[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.