a beating from their fellow 'man'? Say you ignore that too, and I can see you doing it. But then, Neanderthals just attacked others without much provocation. I guess they trained on videogames.

To say that the only possible way to train to kill is via videogames is a logical fallacy. To say that it is impossible to kill without training first is also a logical fallacy. Glen Beck did not make either of those logical fallacies. He specifically gave the example of painting a human outline on the target at the shooting range; training to kill without using video games. And he never said anything about pre-WWI, the study didn't go back farther than that. You're attributing your own logical fallacies to your opponent, you need to stop that.

FYI: The difference between an AO rating and a M rating is one year. If someone isn't ready to play the game at 17, I seriously doubt a single year will make any difference to those who have pre-existing mental instability issues.

FYI: The difference between an AO rating and a M rating is whether the product gets sold in stores like Walmart and Best Buy. Apparently they consider that "one year" to be massively more important than you do. Otherwise, if that one year didn't make any difference, why would they have that policy?

The points you made were just as bad and full of holes as Beck's and Thompson's.

Not really. I'm not saying the entire article was perfect so to speak, attributing specific incidents to specific games is kind of stupid, which is the tangent that Jack Thompson goes off on, ugh. But the main points Glen Beck was trying to make with this news piece, you totally overlooked.



I'm an open minded person. I've been against this 'nonsense', but looking at it from a new angle, thanks to Glen Beck's mention of that study, I can see where they're coming from.

ALT+F4 wrote..

Just curious. Are you a gun owner? Have you ever held a loaded firearm in your hand and felt its awesome and irrevocable destructive potential?



It's easy to blather about being willing to shoot someone when you're just talking out of your ass; a little more thought goes into a statement like that when you truly understand the moral, legal and psychological implications.

I don't own a gun, but I was the most accurate marksman of our group when at shooting ranges. (Various field trips for boy scouts and school to teach firearm safety and such.)



I can't say I've ever pointed a gun at a person with intent to pull the trigger, and I'm glad I can't say that. But yeah, I've fired a few guns, rifles, pistols, etc. Even a crossbow, which was awesome.



And yes, I understand the ramifications, which is why I don't go out and become some random shooter you see on the news for a week and then you forget about. I know when and where would be the right time, and when isn't. But it's certainly something I'm more prepared for, because of video games, than I would've been without them. I could still have prepared myself of course, if I wanted to, without video games, but video games helped.

Zips wrote..

I've also constantly said that this game, and other violent titles will not turn a perfectly normal kid into a sociopathic, uncaring, unfeeling killer.

I agree with you. But that's not what the phrase "training to kill" means. See above.



And see what Nighthawk says. It's amazing how similar Nighthawk's opinions are to mine, all the time. =P