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1-There has always been pornography in society. In university I know for a fact that proliferation has been the case in Britain since at least Eighteenth-Century. I also know from that period that moral panics about dissolute youth and loss of moral values are NOTHING new. Such studies are scare-mongering and irritable rather than informative.

2-Video games are no different to reading books. Something which again, during the Eighteenth-century was held to encourage immorality and sin among those who read novels because it detracted from devotion to godly family duty. Women who read 'profane morals' were belived to become lustful and then decend into being whores and abandoning motherhood. Plus, people who play video games are geeks and nerds; so they do not constitute a generation anymore than 40k players do. Casual gamers (say, one hour a week) don't have enough contact time for any concievable influence to had.

IMO there is already a battery of social and moral disapproval about both porn and video games. Much of it unjustified, hypocritical or childish relics from the nineteenth century. Its like people not liking swearing because in the past it invoked the aid of the devil and was a magical curse.


Plus a lot of psychologists and sociologists IMO are quacks who too often confuse their own perceptions and prejudice with sincere observation.

Melissia wrote:

daedalus wrote:I think I would also be interested in some actual female weigh-in on this; not that you'll find much of it on Dakka, but it would be interesting to get the "other side's" opinion, especially from those who are a part of this little community.

Personally, I think "the demise of guys" is just idiotic scaremongering buy men who feel a need to make themselves feel more manly.

A real man has no such insecurities. He could go in to a gay pride parade wearing a pink shirt with seven rainbows on it and crowd surf his way in to a hair salon then get back in home in time to make dinner to his wife, and then upon reflecting on what he did (in bed with his wife, who is asleep from the afterglow of intimacy), he thinks to himself: "Man, I love being so manly. I should try needle point tomorrow."

A man who is afraid of his non-masculine (or, dare I say it, feminine!) side is a pussy, not a man.

Holy gak in the sky. I agree with everything you said.


As an aside sometimes I make dinner to my wife 3, 4 times a night.
Edit: language filter fail.

2-Video games are no different to reading books. Something which again, during the Eighteenth-century was held to encourage immorality and sin among those who read novels because it detracted from devotion to godly family duty. Women who read 'profane morals' were belived to become lustful and then decend into being whores and abandoning motherhood. Plus, people who play video games are geeks and nerds; so they do not constitute a generation anymore than 40k players do. Casual gamers (say, one hour a week) don't have enough contact time for any concievable influence to had.

That's a bit far fetched. The visual stimuli itself sets apart video gaming from book reading. Then there's the fact that in video gaming, there's a expectation/preparation/action/result structure, which is mostly absent from reading, or at least not lived at the same vividness. It really isn't stupid to think that video gaming has an influence on brain structures, neuroplasticity and all that good stuff. I just think it's a way to easy step to take to think that violent video games breed violent persons.

Kovnik Obama wrote:

2-Video games are no different to reading books. Something which again, during the Eighteenth-century was held to encourage immorality and sin among those who read novels because it detracted from devotion to godly family duty. Women who read 'profane morals' were belived to become lustful and then decend into being whores and abandoning motherhood. Plus, people who play video games are geeks and nerds; so they do not constitute a generation anymore than 40k players do. Casual gamers (say, one hour a week) don't have enough contact time for any concievable influence to had.

That's a bit far fetched. The visual stimuli itself sets apart video gaming from book reading. Then there's the fact that in video gaming, there's a expectation/preparation/action/result structure, which is mostly absent from reading, or at least not lived at the same vividness. It really isn't stupid to think that video gaming has an influence on brain structures, neuroplasticity and all that good stuff. I just think it's a way to easy step to take to think that violent video games breed violent persons.

Video games use quite sophisticated tactics to create an addiction like mindset.

Melissia wrote:

daedalus wrote:I think I would also be interested in some actual female weigh-in on this; not that you'll find much of it on Dakka, but it would be interesting to get the "other side's" opinion, especially from those who are a part of this little community.

Personally, I think "the demise of guys" is just idiotic scaremongering buy men who feel a need to make themselves feel more manly.

A real man has no such insecurities. He could go in to a gay pride parade wearing a pink shirt with seven rainbows on it and crowd surf his way in to a hair salon then get back in home in time to make dinner to his wife, and then upon reflecting on what he did (in bed with his wife, who is asleep from the afterglow of intimacy), he thinks to himself: "Man, I love being so manly. I should try needle point tomorrow."

