Episode 84: Are Video Games Harmful to Children?

• Links to this episode: Spotify / Apple Podcasts

Unofficial, reviewed transcript. It may still contain mistakes; check the podcast when wording matters.

Speakers are labeled by first name where identified. Unidentified-speaker labels may refer to different people. Bracketed question marks indicate uncertain wording.

Transcript

[00:00:08]  Bruce: Welcome to The Theory of Anything Podcast. Hey, Peter.

[00:00:11]  Unidentified speaker: Hello, Bruce.

[00:00:12]  Peter: How are you today?

[00:00:13]  Bruce: Good. Well, why don't you introduce the subject today? Since this one was actually one of your ideas. You've been wanting to do this one for a while, actually.

[00:00:21]  Peter: I have, yes. So this is an article that was actually, I say article, it's actually an interview from 1992 with David Deutsch on video games. It might seem a little outdated since games have changed so much and certain things about it do seem outdated. It really struck a chord with me when I first read it. Part of it could have been that just where I was at in my own life with my own [kids/heads], like a lot of parents in 2024, screen time is an issue, I guess. And just a thing we all have to deal with, I guess, in our families. And well, it really sort of tweaked my, not just the article, but it coincided with getting into David Deutsch and sort of changing my ideas about humans.

[00:01:27]  Bruce: A number of things, yeah.

[00:01:28]  Peter: A number of things. And my own philosophy as a parent, as all we'll probably get into a little bit. I might try to contrast David Deutsch's ideas on screen time with Jonathan Haidt, who's probably at least in the kind of circles that I converse in, seems to be about the most popular public intellectual speaking about these kinds of issues and who at least in, from what I understand at one point, maybe three or four years ago, was saying that video games are not that bad, but seems to at least have, I think he's become more pessimistic. Maybe it just seems like that because I've become more optimistic, but it seems like he's more pessimistic.

[00:02:24]  Bruce: I think he is more pessimistic. However, I think it's for a reason.

[00:02:29]  Unidentified speaker: Fair enough.

[00:02:30]  Bruce: Specifically, I think his pessimism started after he got accused falsely of being racist. And I think that that was a wake up call for him, that there was a problem that needed to be addressed.

[00:02:46]  Peter: Yeah. Well, that's almost a different kind of a thing too. I mean, that could have played into it. I'm not saying that, but that's a little bit, I mean, he thinks that there is, he makes the case and he makes a strong case. I'm not gonna say he doesn't. He's a smart guy. I've read all his books multiple times. I've seen him speak live. You know, he makes a strong case that we are in a mental health crisis. Something comparable to cigarette smoking before people knew it was bad for you. From a recent article, Boys are in trouble. Many have withdrawn from the real world where they could develop the skills needed to become competent, successful, and loving men. Instead, many have been lured into an ever more appealing virtual world in which desires for adventure and for sex can be satisfied, at least superficially, without doing anything that would prepare them for later success in work, love, and marriage.

[00:03:43]  Peter: A little later, the virtual world is becoming ever more immersive and addictive. Every year, it will pull harder and harder on boys urging them to abandon the real world. We've got to make the real world more appealing for them. The mental health crisis afflicting Generation Z is among the most serious of many serious problems we face in America. I see a lot of reasons to doubt that, and we're gonna get into it here, I think. I thought maybe a good way to start it would be to read from the actual interview. This is David Deutsch in 1992. Sometimes in these things, we just start talking and forget about the fact that our audience might not have the same, read the article that we're discussing. But so, yeah, let's go that direction, and then we can see where the conversation takes us. So yeah, this is an interview with Sarah FitzClaridge, who is the co-founder of Taking Children Seriously, along with David Deutsch.

[00:04:51]  Peter: Basically, she asks, so why are video games bad? This is David Deutsch speaking. If you look closely at the evidence, boils down to no more than the fact that children like video games. There seems to be a very common tendency among parents to regard children liking something as prima facie evidence that it is bad for them. If they are spending a lot of time doing something, parents wonder what harm it must be doing them. I think this is fundamentally the wrong attitude. The right attitude is, if children are spending a lot of time doing something, let's not try to find ways of letting them do even more of it. Prima facie, the fact that they like doing it, is an indication that it is good for them. I think that overwhelmingly, the thing which draws people's attention to video games is the fact that children like them. People jump from the solitary piece of evidence to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with video games.

