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Mass Shootings & Video Games

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Once again politicians are claiming video games are a cause of mass shootings. In doing so, they are making an argument that dates back at least to Plato. In the Republic, Plato argues that exposure to certain types of art can have a corrupting effect on people, making them more likely to engage in wrongful behavior in real life. While Plato focused mainly on the corrupting influence of tragedy (which could, he contended, cause people to fall victim to inappropriate sadness) he also discussed the corrupting influence of fictional violence. As he saw it, exposure to fake violence could cause a person to be more inclined to engage in real violence. Plato’s solution to the threat presented by such art was to ban it from his ideal city.

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This argument is not without appeal—people are influenced by their experiences and it certainly makes sense that repeated exposure to fictional violence could impact how a person feels and thinks. It also makes sense that exposure to non-fiction, such as hateful speech, writings and tweets could influence a person in negative ways. The critical question is whether the influence of video games can be a causal factor in a person engaging in violence, especially a mass shooting.

Determining whether video games are a causal factor in mass shootings involves assessing causation in a population. The challenge is showing whether there would be more mass shootings in a population if everyone played video games than if no one did. If there is a statistically significant difference, then video games can be rationally said to have a causal influence on violent behavior. So, let us consider this matter.

If video games were a statistically significant causal factor for mass shootings, then we would expect to see the number of mass shootings varying with the number of video game players in a country. While the United States is a leader in both video game revenues and mass shootings, other countries also have large populations of gamers, yet do not have a corresponding level of mass shootings. As such, video games would not seem to be a significant causal factor. To use an analogy, if it were claimed that smoking caused cancer in the United States, yet other countries had large populations of smokers with little or no cancer, one would suspect that smoking did not really cause cancer.

This does not prove that video games are not a factor—it could be that video games combined with other factors do cause mass shootings. In this case, we would need to look at the differences between the United States and other countries to see what factors combine with video games to cause mass shootings. This does suffice, however, to show that video games are not the primary driver of mass shootings. Now, suppose that video games do have a role to play in causing mass shootings. The question that now arises is the extent to which they cause the shootings.

About 67% of Americans play video games of one form or another. But the concern is not with video games in general but with violent video games like Call of Duty and Fortnite. While most Americans do not play these games, millions of Americans do. The overwhelming majority of people who play these games never become mass shooters. As such, if violent video games do have causal influence, it must be incredibly limited—otherwise mass shootings would be more common. This does not, of course, prove that violent video games do not have a causal influence—but it does show that there must be other factors in play. As such, it is an error to claim that video games are a primary cause of mass shootings. But perhaps a case can still be made for it being a factor.

Some politicians have tried to make use of the method of difference to argue that video games are causing mass shootings. This method involves comparing cases in which an effect has occurred to similar cases in which the effect did not occur and finding a plausible difference that could be the cause. This method is certainly reasonable to use but must be used with due care to avoid falling into error. The gist of the argument is to conclude that violent video games cause mass shootings because mass shootings increased when violent video games were created.

While it is true that the number of mass shootings does correlate with the number of violent video games available (both have increased over the years), correlation is not causation. After all, the number of tech startups has also increased, yet it would be absurd to conclude that they are causing mass shootings. To simply assert that since mass shootings increased as more violent video games appeared would be to commit the cum hoc fallacy—that because two things correlate, there must be a causal connection. This does not entail that violent video games do not play a role, but more is needed than mere correlation. As argued above, there seems to be no significant causal connection between violent video games and mass shootings; they merely happen to correlate as do many other things.

While blaming video games has political value, it does nothing to address the problem of mass shooting since there seems to be no meaningful causal connection between real violence and video games.

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Am I my Own Demon?

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The problem of the external world is a classic challenge in epistemology (the theory of knowledge). This challenge, which was first presented by the ancient skeptics, is met by proving that what I seem to be experiencing is actually real. As an example, it would require proving that the computer I seem to be typing this on exists outside of my mind.