A man who is afraid of his non-masculine (or, dare I say it, feminine!) side is a pussy, not a man.

Well said.

Corpsesarefun wrote:

Kovnik Obama wrote:Although, I have to mention, exposure to porn is proven to desensitize (sp?) to violence for a short amount of hours after.

This I can agree with, in my experiences porn is always followed by a furious beating.

Heheheh.

Did someone just seriously attempt to use Cracked.com as a credible source...

I really hope that's a joke.

LordofHats wrote:Did someone just seriously attempt to use Cracked.com as a credible source...

I really hope that's a joke.

But at least they always cite their sources. ya they present the story in a humorous spin, but you can click on the links and see what they are referencing. so I'd say they are more credible then fox news or the blaze.

As someone who reads Cracked regularly, most of the people who write for that site are morons. Funny morons, but morons all the same. EDIT: Hell, they can't even grasp Marvel/DC comic lore very well. Even as nerds their not that bright and they reference that stuff a lot.

Once again, some idiot wants to blame video games for people sucking at life. At least porn is fighting it for the destruction of males. And I know plenty of women who watch (and enjoy!!) porn. Not all girls do-sadly, I lost an ex in part because she found porn on my computer and she couldn't get over it, even though I said she was far more important and threw it all out and swore never to look at it again while we dated-and I didn't. She still didn't care-and some girls (and guys) feel that way. But if a couple has "the talk" before it happens, who cares about watching porn. As for video games, I have a ton and and play them when I'm in the mood-which seems to be less and less common these days. I spend 90% of my Xbox's usage on Netflix.

This sounds like my whole fething life. A bit depressing. I feel like nothing more than a statistic.

Guess I should lay off the porn and go out once in a while...

timetowaste85 wrote:Once again, some idiot wants to blame video games for people sucking at life. At least porn is fighting it for the destruction of males. And I know plenty of women who watch (and enjoy!!) porn. Not all girls do-sadly, I lost an ex in part because she found porn on my computer and she couldn't get over it, even though I said she was far more important and threw it all out and swore never to look at it again while we dated-and I didn't. She still didn't care-and some girls (and guys) feel that way. But if a couple has "the talk" before it happens, who cares about watching porn. As for video games, I have a ton and and play them when I'm in the mood-which seems to be less and less common these days. I spend 90% of my Xbox's usage on Netflix.

I know a few women that got divorced because their husbands were in the habit of watching porn. They told me it made them feel second rate that their husbands were so wrapped up in the stuff that they were getting progressivly less time with them as the husband's veiwing of porn increased.
I work with a guy that got his wake up call when he told me he was getting divorced because he literally put it that he was addicted to porn. He's the last guy you would think to see in this situation. He's a fairly outgoing person, gets his Elk every hunting season, and is a well respected person at work.
I'm sorry that you had a bad break up over porn on your computer, especially if you were trying to get away from it for your girl friend, but I've seen how that stuff can lead to some pretty bad break ups.

Well, what with the fine ladies of the entertainment industry nowadays, those wifes probably were 2nd rate...

Im sick of people slagging off porn. My Grandmother who is 87 years old, watches her favourite pornographic DVD on a daily basis (Bizzare dwarves 3) and has done for the past 7 years, and she is one of the most polite and respectable people you could meet.

Its all just poppycock.

I have to log off now lads, the old dear has donned her gimp suit and its time for her 8am session in front of the webcam. :(

I hoep hes kidding.....anyway, if this is all true, why is crime so low? If we've all become insatiable by normal sex, why dont we all go out and rape people? If videogames make us so bloodthristy, why aren't killing sprees happening?

Kovnik Obama wrote:I didn't use the wrong word. There are objective facts known about consciousness, for exemple, children up until age 5-6 will, regardless of any subjective incidents, be under the impression that a group of sticks, once split in two groups, do not retain the same amount of sticks, but actually has seen an increase. This is a known fact of genetic epistemology (or Piagetist psychology). This has been positively tested across the world for the last 80 years or so. Like it's been tested rigorously since the 90s that adult minds exposed to pornography (and not erotism) will retain effects of 'numbness' toward violence for a few hours after.

