[umvi]

It's probably confirmation bias.

Same reason a study with positive outcomes about coffee/alcohol/gay parenthood/gender reassignment/<insert issue> are not criticized as much as a study on the same topic that had negative outcomes. We want certain things to be true so we (consciously or not) avoid criticizing studies bolstering what we want to be true and harshly criticize studies we want to be false.

I like to think science always prevails in the end (like with tobacco), but it can take half a century or more to converge on the truth.

[mywittyname]

I mean, part of this is probably also some degree of us intuitively knowing the answer.

If you have a friend group of 10 people, 4 of which regularly work out. You will probably notice that those 4 friends have less body fat and are more toned than the other 6. At that point, if a study came out saying that working out had no impact on body physique, you'd reflexively question the results.

That might sound ridiculous, but lots of people here grew up playing "violent" video games through the 90s-00s, and had large friend groups who did the same. And it's pretty likely that, for most of us, none of our friends ended up with violent or aggressive tendencies.

Anecdotes are not scientifically rigorous, but they aren't completely useless either. If violent video games caused measurable increases in aggressive behavior, people who were around a large cohort of people playing these games would notice this fact in action. Just like they'd notice that friends who eat a lot of cake tend to be larger than the one who don't.

[umvi]

There's some truth here, but it's important not to use anecdotes too much to guide intuition because the sample size is often too small and too biased.

For example, I have a group of 10 friends. All 10 of them (including myself) got covid, and we all agree it is no worse than the flu. I mean, yeah, we couldn't smell or taste for a few days, but we all recovered within a week. Therefore... I should reflexively question covid studies saying how dangerous it is because in my own experience it's not even worth making a fuss over?

Maybe to some degree, but the fallacy I committed by relying on my anecdote to guide my intuition is that me and all my friends are young, fit, healthy people. My group of friends didn't include the elderly or immunocompromised or morbidly obese, etc.

[aidenn0]

To put it a different way, the people who grew up to be violent individuals are probably not posting on HN, nor working at companies with people who post on HN, so the fact that everybody on HN isn't violent, despite playing violent video games is only weak evidence against there being a correlation.

In fact, I would be surprised for there to be zero correlation (even assuming there is no causation), as it is a reasonable assumption that naturally violent people are more likely to play violent video games.

[ajuc]

How about the fact that gaming grew by every metric by orders of magnitude between 80s and now and violent crime dropped by half of more everywhere in the world.

If the effect was even 0.01 with growth by 10000% we would have noticed.

[troupe]

I'm not sure that provides the statistical proof it appears to. Assume there were 1,000,000 violent incidents in 1980 and they were all caused by lead in the water. Violent video games caused no violence at a level that would even show up. If today we had 500,000 violent incidents and none of them were caused by lead but all 500k were caused by the prevalence of violent video games.

(I'm not trying to say that violent video games cause real life violence, but the numbers you describe don't offer any type of compelling evidence without other data being considered as well. )

[Mary-Jane]

So you're saying if there were multiple causes and one of them was corrected, his numbers wouldn't catch it, right?

[zadokshi]

> How about the fact that gaming grew by every metric by orders of magnitude between 80s and now and violent crime dropped by half of more everywhere in the world. If the effect was even 0.01 with growth by 10000% we would have noticed.

Have shootings not gone up? Has no one noticed it.

It’s counter intuitive to think that games that simulate practicing shooting people would have zero influence on people this inclined.

[ajuc]

Shootings have gone down significantly in almost every country in the world.

[aidenn0]

That's actually great evidence! Much better than "I and many of my friends who are currently successful played violent games and we are just fine." The latter is about as convincing as "My grandfather lived to be 90 and he smoked like a chimney."

