Penn & Teller BS - Video Game Violence tonight at 10PM
polycounter lvl 18
Tonight at 10PM on Showtime, the show Penn and Teller Bullshit! on Showtime is going to be talking about video game violence and its effect on children. Should be an interesting episode if you can catch it.
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/07/09/tivo-alert-penn-amp-teller-bullshit-tackles-video-game-violence
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/07/09/tivo-alert-penn-amp-teller-bullshit-tackles-video-game-violence
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http://www.wisevid.com/view_video.php?viewkey=jk2bukzbugecqgg26262#
XD
*edit*
Thanks Arsh! you rule.
Am I missing something? I'm getting "Server not found" when I try to play it.
I kinda felt bad for the kid at the end though. Poor fella, but It was a great way for the point to hit home for the family.
Um. No. That rifle has more of a jolt than a real kick. Even if he used his face to support the buttstock (which he mostly did) it's not going to break his jaw. Most of the "recoil" you see is also partly from the anticipation jerk that novice shooters get when they first feel the weapon reaction.
I'm pretty certain him stretching his face showed it was a little uncomfortable, but his crying came from the emotional impact of shooting a real weapon...which was the point of them showing that at the very end in the first place. I've seen adults with the same reaction to shooting for the first time.
Yea your right, but the guy still should've shown him the proper way to fire the rifle, maybe he wouldn't have had such a bad experience.
classic
they could have given him a pistol or something for starters.... sheesh
I'm surprised they didn't point out that Jack Thompson was disbarred for being a nutcase.
What? Games teach us that, silly! isn't that the whole point of this? THEY TRAIN US TO BE KILLING MACHINES.
I know what the point of that 'experiment' was supposed to be; that doesn't make it right for them to give the kid a rifle and not teach him the proper way to use it. The kid could have gotten hurt.
Overall i actually enjoyed this a lot, got a good laugh at it too poking fun at both the "hardcore" gamer, as well as the "hardcore" hater. As others have said though, it didn't really touch on anything new, just re-states opinions in a very fun / semi-intelligent way.
I wish we got this show here
If you have MEN tv, they air the old ones sometimes.
It's a great show.
Dude, you're on the internet. Just do a quick google search and enjoy. You can either torrent or watch it streaming. Most shows come up a few hours after they air in the east.:)
Anyone remember Lt. Col. David Grossman? He caused some shit about quake3 back a while ago. I remember he said something about how you could put your girlfriends head on a character and then shoot them. So I put him on a character:
fuckers
Great episode.
Chris Cooney would be disappointed...
They clearly failed to deliver the 3rd key component in the deadly fire triangle, the troubled kid. Harrison parent has actually put some thought into raising him. If they want to curb adolescent violence that's where they need to focus their efforts. I someone mentioned that too...
Proper parenting, it does wonders for society.
I think one reason some people rail so hard against games pinning all of societies ills on them, is because they're close to heading up to the bell tower themselves.
I could easily see "gun nut/fire triangle" guy doing that soon after he watches this episode.
People do, in fact, have a part of themselves that is prone to violence, domination, and looking awesome while you're doing it.. but we need to understand what the NEED is here if we're going to say anything intelligent about it at all
if you look at it, I would argue, the need here is significance and empowerment. the difficulty is that there is TONS of ways of getting that need met, and violence and dominance has traditionally been the easiest way, simply because you don't require an education for it... however, there are other ways of meeting exactly the same need: the feeling of being awesome, of being unique, empowered, important, significant.
Intellectual debate is how i do it, obviously.
Creative conversation rewards one with fantastic new ideas that create this feeling
Contribution of your abilities for other people
Being the best at something
jesus (okay i'm kidding)
the point i'm making is that violence in video games, although VERY healthy compared to our past history in humanity, is still a far cry from a good way to meet this human need, and quite frankly, arguing FOR it by bashing football is soooorrtta like voting democrat because the republican party is crazy.
They sortta.... both... suck.
It's one thing to deconstruct an idiot's argument by presenting his own shit as being incongruent, etc... And i suppose that's FINNNEEE....
but what i'm saying is that it is replacing one form of bullshit for another. the logical way to respond to that isn't "oh, i guess i'll shut up about video games" the logical way to respond to that is "maybe we should be bitching about football as well.. or moreso."
in my opinion, it's important to find something healthy -- not just to invalidate shallow arguments.
But again you make the assumption that violent video games aren't healthy, or are somehow at least less than morally neutral
No, that's not the logical response at all. In fact it's highly irrational. While football has been around for decades and decades, videogames are relatively new territory. In other words, the fundamental premise of the argument is that football is an acceptably safe hobby for a growing child. The rest of the argument stems from that. Now, rejecting that premise because of the end result of the logical progression (that games are safer), rather than due to the inherent properties of the premise itself, is fallacious behavior that indicates that you are looking for a logical structure to support an assumed conclusion (i.e. violent games are bad, in this case) rather than starting with a set of reasonable premises and arriving at a logical conclusion from them.
Now. I know that the point was a deconstruction of dogma. Read what I just said. I said it's FINE to deconstruct an idiot's argument, but basically it's just half the story. It's an incomplete truth.
The beef that I have with the point is this -- although it does make sense as an argument against dogma, it's incomplete in that it doesn't appear to be coming from a higher moral perspective. there's no consciousness there focused on what is ultimately healthy.. it's just interested in destroying an argument.
it's typical post-modern, flatlanding, pluralistic, egalitarian bullshit. It's a-moral. it's only intention is to break dogma. it has no desire at all to make distinctions based on what is more or less healthy.. only to destroy arguments. there's no construction going on.. only deconstruction how can any argument that comes out of that value system be anything other than destructive?
Pen and Teller have, if nothing else, consistently shown a COMPLETE lack of the ability to appreciate partial truth in an argument. I enjoy the show, and they make some very good points, but they have no desire what so ever to be reasonable or to reconcile multiple viewpoints to find a higher truth.
I'll give you this -- when talking with idiots, it might be the best you can do to point out their dogma... but the rest of us should spend some more time considering how we SHOULD view things, now that we're free... and that's an argument that non-dogmatic people can have.
when i was around 5 or 6, i used to get off on drawing people being tortured, and in kindergarden, i pushed down a girl from a playhouse because it seemed fun. she broke her arm.
i've been playing violent video games for 15 years now, and i still haven't killed anyone.
blaming video games for the violent killing sprees is just an excuse.
the real culprit is 50/50 bad parenting, demented child.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
next.
they say crime rates has gone down. i checked the crime stats, its correct. crime is down.
you're accusing penn and teller of throwing around strawman arguments?
they didn't just adress the whackjob arguments, but some general arguments as well.
they dumb down their arguments, because only dumb people will come to the conclusion that video games causes kids to become violent mass-murdering criminals.
its the same argument my retarded mother used for my brother.
he spent time with kids who were a "bad influence" therefore he did bad things.
but in reality, it was my mother constantly bitching, and the fact he was really an asshole,
that caused him to steal my savings, my cousins savings, break into a church safe, smoke when he was 9, threathening me with a knife, dropping out of school, beat up a handicapped person, and who knows what else before finally ending up in jail for half a year.
he's now a steroid junkie who goes to the gym every weekday and have a hard time finding a job because of his background.
in comparison, having spent around most of my childhood playing violent video games every day, i'm now antisocial.
so thats my argument. parents pushing the blame for being crappy parents onto video games.