[00:05:54]  Peter: As it happens, I believe that playing video games is very good for you. But I think more important than understanding why it is good for you is to understand and avoid the temptation of saying that if you like it, it must be bad for you. Now, why is playing video games good for you? They provide a unique learning environment. They provide something which for most of human history was not available, namely an interactive complex entity that is accessible at a low cost and zero risk. Let's compare video games with other great educational things in the world. Books and television have great complexity and diversity. They give you access to almost every aspect of human culture and knowledge, but they are not interactive. On the other hand, something like playing piano is also complex and interactive, but it requires an enormous initial investment, months or years of practice and training with the associated huge risk of misplacing that investment.

[00:06:54]  Peter: One cannot make many such investments in one's life. I should say, of course, that the most educational thing in the world is conversation. That does not have the property that it is complex, interactive, and ought to have a low cost, although often between children and adults, it has a high cost and high risk for the children. But it should not and need not. Apart from conversation, all the complex, interactive things require a huge initial investment, except video games. And I think video games are a breakthrough in human culture for that reason. They are not some transient, fringe aspect of culture. They are destined to be an important means of human learning for the rest of history because of this interactive element. Why is being interactive so important? Being interactive with a complex entity is what life and thinking and creativity and art and science are all about.

[00:07:51]  Peter: Okay, that's just one of several sections that really struck a chord with me. But let's talk about what he's not saying. He's not saying, oh, I looked at all the meta studies. I know what the latest research says. I know that video games are good for you. He seems to be making a claim about what human beings are. That humans are a species who thrive under freedom. And that when you give children freedom to explore their interests, their passions, including freedom to play video games, that they will thrive. It's a perspective I've become pretty sympathetic to, I think, largely because of Deutsch's influence. On the other hand, I'm a parent living in the real world. I don't like to see my children zoning out on Clash of Clans or some stupid thing they're doing.

[00:08:57]  Unidentified speaker: I don't like it either.

[00:08:58]  Peter: I don't like myself. Furthermore, I don't like myself when I get sucked into some of these games either. I had the experience of... My kids have turned me on to some of these games. I don't really play that much, but they've turned me on and then I get kind of sucked into a little bit and then I just think, geez, I've had this several times, like a moment of clarity of like, what am I doing?

[00:09:21]  Bruce: This is a waste of time.

[00:09:23]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, and it is.

[00:09:25]  Unidentified speaker: I mean, that's not that, a 45 year old man hitting things on a...

[00:09:31]  Peter: I think about that, what is it? Jerry from Rick and Morty, where he's just popping the balloons, boom, boom, boom, popping the balloons. But, you know, I mean, Deutsch seems to be saying, and it maybe comes down to the, related to the fun criterion a little bit, that, you know, if you're enjoying it, it's meaningful. And I, you know, I find that pretty compelling way to look at humans. Yeah. What are your thoughts, Bruce?

[00:10:02]  Bruce: Well, first of all, let me just say that, I don't think I handled it right when I was a parent. So, in fact, I actually have a story I want to tell that I think was enlightening for me as to the degree to which I had influenced one of my children that I didn't intend to. So, to explain this story, so keep in mind that this all happens before I even have read Fabric of Reality for the first time. Right, so I don't even know who David Deutsch is. So, this is the setting, right? And I also want to point out that when I read an article like this by David Deutsch, there's a lot in the article I totally agree with. And I actually really like the way he goes about it. But I always know there's a little bit of a taint because you know based on other things that he believes and that he said that while he's saying one thing in this article at some level he just thinks you should just never coerce a child at all under any circumstance.

[00:11:06]  Bruce: And you know he comes from that standpoint. I can appreciate this article in part because he doesn't try to rely on the moral upfront fundamental argument. He's not coming at you with the argument, well, it's wrong to coerce a child. And therefore, because of that, you just shouldn't do it. And it doesn't matter if it's harmful or not. But don't worry, it's not harmful, right? I mean, I can appreciate, I've had people come at me like that, and I know how ridiculously negative of an experience it is, very unconvincing. And also, I suspect wrong, okay? I think anytime you say, this is the way it is, fundamental truth about morality, there's always exception cases. And it's just never that simple, right? So at least if you try to turn into a universal law, it's often true as a rule of thumb, but it's almost never true as a universal law when it comes to morality.