[buran77]

A good friend of mine has conducted such a study some time ago (unfortunately I don't have a link at hand) and the team's conclusion was that the games themselves had no impact on violence, it was the multiplayer aspect that made the biggest difference. As in the frustration caused by the human factor in the game lead to far more negative sentiments and violence than the game itself with the same mechanics (playing against the game) ever could. This was exacerbated in games that allowed "humiliating" behavior from the opposing players (think fatalities and the like).

I tend to agree and I can confirm with anecdotal evidence from all around real life. Take traffic for example where road rage is always directed at other people no matter how small their trespass, while far more damaging incidents where no other person was involved are met with some swear words (getting 2 flat tires at once, seeing a tree fall on your car, etc.).

It's other people and their perceived trespasses that cause the buildup of frustration and violence.

[Mary-Jane]

Given the political bent of this forum, I'm curious how people would react to the fact that the same argument could be applied to the prevalence of guns in America, e.g. gun ownership has been steadily increasing since the 50's, but violent crime peaked in the 90's.

[mulmen]

Correlation does not imply causation.

[adamsea]

I mean it’s either good science or it isn’t.

[tomp]

> as it is a reasonable assumption that naturally violent people are more likely to play violent video games.

It's also a reasonable assumption that people who naturally want to avoid actual violence play violent video games instead.

This paranoia against violent video games was obviously fake from the start, and such a typically American thing - in line with the American puritan view that blowing up people in films or broadcasting police car chases is a-OK but (female) nipples or saying "fuck" is a big NO NO.

[aidenn0]

- The paranoia was not uniquely American; as a minor, I could walk into a store in the US and buy e.g. Duke Nukem 3D, while my friend in Germany could not do so.

- I'm not making the claim that video games lead to violence, I'm just saying that we should apply the same level of analysis to studies supporting views we already have that we do to supporting views we do not already have. If this study was well done, great! If it was poorly done, then it is appropriate to call it out. If the study truly wasn't able to find any correlation (positive, per my hypothesis, negative per yours), then either there really isn't any correlation (meaning all of the potential forces that would cause a correlation happen to be perfectly balanced (which would be surprising to me), or there is something wrong with the study.

- To be clear, I don't think there is a causal relationship between violent video games and violent behaviors.

- There are likely correlations between video-games and ADHD, as well as single-player video games (actually any solitary activity) and depression. There are links between both of those and violent behavior, particularly self-harm.

[skrebbel]

> a typically American thing

Not only. Eg in Germany there's long been an enormous stigma against violent video games. I haven't talked with German gamedevs for some years so maybe this loosened up since. But basically, if you worked in gamedev you preferred to tell your neighbours and acquaintances that you work "in IT". If they would find out you work on video games they'd pretty much fully cut you out of their lives.

(Note, to my anecdotal experience this is a purely German thing. I don't know other European countries where the same stigma exists)

[jmchuster]

FPSes are cool in the US because of how we glorify our victories in WW2 and the Persian Gulf. I'd imagine it might be opposite in Germany for the same reason.

[Aerroon]

>In fact, I would be surprised for there to be zero correlation (even assuming there is no causation), as it is a reasonable assumption that naturally violent people are more likely to play violent video games.

There's a lot of violence in society. There's even more violent media available. From news broadcasts to internet forum posts to books. Perhaps violent video games aren't particularly worse at that than all of the other media that portray violence? The news tends to have stories that are more gruesome than the things that happen in video games. The violence in video games is usually toned down or limited.

[gregmac]

> There's some truth here, but it's important not to use anecdotes too much to guide intuition because the sample size is often too small and too biased.

In a community like HN there's also kind of a "meta-anecdote" that emerges. If there was a link, you'd expect to see at least someone posting an ancedote about how their friend got into violent games and then became violent themselves; instead it's mainly the opposite.

I'm still not arguing this observation is scientifically rigorous in any way whatsoever, merely that multiple ancedotes can be more useful than a single one. There could be other reasons such as those that are violent or hang out with those that are don't post on HN - but that also hints there is something more to it then just or even the violent games themselves.