Some of the early skeptics generated the problem by noting that what seems real could be just a dream, generated in the mind of the dreamer. Descartes added a new element to the problem by considering that an evil demon might be causing him to have experiences of a world that does not actually exist outside of his mind. While the evil demon was said to be devoted to deception, little is said about its motive in this matter. After Descartes there was a move from supernatural to technological deceivers: the classic brain-in-a-vat scenarios that are precursors to the more recent notion of virtual reality. In these philosophical scenarios little is said about the motivation or purpose of the deceit, beyond the desire to epistemically mess with someone. Movies and TV shows do sometimes explore the motives of the deceit. The Matrix trilogy, for example, endeavors to present something of a backstory for the Matrix. While considering the motivation behind the alleged deceit might not bear on the epistemic problem, it does seem a matter worth considering.

The only viable approach to sorting out a possible motivation for the deceit is to consider the nature of the world that is experienced. As various philosophers, such as David Hume, have laid out in their formulations of the problem of evil (the challenge of reconciling God’s perfection with the existence of evil) the world seems to be an awful place. As Hume has noted, it is infested with disease, suffused with suffering, and awash in annoying things. While there are some positive things, there is an overabundance of bad, thus indicating that whatever lies behind the appearances is either not benign or not very competent. This, of course, assumes some purpose behind the deceit. But, perhaps there is deceit without a deceiver and there is no malice. This would make the unreal like what atheists claim about the allegedly real: it is purposeless. However, deceit (like design) seems to suggest an intentional agent and this implies a purpose. This purpose, if there is one, must be consistent with the apparent awfulness of the world.

One approach is to follow Descartes and go with a malicious supernatural deceiver. This being might be acting from mere malice—inflicting both deceit and suffering. Or it might be acting as an agent of punishment for past transgressions on my part. The supernatural hypothesis does have some problems, the main one being that it involves postulating a supernatural entity. Following Occam’s Razor, if I do not need to postulate a supernatural being, then I should not do so.

Another possibility is that I am in technologically created unreal world. In terms of motives consistent with the nature of the world, there are numerous alternatives. One is punishment for some crime or transgression. A problem with this hypothesis is that I have no recollection of a crime or indication that I am serving a sentence. But, it is easy to imagine a system of justice that does not inform prisoners of their crimes during the punishment and that someday I will awaken in the real world, having served my virtual time. It is also easy to imagine that this is merely a system of torment, not a system of punishment. There could be endless speculation about the motives behind such torment. For example, it could be an act of revenge or simple madness. Or even a complete accident. There could be other people here with me; but I have no way of solving the problem of other minds—no way of knowing if those I encounter are fellow prisoners or mere empty constructs. This ignorance does seem to ground a moral approach—since they could be fellow prisoners, I should treat them as such.

A second possibility is that the world is an experiment or simulation of an awful world and I am a construct within that world. Perhaps those conducting it have no idea the inhabitants are suffering; perhaps they do not care; or perhaps the suffering is the experiment. I might even be a researcher, trapped in my own experiment. Given how scientists in the allegedly real world have treated subjects, the idea that this is a simulation of suffering has considerable appeal.

A third possibility is that the world is a game or educational system of some sort. Perhaps I am playing a very lame game of Assessment & Income Tax; perhaps I am in a simulation learning to develop character in the face of an awful world; or perhaps I am just part of the game someone else is playing. All of these are consistent with how the world seems to be.

It is also worth considering the possibility of solipsism: that I am the only being that exists. It could be countered that if I were creating the world, it would be much better for me and far more awesome. After all, I actually write adventures for games and can easily visually a far more enjoyable and fun world. The easy and obvious counter is to point out that when I dream (or, more accurately have nightmares), I experience unpleasant things on a fairly regular basis and have little control. Since my dreams presumably come from me and are often awful, it makes perfect sense that if the world came from me, it would be comparable in its awfulness. The waking world would be more vivid and consistent because I am awake; the dream world less so because of mental fatigue. In this case, I would be my own demon.

 

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Are E-Athletes Really Athletes?

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While professional video game competitions have been around for some time, it is only fairly recently that competitive gamers have been dubbed as “e-athletes.” Some colleges now offer athletic scholarships to e-athletes and field sports teams that compete in games like the infamous League of Legends. As with some other college sports, these e-athletes can go pro and earn large paychecks for playing video games competitively.

While regarding video games as sports and gamers as e-athletes can be seen as harmless, there are some grounds for believing that these designations are not accurate. Intuitively, playing a video game, even competitively, is not a sport and working a keyboard or controller (even very well) does not seem to very athletic. Since I am both an athlete (college varsity in track and cross country and I still compete in races) and a gamer (I started with Pong and I currently play Destiny) I have some insight into this matter.

