Perhaps. But does it mean you're more tolerant of violence? And that others such as yourself eventually aggregate to have a collective impact on the broader culture? And what about 10 or 20 years from now, will your non-desire to shoot people still not exist?
Neuro-plasticity effectively dictatess we are what we consume, we are what we do. I'm not disputing your self-diagnosis. But there is science that does.
No, which is the entire premise of the linked article we're discussing.
> And what about 10 or 20 years from now, will your non-desire to shoot people still not exist?
Perhaps, but it will have considerably less to do with video games than other life factors.
> Neuro-plasticity effectively dictatess we are what we consume, we are what we do
This isn't what neuro-plasticity means. It means your brain can perform a task with less work, not that you "become" something because the pathways are optimized for a task.
The brain is a result of how you "exercise" it, or not. It's the result of what you feed it, or not. It's not static.
Neuro-plasticity enables stroke victims to recover. And the depth and breadth of that recovery is a function of how much or not the brain is forced to rewire.
Exercising your brain causes structural changes, whereby neuronal circuity is "rewired" to create more optimal paths. Stroke victim recovery is functional, in which parts of the brain take over responsibilities for what was damaged (but it's not "transferred", you still need to learn it all over again).
Neither, however, somehow magically define you as a person just because your brain decided some optimizations would help with repetitive tasks or worst-case decided cortical remapping was necessary to recover from injury.
That is, what you "feed" your brain will manifest itself physically as paths in the brain. Full stop.
When you develop a habit of consuming violece - and enjoying it - those paths are real. Pretending they don't exist doesn't make them magically disappear. Confirmation bias works that way, the science does not.
Furthermore, human behavior is often learned for the collective. That is, for example, given a group of cigarette smokers, the more who quit smoking, the more likely others in the group are likely to quit.
Put another way, going in the other direction, humans naturally gravitate to broader norms. That is, the more I see others with excessive weight, the more likely others will join that club. So yes actually, you are what you eat. Literally.
Now please explain - not being snatky - how that's nonsensical.
Except that's exactly what is up for discussion, and so far there is no evidence that this is the case. There's a big difference between muscle memory, neuroplasticity, and playing the piano than their is for sitting on the couch and consuming violent media.
> Pretending they don't exist doesn't make them magically disappear.
Saying they exist doesn't make them magically appear.
> Furthermore, human behavior is often learned for the collective
Yes, that's also how morals work. The more people are exposed to something, the more morally acceptable it becomes.
> Now please explain - not being snatky - how that's nonsensical.
Short witticisms like "you are what you eat" or "you are what you learn" are shallow and vastly underestimate the subjects at hand in exchange for a quick nod. Such as "we are greater than the sum of our parts".
So the brain and mind work a certain way...except for video games and violent?
Did you read the Abstract on this "study"? FSS you can drive the planet Jupiter through the holes.
If we're going to discuss evidence, there's no evidence anyone reasonable would read that abstract and put their credibility behind it. HN is such a funny place sometimes. But I trust you can read the article or abstract and see the question marks. But if not, LMK and I'll break it down.
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/suppl/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049
"Therefore, it is determined that adolescents who played a high-level of violent video games at an early age did not show more aggressive behavior later in life than those who played fewer to no hours of violent video games at an early age."
The idea that consumption of violent media changes pathways in such a way that the expression of violent behavior is more common, is null and void. There's zilch, nada, zero evidence to support this including decades of prior research on film and television influence.
Maybe the pathways being trained have less to do with aggression and violence, and more to do with hand-eye coordination and other motor reflexes involved in the process.
Eat crap. Become crap. Brain may still work ...but on a deformed body
Has the collective impact of multiple violences been studied?
Put another way: Will a mouthful of soda do you in? Not really. But multiply that exposure to sugar across different drinks and processed foods multiple times per day and before you know there's an obesity crisis. But the mouthful of soda is proven to be safe.
We are what we consume - physically, emotionally, intellectually, and so on. That's been confirmed time and again as well.
Do Europeans consume large amounts of violent media? As a European, I can tell you the answer is yes. I don't know how much compared to the US, but I basically grew up on violent video games and I have a large number of friends who love horror films that depict far, far worse than anything in a game I ever played. I suspect the media we consume is pretty similar to the media in the US. And yet, less violence. So, an obvious hypothesis is that the tendency to enact violence comes from elsewhere in culture than media.
The best suggestion I've come across is from Pinker's History of Violence book. He suggests that levels of violence correlate with an "honor culture" - as in, godfather style "you disrespected my mother now I gotta kill your brother", to varying degrees. In the US, especially ex-confederate states, an honor culture still persists, while in Europe and northern US states we have progessed to a "law and order" culture with correspondingly lower levels of violence. If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading the book. It gives a much better description of this topic than I can here, and once you've spent some time thinking about it, hopefully, you'll come to recognize that blaming media for violence is shallow thinking. Communities and culture cause violence, or prevent it. Media is just fantasy.
- What of the USA's willingness to use war as a proxy for foreign policy? Is not war a collective "enforcement" of violence? So much so that the masses have become numb and/or blind to war? Why is the USA _so much_ more violent? Because we have more guns? Point being, let's be clear, violence takes many forms.
- What if there are long term effects? What if the children of a player of violent video games are more effected? Maybe the parents are less likely to discipline for acts of toddler violence? What happens when that child grows up?
- The study looked at a particular group of kids, _10 y/o and up_. In terms of development, that's relatively late. The affect of violence on say 5 y/o's could be different, perhaps very.
- It's important to note that this "study" made no mention - at least in the non-pay material available about sample size. How they assessed violence vs non, and so on. The data collected also appears to be self-reported. Read: red flag. But confirmation bias runs strong on HN, yes?
- That said, the article does say:
"Participants were assessed through various behavioral characteristics such as aggression, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and prosocial behavior."
To be clear, the study doesn't connect violence to video games for the sample. However, it also fails to mention whether there are other less positive outcomes (e.g., increase in depression, obesity, or something else).
It is a simulator, so it has the best mechanics. The violence is the only thing missing. Flight Simulator will just display a boring dialog saying "you crashed".
Since it's not part of the mechanics: as you point out, it's not (frequently) done. That seems to support the claim that it's not about seeking violence.
E.g. in Kerbal Space Program I often "reset" bad airplane flights by crashing into the ground as fast as I can, or one of the space center buildings if I'm nearby. I could just hit esc and reset and be back faster, but then I don't see an explosion, nor have a chance to see messed up physics breaking the universe. I've also coordinated orbital collisions to do the same, but there it's more because it's extremely challenging to achieve at any reasonable velocity.
I have no desire to crash real planes or blow up space stations though. The closest that gets to the real world is "I like fireworks".
To transpose the argument to reality, a serial killer may see the act of killing as a neutral act pursuant to a goal they consider important. There are plenty of serial killers with manifestos.
Whatever they are trying to achidve, they aren't welcome in society.
Also, you could just as easily transpose it to something tame in reality. Kids like to put on capes and swing sticks around like swords, not because they want to kill stuff, but because it's fun to play pretend. Turns out grown ups like to do this too, we just call it cosplay and video games.