[throwaway0a5e]

>In a community like HN there's also kind of a "meta-anecdote" that emerges

>multiple ancedotes can be more useful than a single one

Sure. But that meta-anecdote based narrative can be highly biased based on the community that forms it.

A forum with an large respresentation of hospital doctors and a forum with a large representation of convenience store owners are going to have completely different meta-anecdote based narratives on whether packing heat is good or bad.

[ABCLAW]

I think there's a fetish for this "don't trust your anecdotes" reply, when the reality is more nuanced.

People will trust their anecdotes because in general they are right to. They don't need a double blind study to figure out that placing their hand on a heated element is a bad idea.

The question is whether the Bayesian confidence an individual places on their anecdotal knowledge is appropriate or not. In this case, plenty of people have a ton of personal experience with the subject matter, a ton of friends and colleagues with experience, and little to no evidence to suggest the contra factual is true.

Does that mean they're certainly right? No. But it certainly lowers the bar to evaluating yet further evidence of the position already held; why waste the time? If a study was released that was solid evidence that games did cause a significant uptick in violence, then examination would be warranted.

I know a bunch of people are going to take a contrarian position, but we operate in the real world with the same time complexity restrictions as the machines we work on. You don't need a double blind study to determine how to position your head while tying your shoelaces in the morning.

[SkyBelow]

The issue is there is entire areas of psychology studying when we get things wrong. If it works until it doesn't, is it really something you should be trusted? Let us not forget that confirmation bias would also apply to how we judge the accuracy of our anecdotes. Is it that we don't really have that many cases where relying on personal anecdotes betrays us, or is it that we just diminish those incidents and pay more attention to when it does go well for us?

[ABCLAW]

>If it works until it doesn't, is it really something you should be trusted?

Depends on why you need to trust something. If the failure state is multiple nukes going off, sure throw money and time at it until your systems are bullet proof. If you've purchased new shoes and need to design a study to figure out which foot you should start with when lacing up, maybe you're going too hard. What about something more chemical in nature; say you have a family recipe you and your family love. You might tinker around with it, but do you stop making it because you are upset by the intellectual sloth of not running double blind studies on Grandma's Famous Cumin Chili? No. Unless something slaps your Bayesian priors in the face, like a news report that says Chili recipes using Cumin might cause cancer.

Again, the idea is that we all come into this with Bayesian priors. You don't need (and will never get) 100% certainty to operate in the real world. I don't need to spend a few hours and $60 to go from 99.5% to 99.7% on this issue and I'm betting you don't either.

We will be, and largely are wrong about a ton of things. And in the majority of cases it doesn't matter one tiny bit. Like here. This is a study about a political flogging point that is 15 years past the point it conceivably could have been made into legislation. The study will be dated by the time there's a political push for the issue to be re-examined.

This is shoelace study v.2.0. We have more pertinent, more complicated and more impactful problems to study both on an institution and personal level, so why devote our limited mental processing time to this? Because you want to be "right"?

Have you ever read a recipe you've done before and thought to yourself "I really shouldn't make this, because I haven't presented this foo

[kbenson]

> Therefore... I should reflexively question covid studies saying how dangerous it is because in my own experience it's not even worth making a fuss over?

Should you question them? Yes.

Should you let your own experience and that of a few people around you override what you see to be a rigorous statistical study because you questioned it and looked into it? No. If you look into it and have serious questions about the rigor of the study? Maybe. Is that the case in the Covid studies? Probably not.

Whether this is about Covid or anything else, the important thing is to be able to asses information as it comes in and reassess your position based on the data available to you. Anecdotal data is invaluable and used by everyone every day to make decisions prior to receiving good outside rigorous data, because for many things we don't have good outside rigorous data.

[ehsankia]

To be fair we have well defined equations to decide if a sample size is large enough and to calculate the error in our errors.