Before properly starting the game, there is the question of why this matter is even worth considering. After all, why should anyone care whether e-athletes are considered athletes or not? Why would it matter whether video game competitions are sports or not. One reason (which might not be a good one) is a matter of pride. Athletes often tend to regard being athletes as a point of pride and see it as being an accomplishment that sets them apart from others in this area. As such, they tend to be concerned about what counts as being an athlete. This is, some would say, supposed to be an earned title and not one to be appropriated by just anyone.

To use an obvious analogy, consider the matter of being a musician. Like athletes, musicians often take pride in being set apart from others on the basis of their defining activity. It matters to them who is and is not considered a musician. Sticking with the analogy, to many athletes the idea that a video gamer who plays League of Legends or Starcraft is an athlete would be comparable to saying to a musician that someone who plays Rock Band or Guitar Hero is a musician just like them.

Naturally it could be argued that this is all just a matter of vanity and that such distinctions have no real significance. If e-athletes want to think of themselves in the same category as Jessie Owens or if people who play music video games want to think they keep company with Hendrix or Clapton, then so be it.

While that sort of egalitarianism has a certain appeal, there is also the matter of the usefulness of categories. On the face of it, the category of athlete does seem to be a useful and meaningful category, just as the category of musician also seems useful and meaningful. As such, it seems worth maintaining some distinctions in regards to these classifications.

Turning back to the matter of whether or not e-athletes are athletes, the obvious point of concern is determining the conditions under which a person is (and is not) an athlete. This will, I believe, prove to be far trickier to sort out than it would first appear.

One obvious starting point is the matter of competition. Athletes typically compete and competitive video games obviously involve competition. However, being involved in competition does not appear to be a necessary or sufficient condition for being an athlete. After all, there are many competitions (such as spelling bees and art shows) that are not athletic in nature. Also, there are people who clearly seem to be athletes who do not compete. For example, I have known and know many runners who do not compete in races, although they run many miles. There are also people who practice martial arts, bike, swim and so on and never compete. However, they seem to be athletes. As such, this factor does not settle the matter. However, the discussion does seem to indicate that being an athlete is a physical sort of thing, which does raise another factor.

When distinguishing an athlete from, for example, a mathlete or chess player, the key difference seems to lie in the nature of the activity. Athletics is primarily physical in nature (although the mental is very significant) while being something like a mathlete or chess player is primarily mental. This seems to suggest a legitimate ground of distinction, though this must be discussed further.

Those who claim that video gaming is a sport and that e-athletes are athletes tend to focus on the similarities between sports and video games. One similarity is that both require certain skills and abilities.

Competitive video gaming clearly requires physical skills and abilities. Gamers need good reflexes, the ability to make tactical or strategic judgments and so on. These are skills that are also possessed by paradigm cases of athletes, such as tennis players and baseball players. However, they are also skills and abilities that are possessed by non-athletes. For example, these skills are used by people who drive, pilot planes, and operate heavy machinery. Intuitively, I am not an athlete because I am able to drive my truck competently, so being able to play Destiny competently should not qualify me as an athlete.

Specifying the exact difference is rather difficult, but a reasonable suggestion is that in the case of athletics the application of skill involves a more substantial aspect of the physical body than does driving a car or playing a video game. A nice illustration of this is comparing a tennis video game with the real thing. The tennis video game requires many of the reflex skills of real tennis, but a key difference is that in the real tennis the player is fully engaged in body rather than merely pushing buttons. That is, the real tennis player has to run, swing, backpedal and so on for real. The video game player has all this done for her at the push of a button. This seems to be an important difference.

To use an analogy, consider the difference between a person who creates a drawing from a photo and someone who merely uses a Photoshop filter to transform a photo into what looks like a drawing. One person is acting as an artist; the other is just pushing a button.

It might be objected that it is the skill that makes video gamers athletes. In reply, operating complex industrial equipment, programming a computer or other such things also require skills, but I would not call a programmer an athlete. Nor would I call a surgeon an athlete, despite the skill required and the challenges she faces trying to save lives.

