...And a defeat for the taxpayers of California.

As if they needed another one with $42 billion budget deficits looming, and Governator Schwartznegger planning to cut 20,000 state jobs. What happened?

A California game law was struck down as unconstitutional, after an appeals court upheld a previous ruling. The law in question was AB1179, which was signed into law by Governator Schwartznegger in 2005.


(Arnie wages war against violent video games)

Please sit down and appreciate the irony: AB1179 required warning labels and sales restrictions on violent video games. Got that? The beefy steroid-gobbling, gun-toting, robotic clown who made his reputation in such peaceful movies as "Terminator" and "Predator" was able to actually put a pen and signature on a law intended to protect kids from exposure to pixelated violence.


My hypocrisy meter is registering in the red zone.

I hope all the Californians who lose their jobs will show their appreciation for the Governator and the bill's author, California Senator Leland Yee. Not only did it cost money to write and pass the bill, it cost money to fight it, defeat it, appeal its defeat, and lose. How many million dollars? We don't know. One thing we do know is that the State of California was ordered to pay the Entertainment Software Association's $280,000 legal bill from fighting the law. If that's not a smackdown, I don't know what is.

This was done to protect the kids.

The social "science" angle

I've got a dirty little secret: my college education was in Psychology. I'm still trying to live it down, but the truth is that I was just too lazy to crack the math and major in Physics. Anyhow, the truth is that Psychology, and the other social "sciences" are mostly unadulterated bullshit. Consider that Psychology took Sigmund Fraud - excuse me - Freud seriously; a guy whose entire body of work was pulled out of his backside on some fine summer afternoon when he wasn't field-testing cocaine's value as an analgesic.(link)

The social "scientists" keep trying to say something useful and interesting about how comic books are going to turn kids into blood-crazed killers. Oh - oops - it's not 1955 anymore. Now, it's violent video games. Society didn't collapse from the comic books, though perhaps the comic book reading kids got their asses blown away in a useless war in Vietnam that was started by the same congressmen who were worried about the comics. Today, it's violent video games and - surprise - congressmen like Hillary Clinton (who voted in favor of sending American kids to go die and kill in Iraq) and the Governator are busy helping out to protect the kids. What's the science behind all this?

It's really really hard to make scientifically accurate statements about behaviors. How do you measure "aggression"? Perhaps in 20-30 years, neuroscience will be able to answer such questions, by mapping areas of brain activation depending on stimulation - but today's social "scientists" rely on tried-and-true methods like asking kids "do you feel more aggressive?" Yes, you read that correctly. I'm not saying kids are going to knowingly lie - but, come on, "lacking scientific rigor" is an understatement. All that said, there are lots of studies that show an arousal effect is present while playing violent games or watching violent media. Not that I want to belabor the obvious: that's why people enjoy them. We're evolved primates - vicious, aggressive creatures who typically kill everything that crosses our path. The stuff we don't kill to eat, we kill because it's fun. Maybe the social "scientists" have it backwards:
It's not that the video games make kids violent; it's that human children are horribly violent and aggressive creatures. And some of them like to see blood-pixels splash across a screen.

The educational/social programme we put human children through is intended to train children to be cooperative members of society; non-violent, happy consumers, ready to grow up and be good little tax-payers. Has it escaped people's attention that, without considerable training, humans are vicious killers? Yes, it takes a little training to turn humans into polished killers, but that's emphatically not the kind of education you get from Grand Theft Auto.


(Haitian child soldier, age 8)

The hypocrisy of american politicians who bleat about "protecting the children" from video games knows no bounds
At this moment, there are hundreds of thousands of children in war-zones like The Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan. Want some kids to protect? Help them! While american kids may grow up fat and uncoordinated because they never play outside, there are kids around the world who worry about important stuff like: "Will the man with the gun shoot mommy?"

In preparation for this journal entry, I refreshed myself on the studies that are out there, regarding this important topic, and - as far as I can tell - everyone is still looking at the problem backwards. The question that social "scientists" should be asking is not:
"Do violent video games make kids violent?"
but rather
"What about US culture makes US kids more violent than Japanese kids?"

Now, that's a really interesting question - because it doesn't try to reason backward from an ideological agenda. Obviously, it's a much more complicated question - but that's how science works, sometimes. Let me show you:

Japanese kids: not violent, play loads of violent video/computer games
American kids: not particularly violent but more violent than Japanese kids, play loads of violent video/computer games

A scientist might look at those observations and conclude "there is probably another factor that has a bigger influence on the problem than video games." What is it? I'm a scientist so I get to say the mantra of all True Scientists: "I don't know." Real scientists don't hear "I don't know" as an admission of defeat - it's a battle call! It means there's more stuff to discover. It does not mean, "it's time to make stuff up then jump to conclusions."

Here's an example of jumping to conclusions. I'm not serious. OK? Got that? How's this for a hypothesis: US kids tend to be more violent than Japanese kids because more US kids are raised in day-care. Wow! That was fun! Or maybe: US kids tend to be more violent than Japanese kids because US kids eat more cheeseburgers whereas Japanese kids eat sushi.

Bah

I'm going downstairs to fire up the Playstation and play "Monster Madness." I'll do this in honor of Governator Schwartznegger, Senator Yee, and the money they could have spent on something useful like ammo for Arnie's chain-gun. Those GE miniguns really chew through .308s like they're going out of style.


mjr.