In the case your examples, we already know that the CFR is lower than 10%, so a sample of 10 definitely is nowhere near enough to tell us anything useful. Now if the CFR was 50% and you had 0/10, maybe it'd be worth looking into it.

I'm curious though, have any of your friends had longer term effects? longer term smell/taste loss, brain fog, heart issues, memory issues, breathing issues, etc? The early reports on long term impact are at ~10-20%, so you may have 1 or 2 in your sample, but again your sample is small enough that you very easily could've had 0 too. Again, it depends heavily on what you're trying to disprove and what the rate of it is.

[Quarrelsome]

well to put it another way; in the time that I have lived violent video games have exploded in popularity and violent crime has apparently decreased substantially. That's not to say there's causality between the two but it would definitely support the premise that violent video games at least don't encourage violent crime.

[Natanael_L]

I also don't think there's a strong correlation / causation, but this isn't solid proof.

If there was a causation then the reduction in violent crime could be muted by a small factor due to games, while the net decrease is (as before) caused by an even larger independent factor. In other words, the net decrease could have been larger without the presence of games.

What it does instead show is a maximum plausible effect size, and that it likely isn't worse than the activities which it is replacing.

[WD-42]

What the hell? Were you all practicing CPR on each other or something?

[kiliancs]

Intuitively, it's hard to believe that witnessing and using violence doesn't have any negative effect on a person, even if in videogames.

I think that rather than asking ourselves "does this have a negative impact?" we should ask "what can I do that has a positive impact?".

Personally, I would never work on a game with significant violence. From my point of view, there are so many other things a human being can contribute towards the well-being and progress of humanity, and I would not feel happy with myself if I limited my contribution and my creativity to making another shooter.

[techlaw]

I work with a nonprofit group that does this. We produce prosocial video games intentionally designed to encourage prosocial outcomes.

The published studies (two so far) support their effectiveness. It's not easy to get the word out though without the funds for a publicist, advertising, etc.

[longdefeat]

-we should ask "what can I do that has a positive impact?"-

That's part of the point of this essay that was on HN last year: "Fortnite and the Good Life," which seems relevant here.

https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-convivial-soc...

[diarmuid]

headshot === positive impact

they are just games and most (non crazy) people understand that

like hansel and gretel when they push the witch in the oven - its fiction and not intended to be a guide to life

[kiliancs]

I think you might be underestimating the fragility of the human being in so many aspects (2020 might be trying to teach us something in that regard). Consider how alcohol has a very negative (often disastrous) effect in so many lives, even though most people start drinking thinking they understand how alcohol is going to affect them and that they can keep it under control.

[scpedicini]

Yeah... I don't think ethanol is a very fair comparison considering that it's a physical substance that bypasses the blood brain barrier.

[OOPMan]

Missing the point.

Alcohol is real.

Games are not.

[troupe]

> its fiction and not intended to be a guide to life

You might read the actual tale of Little Red Riding Hood. It is very much meant as a guide for young girls in what to expect and watch out for in life.

[dmix]

That's an excellent article, thank you.

[furyofantares]

This comment got my interest but I don't see anything linked here that's written by Yuval Harari. I can't tell if I've missed something, or if you're referring to another book called Sapiens other than Yuval's, or something else.

[dmix]

I was replying to something else I believe and got mixed up. Edited reply...

[GTP]

I rarely play videogames, but when I do, I usually play FPSs. I think that a small dose of virtual violence could help in discharging your stress/anger.

[adamredwoods]

The Columbine murderers played a bit of FPS, I wish it had reduced their anger.

[hellotomyrars]

And yet the millions who buy Call of Duty every year somehow keep it in check and don’t commit mass murder.

[adamredwoods]

My point is that it doesn't guarantee reduction in anger or stress, therefore should probably not be prescribed as such.

[scpedicini]

I'm not sure I agree with your comment. While I would be willing to concede that witnessing the visualization of violence might have some kind of affect towards increased desensitization, that's not necessarily a negative.