Sticking with gaming, playing a board game like Star Fleet Battles or classic tabletop war games also requires skills and involves competition. Some games even require fast reflexes. However, when I am pushing a plastic Federation heavy cruiser around a map and rolling dice to hit Klingon D7 battle cruisers with imaginary photon torpedoes, it seems rather evident that this does not make me an athlete. Even if I am really good at it and I am competing in a tournament. Likewise, if I am pushing around a virtual warrior in a video game competition, I am not an athlete because of this. I’m a gamer.

This is not to look down on gaming—after all, I am a gamer and I take my gaming almost as seriously as I do my running. Rather, it is just to argue what seems obvious: video gaming is not an athletic activity and video gamers are not athletes. They are gamers and there seems to be no reason to come up with a new category, that of e-athlete. I do not, however, have any issue with people getting scholarships for being college gamers. I would have loved to have received a D&D or Call of Cthulhu scholarship when I went to college. I’d have worn my letter jacket with pride, too.

 

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#Gamergate, Video Game Wars, & Evil

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As a gamer, philosopher and human being, I was morally outraged when I learned of the latest death threats against Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian, who is well known as a moral critic of the misogynistic rot defiling gaming, was scheduled to speak at Utah State University. Emails were sent that threatened a mass shooting if her talk was not cancelled. For legal reasons, the University was not able to prevent people from being weapons to the talk, so Sarkeesian elected to cancel her talk because of concerns for the safety of the audience.

This incident is just the latest in an ongoing outpouring of threats against women involved in gaming and those who are willing to openly oppose sexism and misogyny in the gaming world (and in the real world). Sadly, this sort of behavior is not surprising and it is part of two larger problems: internet trolling and misogyny.

As a philosopher, I am in the habit of arguing for claims. However, there seems to be no need to argue that threatening women with violence, rape or death because they are opposed to misogyny in gaming and favor more inclusivity in gaming is morally wicked. It is also base cowardice in many cases: those making the threats often hide behind anonymity and spew their vile secretions from the shadows of the internet. That such people are cowards is not a shock: courage is a virtue and these are clearly people who are strangers to virtue. When they engage in such behavior on the internet, they are aptly named trolls. Gamers know the classic troll as a chaotic evil creature of great rage and little intellect, which tends to fit the internet troll reasonable well. But, the internet troll can often be a person who is not actually committed to the claims he is making. Rather, his goal is typically to goad others and get emotional responses. As such, the troll will pick his tools with a calculation to the strongest emotional impact and these tools will thus include racism, sexism and threats. There are those who go beyond mere trolling—they are the people who truly believe in the racist and sexist claims they make. They are not using misogynist and racist claims as tools—they are speaking from their rotten souls. Perhaps these creatures should be called demons rather than trolls.

While the moral right to free expression does include the saying of awful and evil things, a person should not say such things. This should not be punishable by the law (in most cases), but should be regarded as immoral actions. Matters change when threats are involved. Good sense should be used when assessing threats. After all, people Tweet and post from unthinking anger and without true intent. There are also plenty of expressions that seem to promise violence, but are also used as expressions of anger. For example, people say “I could kill you” even when they actually have no intent of doing so. However, people do make threats that have real intent behind them. While the person might not actually intend to commit the threatened act (such as murder or rape), there can be an intent to psychologically harm and harass the target and this can do real harm. When I contributed my work on fallacies to a site devoted to responding to holocaust deniers I received a few random threats. I was not too worried, but did have a feeling of cold anger when I read the emails. My ex-wife, who was a feminist philosopher, received the occasional threats and I was certainly worried for her. As such, I have some very limited understanding of what it would be like receiving threats and how this can impact a person’s life. Inflicting such a harm on an individual is wrong and legal sanctions should be taken in such cases. There is a right to express ideas, but not a right to threaten, abuse and harass. Especially in a cowardly manner from the shadows.

As might be suspected, I am in support of increasing the involvement of women in gaming and I favor removing sexism from games. My main reason for supporting more involvement of women in gaming is the same reason I would encourage anyone to game: I think it is fun and I want to share my beloved hobby with people. There is also the moral motivation: such exclusion is morally repugnant and unjustified. If there are any good arguments against women being more involved in playing and creating games, I would certainly be interested in seeing them. But, I am quite sure there are none—if there were, people would be presenting those rather than screeching hateful threats from their shadowed caves.

