Basically the object lets you look into the mind of another human being, and see the evil in them. Your seeing evil in a physical manifestation.

Of course, the torture tool is just a clump of atoms. But then again, everything is - a cake is not a cake, it’s a clump of atoms. You just plant the idea of ‘cake’ onto that clump of atoms so as to comprehend it. That is how humans percieve their world, with the idea of things mapped over the top of many, many atoms. Just as much as the game is not ‘evil’ the cake is not a cake, and the torture tool is not a torture tool. They are all atoms. But we see in ideas, not atoms. For someone to argue a game can’t be evil is to act as if they themselves do not see things in ideas. I doubt that.

And given that, yes, a video game can be evil. Because as a human, you see in ideas, not atoms. And evil is one idea amongst others, and one that, like the torture tool, may be applicable because of what you see in another mans mind, through the object.

Hi Jimmay,
“If I’m playing WoW and I’ve been told to prod somebody with a hot poker until they give me the information needed to complete my quest, consider those pixels prodded.

Would playing GTA enough de-sensitize me to those activities, to the point where I would pistol whip my neighbor because my car won’t start? No.

Would completing enough torture missions/quests in any number of games cause me to dance around to “Casey Jones” while hacking someone’s ear off with a straight razor? No.”
I think an interesting question here is, if it were torturing a baby, the pixel version, but with sound and blood and all, would you do it?

Second guessing the responce “No, I wouldn’t play a game with THAT in it”

Looking at it, one type of torture (the baby) would change your behaviour (don’t get/play the game), while the other torture would see no change in your behaviour.

A hard question to ask, is: Did you intend for this difference in behaviour to exist? Or did it just happen to exist in you, without any intent to be that way on your part?

If it wasn’t entirely intentional, how sure are you that your in control of your behaviour to say what you wouldn’t do?

All we have to realize is, our human brain is tiny and most of the times we never truly understand what the result of our actions are (or how big the mess we could make). That is why we should use caution when doing something on large scales (i.e use of DDT, use of generically altered farm products, tax, welfare). Because something that seems to be good for us now could doom us a thousand years from now.

In both case it’s possibly that the ends justify the means. Terrorism is a strategy that you can use when facing a more powerful enemy, one that was used quite effectivly by the French Resistance during WW2, the Jews in British controled Palestine or the Viet Cong. It works, but only if you believe the ends justify the means. There’s more than one way to fight a war, but that doesn’t automatically make the leaders evil. If a stronger nation invaded us (Canada), you can bet I’d be thinking about terrorism as a strategy.

Same with Congress. Ear marks, favor trading or whatever you need to do. Supporting a bill you don’t like to get the help of another member to pass another bill you believe in - the ends may justify the means but that doesn’t make it evil.

Do you see good generals send his troop to death before he gets all the equipments? If the Islamic extremist leaders really want to do good for their own people, they will make peace, get their local economy off the ground, buy/build better weapons then attack.

Instead what they do is send missiles which do little damage but cause panic and retaliation. The reason? attack the enemy => quick favors from locals, retaliation=> more locals hates their enemy => more local support.

Same thing with US congress. If they wasted a lot of money on pork because they are stupid, it is not evil. However if they did that because those pork could buy votes, evil.

Disagree. I we are talking about recent examples of Islamic extremist leader, the leaders believe they are doing good. They believe jihad is moral, good and supported by their god. Therefore by requiring evil intent, you have let them off the hook - they are, by your definition, not evil. Your example illustrates the point I was making perfectly.

Most suicide bombers are not evil, they are fooled by their leaders and made bad judgments. It is their leaders who use them to create fear and grab power that are evil.

So Abelard is partially right, the suicide bombers, as long as they believe they are doing the right thing, are not evil. However we can’t advocate that, because there are plenty of people that would rush to judgment under desperate situations.

That is why most of the religious books denounce violence, the sharp turn between the old/new bible, and in Buddhism all violence is forbidden (even to animals).

I would further claim:
a) The act of hole digging is evil even if I don’t manage to kill an innocent with it.
b) Even if my intentions were good (ie, I want to entrap some dangerous murderer), my actions are grossly negligent at best. Such a booby trap in the typical urban environment has a huge onus of proof to justify its benefit outweighing the obvious and serious harms. The extenuating circumstances that would justify the hole digging are the exception that proves the rule: don’t go digging dangerous holes.
c) Even though “spiked hole creation” is an action with unpredictable outputs - either good or bad will come out - society does tend to a rather black and white judgment of the activity. Arguments of “private property” fall on deaf ears - at least they should, for society recognizes some emergencies, like fire, require you to grant permission to trespass without your consent.