Cool, cite a source and I'll agree with you. I wasn't even disagreeing that there were links between porn and attitudes to violence, I just thought your language was a little absolute. If you'd applied a few caveats along the lines of 'studies have suggested...' or ' there is a strong case for...', we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Imagine how wonderful that would be...

Because your field of study doesn't prepare you to handle objective facts about the human mind doesn't give you any right to attack those that are in such a field.

You actually don't know anything about my field, and I'd prefer it if you 'played the ball and not the man' - that is, unless you like being on ignore.

Kovnik Obama wrote:

2-Video games are no different to reading books. Something which again, during the Eighteenth-century was held to encourage immorality and sin among those who read novels because it detracted from devotion to godly family duty. Women who read 'profane morals' were belived to become lustful and then decend into being whores and abandoning motherhood. Plus, people who play video games are geeks and nerds; so they do not constitute a generation anymore than 40k players do. Casual gamers (say, one hour a week) don't have enough contact time for any concievable influence to had.

That's a bit far fetched. The visual stimuli itself sets apart video gaming from book reading. Then there's the fact that in video gaming, there's a expectation/preparation/action/result structure, which is mostly absent from reading, or at least not lived at the same vividness. It really isn't stupid to think that video gaming has an influence on brain structures, neuroplasticity and all that good stuff. I just think it's a way to easy step to take to think that violent video games breed violent persons.

In what sense is participation different from being a passive watcher. If you clearly desire to view or read about something theres no reason why it wouldn't encourage you to take such actions in the real world. This is what men in the eighteenth century believed was the result of women reading 'profane novels'; it encouraged their imaginations so it would make them behave differently in the real world. Today, society has simply came to view women reading as a natural part of 'feminity' and is considered acceptable; indeed most feminists argue (quite correctly) that this was a means of patriarchy enforcing proper gender roles. Because video games are new it provokes dissent among individuals who desperately under-rate the ability for individuals to distinguish fantasy from real-life. To go with the witnessing is as bad as participating. Another 18th century vice was cock-fighting, which is a purely visual spectator sport involving gambling, even if you didn't own a fighting cock you were still watching two animals butcher eachother and take pleasure from that; which would desensitze you to violence regardless of whether you witness or if you partake of an action.

Also, you could say exactly the same thing about buying an army of 40k models and having them kill eachother. This involves stimulating the imagination to think of violent passions and the same can be said of films. If you actively seek these things out then you are partaking of emotions which could be considered to cause what you're describing. However, these are socially acceptable and its merely because you falsely believe that because the task or problem solving agent is used it encourages more violence. Which makes no sense, even if you work you think about how to meat your goals and achieve them. But experiencing love of violence can be achieved through passive means without interaction (ever seen Rambo 4?) which are surely the cause of becoming desentized to violence.

So I think you're confusing things with your own prejudices. If society considers reading about sex and violence in books or wathcing films to be okay then it has utterly no right to argue that the same in video games like Mass Effect is immoral. It is simply base hypocrisy IMO.


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Exalted Pariah wrote:I hoep hes kidding.....anyway, if this is all true, why is crime so low? If we've all become insatiable by normal sex, why dont we all go out and rape people? If videogames make us so bloodthristy, why aren't killing sprees happening?

Exactly, I mean think about the people who play video games more than anyone else; so you're saying some of the meekest people out their ie Nerds or Geeks are the most prone to commit acts of violence. Thats an almost laughable notion. Most violence is the result of poverty, drink and people not respecting the forces of the law n order; nothing has changed in that regard since the 18th century. Indeed I would even suggest that focusing on neural explanations of violence by the gvt is simply a means of ignoring its own respoonsibilites in this regard. Plus you can blame things like gang culture more than video games since they rely upon a masculine culture where self-esteem is built through acts of defiance against the law and society. That is a destructive element and the contempt they show probably does more to awaken callous violence than anything else. If you're with a group of mates putting peer pressure on you to commit crime or violence then it is a vastly more compulsive force on people than an individual partaking in a visual act of violence since he can distinguish fantasy and reality.

This is just my two cents, I only study history and I just find the parrallels of moral panic between now and then startling; especially the desire to blame books and subversive literature rather than poverty and the failings of the state.

Video games really are the favourite subject for the demagogues, frankly I'm more concerned about the increasing lack of positive male role models in young males lives (for some this will be for their entire childhood and adolescence), and the persistent denigration of males in popular media.