As far as removing sexism from video games, the argument for that is easy and obvious. Sexism is morally wrong and games that include it would thus be morally wrong. Considering the matter as a gamer and an author of tabletop RPG adventures, I would contend that the removal of sexist elements would improve games and certainly not diminish their quality. True, doing so might rob the sexists and misogynists of whatever enjoyment they get from such things, but this is not a loss that is even worthy of consideration. In this regard, it is analogous to removing racist elements from games—the racist has no moral grounds to complain that he has been wronged by the denial of his opportunity to enjoy his racism.

I do, of course, want to distinguish between sexual elements and sexism. A game can have sexual elements without being sexist—although there can be a fine line between the two. I am also quite aware that games set in sexist times might require sexist elements when recreating those times. So, for example, a WWII game that has just male generals need not be sexist (although it would be reflecting the sexism of the time). Also, games can legitimately feature sexist non-player characters, just as they can legitimately include racist characters and other sorts of evil traits. After all, villains need to be, well, villains.

 

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Brain Games

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Brain Games box art
Brain Games box art (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As a general rule, most people want to gain for as little as possible effort. For example, people seem to often buy exercise equipment thinking that it will make exercise easier. They usually find out that is not the case—thus the brisk trade in lightly used exercise equipment and its regularly being buried under clothes. The latest brain training games seem to be offering the same temptation: if a person plays these brain games, she will become smarter. The appeal is, of course, that the games are supposed to fun rather than burdensome—like education tends to be. The obvious questions is whether such games work or not.

On the face of it, the idea that playing these brain games can have positive effects does make some sense. After all, exercising the body improves it—so, by analogy, the same should hold for the brain. The obvious concern is that not everything that people think is exercise actually improves the body. Likewise, the brain games might be like useless exercises for the body: you are doing something, but it is having no effect. To address this matter, the thing to do is to turn to some actual science.

As it stands, the unbiased research seems to show that the current crop of commercial brain training games have no meaningful impact. While people do get better at the games, this is most likely due to familiarity. To use an analogy to another type of video game, doing the same scripted event over and over in a game like World of Warcraft or Deadspace III will cause a person to improve at that specific task. To use a specific example, in Deadspace III the player has to “fly” through a field of debris and avoid being smashed. My friend and I smashed into the debris repeatedly until we finally made it—through familiarity with the process rather than by getting “better.” The same seems to be true of the current brain games and getting better at such a game does not entail that one is smarter or more mentally capable. In light of the existing evidence, spending money on the commercial brain games would be a waste of money—unless one is just playing them for fun.

Interestingly enough, video games of the more “traditional” sort can improve memory and mental skills. This is not surprising—such video games typically place players in challenging environments that often mimic general challenges in the real world. As such, rather than simply focusing on a relatively simple game that is narrowly focused, the gamer is forced to fully engage the general challenge and develop a broader set of capabilities. As such, video games of this sort probably help improve mental abilities in a way analogous to how reality does so. In the case of video games, the challenges will tend to be more challenging and more frequent than what a person would generally encounter in the real world. For example, participating in a World of Warcraft raid involves tracking abilities, maintaining situational awareness, following (or giving) orders, following a strategy and so on. That is, it provides an actual mental workout. So, a person looking for games to make her smarter would be better off getting a gaming console or PC and selecting challenging games. They will probably be much more fun than the brain games and apparently more effective.

I would also like to put in a plug for traditional table top games as well—be they games like Risk or D&D. These games provide enjoyable challenges that seem to have a positive impact on cognitive abilities. Plus, they are social activities—and that is no doubt better for a person than playing brain games online solo.

 

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Sexbots: Sex & Consequences

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Sexbot-ColorAs a general rule, any technology that can be used for sex will be used for sex. Even if it shouldn’t. In accord with this rule, researchers and engineers are hard at work developing ever more realistic sexbots. By science-fiction standards, these sexbots are fairly crude—the most human-like seem to be just a bit more advanced than high-end sex dolls.

In my previous essay on this subject, I considered a Kantian approach to such non-rational sexbots. In this essay I will look at the matter from a consequentialist/utilitarian moral viewpoint.