Back to the issue of games.

I agree there is no universal predictability. That is not, however, the same as there being *no* predictability. Some people apparently enjoy being kicked in the private areas - this does not, however, mean that we can’t classify such a kick as a “harmful” action.

My summary is thus:

1) Regardless of whether games can harm people, or harm people predictably, it is possible for someone to write a game with the intent of harming people. Writing such a game is an evil action.

2) I believe games can harm people for the same reason they can help people. This is said with the disclaimer that how it harms/helps depends on context and is not universal to the game.

3) I further believe (and this is where we diverge, I think), that you can predict how a game would affect certain people. This is what we are doing when we try to design “fun” games, no? A market-targeted game will try to design a sensory impression that will have a beneficial, “This was fun!” effect on the players. (Or even a harmful, “I am addicted!”) The conceit that we can write a game for a market requires that people’s responses, specifically, a sub population’s responses, are sufficiently predictable.

4) Having selected your audience, either explicitly with marketing or implicitly through the first 10 seconds of play (Those who don’t like it will move on…), one is left with players whose response to your sensations are somewhat predictable. This means you now have a framework in which to be judged. We can look at the effect of the game on this market to determine if it is beneficial or harmful. If the game, when brought outside its desired niche, is harmful, I think the author can be forgiven. But if the game, within its targeted niche, is largely harmful, I think the author can be accused of either negligence or evil intent.

5) I am of the (unproven) opinion that committing torture, for the non-psychopath, does harm the person committing it. When it stops harming someone is when they have, IMHO, lost some of their humanity. This harm isn’t always a bad thing. The harm of a hot stove can keep me from burning myself again. Likewise, some exposure can make one realize the demon that lives within. Rather than believing one innately good one could suddenly realize that one is capable of evil, and thus live one’s life more carefully. There is some torture IF, for example, which tries to provide this sort of beneficial harm: http://playthisthing.com/rendition

Why is mass murder good while torture is wrong? Well, I’m not at all convinced mass murder should be acceptable. I think part of the issue is that the mass murder and genocide are easier to make abstract. It is not clear murder, it is very “mob goes poof”, and the mob makes no real attempt to build empathy. (And, note I’d be opposed to a “murder” game for the same reason I’m opposed to a “torture” game. Specifically, a game where the intent is to make it feel like you murdered someone, rather than a game where the goal was to “murder” someone.) The genocide part probably skips our lizard brain altogether as an irrelevant large scale picture. The idea that if you keep killing the mammoths that you will eventually run out is not something our species seems well equipped to understand. Torture, on the other hand, *requires* you empathize with the target. That is what differentiates a torture game from a “press A and B until the bar reaches the center…” It hits the lizard brain straight on with explicit “something is in pain, I am causing it!” messages. Our higher brain saying “oh, no, don’t worry, it’s just some code” isn’t a healthy override.

This is not an easy issue, which is why I think we agree that legislation should not be done to “solve” it. I also think it is useful to have games which allow evil play, precisely so that players can choose not to play that way. (There is no good if we have no option to not be good…) Now, whether you *can* be evil inside of a ephemeral software world? Sites like this http://creatures.wikia.com/wiki/Tortured_Norns make it clear that that is the sort of question that is not easy to answer.

I have to go kill off my artificial life simulation to restart it with better tracking attached to the genes…

There are numerous pictures, and in the modern internet, videos, which most people have out of curiosity viewed. The common reaction to this is to claim to have been harmed - often expressions like “my eyes have been burned out” might be used.

But some people like viewing those pictures. They aren’t evil or good. They’re just things. (I also think the example “my eyes have been burned out” is specious, since the people saying it aren’t serious. Most of them are probably chuckling as they say it.)

If you had a holodeck and setup an entirely realistic torture “game”, would I suffer any problems from playing it?

I have no idea. You might, you might not. I’m not aware of any authoritative evidence that torture does cause problems in all people that administer it, which is what you’re asking.

Then again, surely the same question applies to genocide and you’ll notice that Raph finds a way to explain away genocide and mass murder as acceptable, while somehow torture is not.

–matt

I don’t believe in gods, but I appreciate Abelard’s point.