LordofHats wrote:As someone who reads Cracked regularly, most of the people who write for that site are morons. Funny morons, but morons all the same. EDIT: Hell, they can't even grasp Marvel/DC comic lore very well. Even as nerds their not that bright and they reference that stuff a lot.

They give a broad overview which, as mentioned, you can look into further by following their sources. I've yet to see an outright lie from them.

daedalus wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Mr. Breikviek is a most reputable witness. I cannot conceive of how one would not find him a typical representative of a generation.

Unless of course he is a fething loon.

Who can say?

Clearly, we are all mass murderers.

Reminds me of my favorite quote though:

If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music. -Marcus Brigstocke


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I think I would also be interested in some actual female weigh-in on this; not that you'll find much of it on Dakka, but it would be interesting to get the "other side's" opinion, especially from those who are a part of this little community.

Apparently you missed the whole Rave scene then, Pretty much describes most of the 90's as lived by me

treadhead1944 wrote:

daedalus wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Mr. Breikviek is a most reputable witness. I cannot conceive of how one would not find him a typical representative of a generation.

Unless of course he is a fething loon.

Who can say?

Clearly, we are all mass murderers.

Reminds me of my favorite quote though:

If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music. -Marcus Brigstocke


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I think I would also be interested in some actual female weigh-in on this; not that you'll find much of it on Dakka, but it would be interesting to get the "other side's" opinion, especially from those who are a part of this little community.

Apparently you missed the whole Rave scene then, Pretty much describes most of the 90's as lived by me

RossDas wrote:Video games really are the favourite subject for the demagogues, frankly I'm more concerned about the increasing lack of positive male role models in young males lives (for some this will be for their entire childhood and adolescence), and the persistent denigration of males in popular media.

I'm also concerned that in business women are taught they must display more masculine attributes as well. The increasing prevalence of mysandrony is quite concerning too, it seems harmless, but may well prove quite an insidious form of emasculation over time.

dæl wrote:They give a broad overview which, as mentioned, you can look into further by following their sources. I've yet to see an outright lie from them.

Just because someone isn't lying doesn't mean their telling the truth. EDIT: Not to say their outright wrong, but most of the time the writers over at cracked are living in their own reality of existence where they like to ignore the minutia of the reality the rest of us live in. Its a problem they have when they wander away from randomness and try to be serious for a moment.

Granted they're probably more accurate than the Onion so there's that

LordofHats wrote:Not to say their outright wrong, but most of the time the writers over at cracked are living in their own reality of existence where they like to ignore the minutia of the reality the rest of us live in.

Thats funny, because it sounds like your talking about the sort of people that write hundred page long peer reviewed papers.

My gawd you may be right @_@

In what sense is participation different from being a passive watcher.

From the brain's point of view, there's a hell of a difference. And this is what I was talking about : the influence of video gaming on brains structures through the effect of neuroplasticity. While reading, a person is mostly subject to their own imagination, on a very different level. Sometimes you can see people starting to enact based on what they are reading, twitching their hands or adopting a frown when a character does, but it's an incident, a relaxation of the proper mindset of reading. In video gaming you need to enact, it's the part that makes it a game. So psychological traps can and are elaborated to take advantage of the brain structures that apply to actions, which are linked to those that provoke pleasure (pleasure being the bio-psychological regulation of the positive achievement of an aim).

If you clearly desire to view or read about something theres no reason why it wouldn't encourage you to take such actions in the real world. This is what men in the eighteenth century believed was the result of women reading 'profane novels'; it encouraged their imaginations so it would make them behave differently in the real world. Today, society has simply came to view women reading as a natural part of 'feminity' and is considered acceptable; indeed most feminists argue (quite correctly) that this was a means of patriarchy enforcing proper gender roles.

Sublime art, morbid curiosity, acrasia... ''Men of the 18th Century'' weren't all as stupid as you paint them up. They were quite aware of the 3 phenomenon I just mentioned, which are all based on the separation of theme and moral education. Some men of the 18th century came up with the associationist school of psychology, and were rightly ridicule for over a century after for it....