[00:12:00]  Bruce: So the thing I really love about this article is that he's really getting down to, this is why it's good, right? And look, at some point even, you can tell he's skeptical there's any negatives, but at some point he kind of admits there could be some negatives. But he's like, but you got to consider all the benefits. It's like, this is exactly the right attitude. Don't come at me with, this is the moral law. Explain to me why, given what I subjectively value with my kids, this is what I want. And I actually think that's exactly, this is exactly the way he should be making his arguments. I think all the arguments around raising children should probably start with the idea. Parents want what's best for, I mean, maybe not every parent, but the vast majority of parents want what's best for their children. And so coming at them with, this is why, this is what you want, and this is going to fulfill your desires and your values with your children, that's exactly the right kind of argument.

[00:13:00]  Bruce: So I could really relate to the article precisely because he kind of left behind the moral baggage, philosophical baggage that I'm not likely to agree with and instead is convincing me using arguments that I can relate to and that I as a parent go, hmm, that's a good point. That does fit what I want for my children. And the stuff about the fact that it's an educational experience. I don't think you have this quote, but he has a quote somewhere about how it's the same impulse to play video games as the same as the impulse for him to do science. I know for myself, I know now for myself the thing which makes me play video games today is identical to the thing which makes me play with Legos then, which is, by the way, the very same thing that makes me do science, that is the impulse to understand things. Now, having said all that, and I do have some, I have one major criticism of this article that I don't think is core to his argument, so I'll cover it at some point, but I don't think it really affects his argument any, it's just I don't like something he said.

[00:14:04]  Bruce: Or at least I don't even think I dislike what he said. I think he contradicts himself and I think it should be called out, if that makes any sense. Both the things he say I like, but they're clearly in contradiction to each other.

[00:14:16]  Peter: I like the comparison, I think it was right before the section you read where he talks about chess, comparing a video game. I'm not really much of a gamer. I do play chess poorly, but I have a lot of appreciation for the game, the beauty of what takes place on these 64 squares.

[00:14:39]  Unidentified speaker: But that could just be my own bias.

[00:14:43]  Peter: Is there a fundamental reason why... I look at my son, and he's on Fortnite, and he's got his headset on. He's there with 10 of his friends talking away. Not even just about the game. They're talking about school and life and singing songs, and sometimes they have arguments or whatever. Is an experience like that inherently worse than playing chess? Is Minecraft, maybe Minecraft is a better example. I don't know if there's a fundamental reason why someone can't explore the Minecraft world and appreciate the beauty of these, or sometimes very artistic creations. I mean, is that mindless escapism? I mean, how is it different than chess? To me, it's an extremely valid question.

[00:15:39]  Bruce: So, and Deutsch makes the claim that there are certain culturally sanctioned areas where knowledge is considered positive and others where it's not culturally sanctioned. And I would actually have maybe a minor criticism there. He's kind of right. Clearly culture prefers, and culture has changed its mind over the years as to what's sanctioned and what isn't. On the other hand, some knowledge is more valuable to the market than other knowledge. So like the example he uses of piano, and I totally agree, piano has this huge upfront investment. You may end up spending it, and then it's not what you wanted anyhow, and so there's this giant risk with piano. But if you're a good piano player, you can make money doing that, right? I mean, teaching lessons at a minimum. I mean, I've known multiple women and men that do that as a side gig or full-time.

[00:16:32]  Peter: Well, my wife is a violinist, and she's had an extremely successful life as a teacher and performer, so yeah, it can work out.

[00:16:44]  Bruce: Now, someone might at this point say, well, it can work out as a video gamer.

[00:16:47]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:16:49]  Bruce: There's professional video gamers today. I mean, it's... But let's be honest, if we're going to try to make that comparison, the odds that you could make money with piano practice is probably quite a bit higher than you're going to make money as a professional gamer.

[00:17:07]  Unidentified speaker: Maybe.

[00:17:08]  Peter: I mean, when you consider how many people are making money streaming and all this stuff.

[00:17:13]  Bruce: I think even if you considered everybody making money streaming, I don't think you would even come close.

[00:17:20]  Peter: To people making money through music?