On the face of it, sexbots could be seen as nothing new—currently they are merely an upgrade of the classic sex dolls that have been around for quite some time. Sexbots are, of course, more sophisticated than the famous blow-up sex dolls, but the basic idea is the same: the sexbot is an object that a person has sex with.

That said, one thing that makes sexbots morally interesting is the fact that they are typically designed to mimic human beings not merely in physical form (which is what sex dolls do) but in regards to the mind. For example, the Roxxxy sexbot’s main feature is its personality (or, more accurately, personalities). As a fictional example, the sexbots in Almost Human do not merely provide sex—they also provide human-like companionship. However, such person-like sexbots are a still a thing of science-fiction. As such, human-mimicking sexbots of this sort can be seen as something new.

An obvious moral concern is that the human-mimicking sexbots will have negative consequences for actual human beings, be they men or women. Not surprisingly, many of these concerns are analogous to existing moral concerns regarding pornography.

Pornography, so the stock arguments go, can have considerable negative consequences. One of these is that it teaches men to regard women as being mere sexual objects. This can, in some cases, influence men to treat women poorly and can also impact how women see themselves. Another point of concern is the addictive nature of pornography—people can become obsessed with it to their detriment.

Human-mimicking sexbots would certainly seem to have the potential to do more harm than pornography. After all, while watching pornography allows a person to see other people treated as mere sexual objects, a sexbot would allow a person to use a human-mimicking object sexually. This could presumably have an even stronger conditioning effect on the person using the object, leading some to regard other people as mere sexual objects and thus increasing the chances they will treat other people poorly. If so, it would seem that selling or using a sexbot would be morally wrong.

People might become obsessed with their sexbots, as people do with pornography. Then again, people might simply “conduct their business” with their sexbots and get on with things. If so, sexbots might be an improvement over pornography in this regard.  After all, while a guy could spend hours each day watching pornography, he certainly would not last very long with his sexbot.

Another concern raised in regards to certain types of pornography is that they encourage harmful sexual views and behavior. For example, violent pornography is supposed to influence people to engage in violence. As another example, child pornography is supposed to have an especially pernicious influence on people. Naturally, there is the concern about causation here: do people seek such porn because they are already that sort of person or does the porn influence them to become that sort of person? I will not endeavor to answer this here.

Since sexbots are objects, a person can do whatever he wishes to his sexbot—hit it, burn it, and “torture” it and so on. Presumably there will also be specialty markets catering to particular interests, such as those of pedophiles and necrophiliacs. If pornography that caters to these “tastes” can be harmful, then presumably a person being actively involved in such activities with a human-mimicking sexbot would be even more harmful. Essentially, the person would be practicing or warming up for the real thing. As such, it would seem that selling or using sexbots, especially those designed for harmful “interests” would be immoral.

Not surprisingly, these arguments are also similar to those used in regards to violent video games. The general idea is that violent video games are supposed to influence people so that they are more likely to engage in violence. So, just as some have proposed restrictions on virtual violence, perhaps there should be strict restrictions on sexbots.

When it comes to video games, one plausible counter is that while violent video games might have negative impact on the behavior of some people, they allow most people to harmlessly “burn off” their desire for violence and to let off steam. This seems analogous to sports and non-video games: they allow people to engage in conflict and competition in safer and far less destructive ways. For example, a person can indulge her love of conflict and conquest by playing Risk or Starcraft II after she works out her desire for violence by sparring a few rounds in the ring.

Turning back to sexbots, while they might influence some people badly, they might also provide a means by which people could indulge in desires that would be wrong, harmful and destructive to indulge with another person. So, for example, a person who likes to engage in sexual torture could satisfy her desires on a human-mimicking sexbot rather than an actual human. The rather critical issue here is whether or not indulging in such virtual vice with a sexbot would be a harmless dissipation of these desires or merely fuel them and drive a person to indulging them on actual people. If sexbots did allow people who would otherwise harm other people to vent their “needs” harmlessly on machines, then that would certainly be good for society as a whole. However, if this sort of activity would simply push them into doing such things for real and with unwilling victims, then that would certainly be bad for the person and society as a whole. This, then, is a key part of addressing the ethical concerns regarding sexbots.

(As a side note, I’ve been teaching myself how to draw-clever mockery of my talent is always appreciated…)

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