Because video games are new it provokes dissent among individuals who desperately under-rate the ability for individuals to distinguish fantasy from real-life. To go with the witnessing is as bad as participating.
Also, you could say exactly the same thing about buying an army of 40k models and having them kill eachother. This involves stimulating the imagination to think of violent passions and the same can be said of films. If you actively seek these things out then you are partaking of emotions which could be considered to cause what you're describing. However, these are socially acceptable and its merely because you falsely believe that because the task or problem solving agent is used it encourages more violence. Which makes no sense, even if you work you think about how to meat your goals and achieve them. But experiencing love of violence can be achieved through passive means without interaction (ever seen Rambo 4?) which are surely the cause of becoming desentized to violence.

No, again, witnessing a violent event doesn't have at all the same psychological implication as enacting the violent act. And there's a huge difference between watching a show in which each act of violence occurs inside a definite time frame, which last overall for less than 3 hours, and playing a game for weeks that let you repeat over and over again the same act of violence.

So I think you're confusing things with your own prejudices. If society considers reading about sex and violence in books or watching films to be okay then it has utterly no right to argue that the same in video games like Mass Effect is immoral. It is simply base hypocrisy IMO.

Hum, prejudices? How did you get there? I made no moral point about it. I simply stated (quite correctly) that reading and video gaming doesn't have the same effect on the mind. Would you re-read a sentence 10000 times in order to 'farm' it's meaning and the pleasure you derive from it and it's place in the story? No? That sounds dumb, right? Well that's because there are basic differences between the two.



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Exalted Pariah wrote:I hoep hes kidding.....anyway, if this is all true, why is crime so low? If we've all become insatiable by normal sex, why dont we all go out and rape people? If videogames make us so bloodthristy, why aren't killing sprees happening?

Exactly, I mean think about the people who play video games more than anyone else...

I think he was referring to Matty's grandmother doing stuff on webcam.

No, again, witnessing a violent event doesn't have at all the same psychological implication as enacting the violent act. And there's a huge difference between watching a show in which each act of violence occurs inside a definite time frame, which last overall for less than 3 hours, and playing a game for weeks that let you repeat over and over again the same act of violence.

There's also a difference between playing out a fantasy in a video game and living the fantasy out in real life. When I "kill" my enemy in these games, I know I'm not actually killing anyone.

After all, I see them up again a few seconds later, and I'm still chatting with them anyway even after their avatar "died". It is a friendly competition, nothing more (Even the ones that have prize money, or are competing for pride, are just that-- they aren't real fights). Their avatar gets back in the fight, we go at it again, and so on and so forth.

Even the creatures that don't have humans playing them don't really die, because they're also back up, how soon depending only on the game. I might clear an area from bandits, but come back five minutes later, they're back up and ready to fight again. Or I might massacre a lot of zombies, but next time I play, the zombies are there again. I'm not actually killing them, I'm just out-competing them. And when my character dies, that means they out-competed me. I get back up a few minutes (at most) later, and go at it again, until I decide to take a break or if I need to go do something else. The only thing that might possibly be injured is my ego, and even that not really.

Many of the psychologists that study the issue don't seem to understand this mindset. Or be willing to.

Cool, cite a source and I'll agree with you. I wasn't even disagreeing that there were links between porn and attitudes to violence, I just thought your language was a little absolute. If you'd applied a few caveats along the lines of 'studies have suggested...' or ' there is a strong case for...', we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Imagine how wonderful that would be...

I had the study under my eyes... 9 years ago, during my sex psy course. My teacher was the one doing it. Honestly, I don't think I have to dig this up to prove my point to you, as you say, you don't question the truth of it, but the wording. Which is ridiculous, because you clearly don't have any clue about what scientific objectivity is. ''Strongly suggest'' and ''proven'' is exactly the same thing, since science is a field always left open to debate. Scientific proof is never anything else than a 'strong suggestion of the presence of a fact''. And citing a source is nothing more than a sophism (appeal to authority), since no one here (including myself) is trained enough to understand it completely.


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Melissia wrote:There's also a difference between playing out a fantasy in a video game and living the fantasy out in real life. When I "kill" my enemy in these games, I know I'm not actually killing anyone.

After all, I see them up again a few seconds later, and I'm still chatting with them anyway even after their avatar "died". It is a friendly competition, nothing more (Even the ones that have prize money, or are competing for pride, are just that-- they aren't real fights). Their avatar gets back in the fight, we go at it again, and so on and so forth.

...

Many of the psychologists that study the issue don't seem to understand this mindset. Or care ,for that matter.