[00:17:22]  Bruce: Through teaching music lessons, yeah. So there's a similar thing that goes on with playing sports. Now, sports is a more socially sanctioned thing for sure, right? And I wonder why, because I don't actually think sports is anywhere near as good as culture thinks it is. Although I don't think it's necessarily bad for people who are interested in it. It's just that we almost force people into it, and it's dumb, right?

[00:17:48]  Peter: It's another one of these biases.

[00:17:51]  Bruce: Okay, but sports, you can make the exact same argument. Well, you can make tons of money in sports, right? No, you really can't. I mean, it's sure the very, very best person in sport, you know, Michael Jordan, who makes a ton of money in sports, but who's the Michael Jordan of software? It's Bill Gates, you know, I mean, like it's not even close, right? You know, I mean, it's, there's definitely certain types of knowledge that make you money better than others.

[00:18:19]  Peter: Yeah, you know, it's not even, I don't even, don't want people to read us as thinking it's just about money. It's about living, it's a meaningful, productive life.

[00:18:28]  Bruce: No, I think that's a better argument, right? But we do have to acknowledge that as a parent, one thing that's going to cross a parent's mind, rightly so, is, okay, but some kinds of knowledge are more valuable than others in terms of being able to sustain yourself in terms of a job, okay? Now, we can talk about whether that's a moral panic, we do it too much, but the seed of the thought strikes me as completely legitimate, and we got to get that out there right away, okay? That if your child were, think of some really horrific, maybe even unrealistic circumstance, your child does nothing but play video games, or does nothing but play chess. I don't care what it is. Does nothing but play sports.

[00:19:17]  Peter: Well, yeah, I might point out that many people dedicate their lives to chess, and it just goes nowhere for them. They're playing in the park, and they don't seem to have particularly successful lives.

[00:19:33]  Bruce: So there is a legitimate concern there. Now, how common of a concern is it really? Probably not that common. Can we maybe wrap our minds around the fact that there's a legitimate concern, but there also can be a moral panic about the legitimate concern? If we can wrap our minds around that, I think we can get to a more realistic place, right? Where we can acknowledge, okay, parent who is worried about video games, there is a potential danger there, but it's way less common than you think it is, right? And I think that this is one of the things that I've changed my mind about over, because I grew up with parents who limited our screen time, and my mom listens to my podcast, and my dad listens to my podcast. And honestly, I don't even necessarily have a criticism there, particularly since back then, you only could afford maybe one TV, everybody wants to play video games, you've got to somehow limit people so they can take turns.

[00:20:31]  Bruce: I mean, there's a whole cultural environment that has to be explained, that existed at the time, that was just a necessity. People didn't have personal screens back then, that they were carrying around with themselves so they could just do it and not interfere with other people. So I think that the first thing you have to understand is that the cultural reason why we limited screen time came from a place where that may have just been a necessity. That if you had enough kids, there was just no other fair way to do it. So let's start with that. So now I've got that kind of cultural milieu. Is that pronounced that term right?

[00:21:13]  Peter: I don't know.

[00:21:14]  Unidentified speaker: milieu.

[00:21:14]  Unidentified speaker: milieu.

[00:21:15]  Bruce: Yes, thank you. And it's in my head that I should be limiting children's video games, but not necessarily for me. The whole situation has changed at this point. We've got tons of TVs around the house. Kids start having little personal video games with them. I might be doing this for reasons that don't make sense anymore. And I think that happens, that you have a tradition. The tradition was knowledge-bearing. The tradition made perfect sense and was really important at the time. And the need for it shifts slowly away, and it's not obvious at first when to drop it or if to drop it. And a lot of times we do traditions, we don't think about them that much. My parents did this, so I'm doing it. It's the old thing about cutting off the edge of the end of the pork, and nobody knows why, and they go back and it turns out that the grandmother or the great-grandmother had a pan that was too small.

[00:22:15]  Bruce: Everybody else thought there was some other reason for why they were doing it. So that kind of takes place, where maybe we've developed a tradition that's going to take a while for that knowledge-bearing, important tradition to die out because it no longer has a use. Okay. And it's not always obvious why traditions exist. Sometimes they're knowledge-bearing in ways we didn't understand. Okay.

[00:22:40]  Unidentified speaker: So there's a lot of...

