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Re:Why I'll never work on First-Person Shooters again by philwelch on Saturday April 20, 2013 @07:52PM (#5583277)
It's a constant presence, but I never said it occurs--in reality--at a constant level. In fact, if anything it serves Pinker's thesis that people are handwringing and agonizing over how terrible violence is, how even imaginary violence is an unthinkable evil one should refuse to contribute to, when for most of human existence it was an everyday fact of life.

Humans are never going to be so perfect that 0 men out of 1,000,000 dies at the hands of another. Hell, humans are never going to be so perfect that 0 out of 1,000,000 doesn't deserve it, either. And I don't even want to live in a world where people are above enjoying a good boxing match or a bloody movie.

Re:Why I'll never work on First-Person Shooters again by loup-vaillant on Sunday April 21, 2013 @08:01AM (#5584598)
I agree with your first paragraph.

I'm not sure the second paragraph is hopeless. Sure we probably don't want a world where we're so perfect, but we also may not need one to prevent violent death. We could for instance imagine something like mechanical guardians that simply prevent any fatal move to ever occur (like, nano-machines in the walls that just spring up to save your life whenever needed).

That does suppose a level of technology that is extremely risky by itself, but provided we solve a few problems, such as Nanotechnology and Friendly AI, it could happen. Heck, we could even reinstate blood sports, only without the "death" part. (Okay, those problems are faar from solved. But I haven given up hope yet.)