Absolutely true, but I don't know how a psychologist could take in account the level of abstraction the player is using. Because that's mostly subjective, for example, after a long work day, killing ghouls in fallout can easily become killing my boss over and over again, subjectively . So that's an element I don't see how you could control.

And what's even more likely, in the event that video gaming actually makes people more aggressive, is that it has nothing to do with them being violent, and more to do with some level of frustration, a shorter attention span, less attention to school, thus less educated (for some) etc...

So you think an individual who would actively go to and enjoy watching an act of real violence and death ie a cockfight or bear baiting, would be more violence than somebody who plays a videogame? Also it is possible to get wound up whilst reading, believe me, I imagined some very, very, violent and gory things happening to the Freys and Boltons after what they did in A Song of Ice and Fire. Let me pose the question another way. When you read, you essentially imagine what you are watching in your head like a movie; right? Now, what you're saying is that the pro-active involvement has a much greater effect since it encourages a positive response. So, are you saying that simply day-dreaming, using your own imagination independent of any external book or film has a stronger effect than something prompted by an external source? (for example, you're on the metro to your wargames club and imagining what your armies fighting would look like) Now, to me, I don't see how you can distinguish those two things, to me they seem exactly the same and the only conclusion I can reach is that the physical enaction or problem solving is not required for the imagination to provoke violent action. You could argue that, making up stories and images in your head is pro-active in itself; but then how is your brain translating what you are reading into pictures itself any different a process? Both are creative thought surely?


If you say video games have a subconscious effect of making people who play them more violent then you know that is a line which encourages the state making them illegal and asserting its right to maintaining the mental health of its citizens then you can't be surprised when people take exception to that view. Presumably that would mean you couldn't play a video game anymore than you would take drugs because you would believe that the health damage cannot be mitigated by individual will ie distinguishing reality from fantasy since playing a video game warps the mind to be violent in the same way drugs warp the mind. That is what you are saying, if that is true then video games would get banned. I cannot accept that since it is no different from reading or film in my eyes; which have long been considered in the past to be subversive and encourage violence. These attitudes came to be viewed as silly and childish, like saying comics encouraged sexual BDSM and TV melted your brain.

You also mention the amount of time used. If I finish one book or film which is violent, I'll just go and get another. So the process continues. Plus you mentioned farming the meaning of a word 10,000 times which is besides the point. The more repetitive a task gets the less it matters, if you're an admin worker filling letters then you're frankly not all their. Which is how a lot of video gamers are, just focusing on the task without actually registering the killing ie on ME3 multiplayer. By far the most visibly violent reaction from video gamers is when they are killed or lose as in Call of Duty. The actual satisfaction from beating your enemy is minimal if not non-existent. But the effects of having your ego hurt by dying repeatedly is undeniably where people are more likely to swear loudly, curse and get emotional. To my mind this is more because you get involved and is a matter of natural competitiveness, like how football players get involved into the game and behave more violently by spitting and swearing than they do in normal conversation. However, because the psychologist views only a person sitting at a computer screen, such a reaction appears out of its social context and so leads to a negative perception as unaccpetable behaviour. If a psychologist viewed people playing football and acting similarly they would probably shrug their shoulders and pass it off as natural boistrous behaviour during a competition.

It's not porn or video games which is doing the damage, we do not discipline kids properly.

Melissia wrote:

Many of the psychologists that study the issue don't seem to understand this mindset. Or be willing to.

Its because most psychologists reduce the brain to a passive organic machine that can only be affected by external stimuli. They basically have a serious problem with factoring in free-will and the fact that the mind can only view the world through the filter of ITS own perceptions and prejudices. As a result they don't get that the 'killing' in a video game has no more effect than playing a game of 40k. But like most old hands they see how real such images are and see the length of time something is done and assume it must be a malignant effect. Whereas 40k is just the harmless thing nerds spend hours of their time doing; are you not leading your army to slaughter the opponent with bolters n chainswords?

Basically psychology is essentially in the same place physical surgery was in the eighteenth century, its a quack branch of medicine until neuro-scientists find out exactly how the mind works and it worries me that so much social policy is being based upon very tenuous assertions made by unempircal observations of peoples behaviour which can be frighteningly prone to bias. You only have to look at Freuds theories to understand the extremes this can lead to.

Thought for the day..

'You know nothing Jon Snow.'-Yigritte A Song of Ice and Fire