[00:22:41]  Peter: I mean, if you think about all the things that go on in a family, the dynamics, there's a lot of traditions, one after another. And, you know, it's hard to... If you want to destroy everything that... Or change everything that happens in a family. I mean, well, maybe. Maybe it's for the best, but easier said than done.

[00:23:05]  Bruce: Right. So, okay. So with that in mind, when I'm raising my kids, I put a limit on their screen time. And this is exactly how strongly we put a limit to an open question, right? I think a lot of times you put the limit, but you also put really fuzzy boundaries around the limit. Because the limit is almost more like a threat that it will get enforced if the privilege gets abused, right? So that's probably more realistically what we're doing. We've got this limit on screen time, but it doesn't always get enforced. The kids know it doesn't always get enforced. We've even explained to them, like, you know, we don't care so much as long as you're also doing your schoolwork or doing something that we feel is going to be moving you towards being able to take care of yourself when you're old enough, you know, things like that, right? And so a lot of it does come down to ultimately a relationship with the child, and you're trying to do your best with the child.

[00:24:11]  Bruce: And children don't always do the wisest things. And there's, you know, I know if you're coming from David Deutsch's background, you may at this point say, well, you know, who are you as the parent to be the authority to decide what's best for the child? Well, you know, I kind of...

[00:24:28]  Unidentified speaker: That's a valid point.

[00:24:29]  Bruce: It is a valid point. It's not a fully valid point, right? It's the idea that parents don't sometimes actually know what's best for the child, maybe even often just isn't true, right? And so there's, if we made a blanket rule, the parent never gets to try to influence the child, you know, and that would be a very bad rule. That would be turning off the means of error correction, right? So we're looking for what's the best way to do this, and maybe it's not obvious right away what's the best way. So I've got this child in particular who is one of the only ones that I enforce it with on a regular basis, because he just does nothing but play video games, and he won't get his homework done, and he never wants to be around anybody else, and he kind of disappears, right? So I enforce this. He gets a certain amount of video games, but then he doesn't get to play more video games, at least until he finishes his homework or whatever.

[00:25:33]  Bruce: And when he grows up, he's now an adult. And by the way, I would point out that it wasn't ineffective, that when we would take away the video games like that, he would in fact then go do his homework. And as soon as it was done, maybe we'd let him reward him with more video games or something like that. And he made it through high school, and he probably wouldn't have, right? Now, we can talk about whether I should have put my kids into high school or not. That's probably a totally different podcast. But I was going to do it at the time, and I was a traditional parent. And I don't think school is an unvaluable tradition. Even now, I do not believe school is an unvaluable tradition. So I have a more complicated view of it now. But I don't really entirely disagree with my younger self on this one. So he grows up, and he has a girlfriend who doesn't want him to play video games, and keeps telling him video games are bad for him, and he shouldn't be playing them.

[00:26:36]  Bruce: And it's really kind of a strong sign that this girlfriend maybe isn't the best for him. She's controlling, she's kind of manipulative, she's got these ideas that I don't agree with. And he's talking with me about it, and he goes, I know I shouldn't be playing video games because video games are bad for you. I go, why do you think that? I've never told you they're bad for you. And he goes, I thought you said they were bad for you. I'm like, I've never said that. He says, well, but you always limited me. I'm like, oh my gosh.

[00:27:04]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, yeah.

[00:27:05]  Bruce: That's the lesson he came away with. And it's like, oh.

[00:27:11]  Peter: Well, you know, I had a similar, I think probably when I was getting into David Deutsch sort of just coincided for me like I alluded to before with really questioning how I was handling this with my own children. You know, we used to kind of do the same thing you did where we'd set the timer and they only get this much better. I was just getting so sick of being the screen time police that it just didn't seem like a good thing to our relationship. And I will say that letting that go was completely positive for my family, I would say. I mean, not that it doesn't have downsides too. Like I said, it kind of gets under your skin when you see your kids just like watching these mindless TikTok videos or whatever. But at the same time, I can't really convince myself that it would have been better just to hand my three-year-old a iPad and just say, just do what you want.

[00:28:16]  Peter: Don't go outside. Don't play games.