In some situations being able to keep a cool head in a crisis or in an area where something like this might occur could actually prove to be a benefit, as you are less likely to enter a panicked state (such as working in an environment where you may witness excessive amounts of blood/gore, eg paramedic)

I think that the vast majority of people (teenagers included) are more robust than we give them credit for, and can distinguish fantasy from reality.

[seangrogg]

To take this even further, with the increasing popularity of games, if violent video games were linked to violence itself we should theoretically see pronounced numbers of streaming personalities (at least those involved in competitive games, which trend towards violence as a win condition) engaged in violent acts. Gaming communities such as Twitch, competitive game conferences such as Evo, events such as Riot's world finals, and establishments such as gaming bars should all have an outsized number of people ready to throw down moreso than their non-gaming cohorts.

And yet gamers remain relatively docile on the whole. And while they may get heated their debates about PlayStation vs XBox are about as likely to result in fatalities as the programming community's vim vs emacs or tabs vs spaces debates.

[Thorrez]

> And while they may get heated their debates about PlayStation vs XBox are about as likely to result in fatalities as the programming community's vim vs emacs or tabs vs spaces debates.

I can think of 2 incidents in the gaming community off the top of my head which led to fatalities. The SWATing of Andrew Finch, and the Jacksonville Landing shooting (that was an NFL game convention though, so it's debatable whether the game was violent). I certainly haven't heard anything like that about text editors or coding styles, but then maybe the number of gamers is higher than the number of programmers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacksonville_Landing_shooting

[seangrogg]

I want to preface this with the fact that I do think that the Wichita swatting incident was a heinous crime and that those involved (both the hoaxers and the intended victim) were truly despicable people each in their own way.

That said, at the end of the day, the life was lost not because gamers were being violent due to a violent video game. None of the gamers involved so much as ever saw one another. Instead, an entirely innocent third party individual got erroneously targeted by a known type of hoax and, upon moving his hands wrong, was shot by a law enforcement official.

This was intended to be a case of gamer-on-gamer harassment over something that likely was spurred on by events in a violent video game (which is woefully common, though rarely to this degree). But the only violent act committed was by a police officer. And that's an important distinction.

(I assume we can elide the Jacksonville event as that happened during a Madden tournament; unless we want to make the case that football is more like Grand Theft Auto than it is baseball...)

[HeckFeck]

There will always be unhinged people in the world, with a tendency to violence. Video games or not, these people will kill and harm others. It's a dark truth.

Otherwise, we have to wonder how much Doom was played by Jack the Ripper or Ian Brady.

[adamredwoods]

There is evidence of gaming personalities committing suicide.

There is evidence of gamers doxxing, and even worse, swatting.

[mkr-hn]

There is evidence of astronauts who've walked on the moon punching people. Does walking on the moon make people violent?

[CM30]

There's also evidence of sports fans and music fans and film fans doing all those things, and people involved in all those committing suicide.

Does that make those other things toxic? On a purely comparative level, gaming is probably less 'toxic' if you go just by the worst things done by its fans.

[mamon]

But is gaming at fault here? Or maybe "gaming personalities" are simply people for which real life sucks, so they try to alleviate their pain by gaming a lot? Maybe gaming was the thing that delayed their suicide by months/years?

[seangrogg]

There's evidence of academic stress leading to suicide. Does that infer a causal link between academia and violence?

[adamredwoods]

It could, any studies?

Going back to streamers and video games, Twitch has definitely had its share of toxicity:

https://gamecrate.com/how-twitch-now-holding-streamers-respo...

[yters]

I read a story in the recent past about a 30 some year old constant gamer who lived in his parents' house who shot and killed his mother for messing with his gaming console. There is some anecdata for you.

[Blikkentrekker]

H.N. is also a place where one will simply be downvoted for criticizing the methodology, even if the post reveal nothing about whether one support the conclusion or not.

But any place with “votes” has such effects.