[00:28:19]  Bruce: Okay, so let's talk about that. Let's talk about what the concern is here and to what degree it is or isn't warranted, if that makes sense. I want to kind of, for those who are listening to the show, who are parents that do enforce rules with their kids, first of all, no problem. This is between you and your kids. I am not in any way telling a... And for those who don't, who decide, you know what, I'm going to let my kids... I'm going to be non-coercive with my kids. No problem, right? I completely am not here to judge you in the slightest, either way, right? But let's talk about the underlying concern here. So you made an interesting point that Deutsch doesn't look at any of the literature on the subject. Instead, he comes up with this idea about what human beings are like, okay?

[00:29:14]  Peter: Well, I think he would probably question a lot of the assumptions behind the literature almost. Behaviorism and psychology, if you just don't find that convincing, then it's just not what you're going to base your life on.

[00:29:30]  Bruce: Okay, but by the time this podcast episode airs, I have now made the statement, reason as severe testing, somewhere in one of our past podcasts, maybe several ago by the time this one comes out. So I'm going to challenge that a little. On the one hand, yeah, I get where he's coming from, and I'm not even saying he's wrong. But reason is severe testing. So if you're going to ignore all of that literature, and you're going to ignore an entire body of work out there, let's even assume you're right to ignore it, because it is in fact wrong. You don't get to, under critical rationalism, just decide it's wrong, offer me an explanation, and not test. You must come up with ad hoc explanation, [not?] non-ad hoc explanations that are testable. And I do see that as a problem, that Deutsch, not just on this one, where I largely agree with him, but I've seen him do the exact same thing in areas where honestly I think he's just wrong.

[00:30:34]  Bruce: And animal intelligence would probably be the most obvious one here, where he's ignored an entire body of evidence, that I don't think if he actually engaged, he'd have even the slightest chance of overcoming in a testable way. So I do think that's a problem. It may be that we're right, that this idea of non-coercion with humans, that video games are great teaching tools, that may all be true, but we should have a little bit of doubt about that. Even if we're ultimately right, we should kind of know that our theories need to survive severe testing. And if there is a body of evidence out there that is saying video games is harmful, then it's really upon us to figure out what's wrong with those, not to just dismiss them, oh, that's behaviorism, oh, that's psychology. Psychology, universal explainers, so therefore all psychology is wrong. Which, by the way, we've covered in this podcast, is a false idea because genes can influence us strongly.

[00:31:37]  Bruce: Does genes influence you to want to eat through hunger? Oh, heck yeah, it does. So right there, counterexample, we now know universality does not mean genes do not influence you, maybe even strongly. Pain, do you dislike pain? And then I know people will at this point say, well, there's somebody out there who learns to not care about pain. Okay, how often does that happen? I'm not denying we're universal explainers and that with the right knowledge, we can change ourselves, but it's not necessarily easy. It may be incredibly rare. It may be incredibly hard to obtain that knowledge. It may be something that just isn't going to happen in your lifetime for you. Okay, so we might as well just admit genes influence us then because that's what this means. The fact that you can show me a counterexample to that was making an assumption that... The fact that there are counterexamples shows we are universal explainers.

[00:32:32]  Bruce: The fact that there are so few shows that the genes do influence us and that those two are not in contradiction to each other. So because of that, I do feel a little skepticism here at the idea that we can just wave it all away. In this case, though, I think he's probably largely right. And now that's just my own bias, and so I'm putting it out there. I do want to know what's wrong with the studies in video games, and I want to know how to modify those studies to testably show a different result, right? And if I don't know how to do that, then I'm going to reserve myself at least a little. I may have an opinion. I may have a strong opinion, but I'm going to withhold, and I'm going to admit I could be wrong. That's fallibilism, right?

[00:33:13]  Unidentified speaker: And I think there are other ways to argue.

[00:33:15]  Peter: I looked at some articles that were criticizing some of the interpretation of the data that Jonathan Haidt relies on. And he's probably a little more down on social media even. He literally thinks, I think he's literally said that social media is going to destroy our country if it's not addressed, I guess, by the government intervention. And he doesn't seem to like video games much either. So it's an extremely, what to me seems like an extreme... I mean, maybe it's realistic, but it's an extremely pessimistic view. But there are people who really question his interpretation of the data, too, and try to take it more to that level. So I think it might be pretty questionable, in my opinion.

[00:34:06]  Bruce: Yeah, so I have never looked into this. So let me just say that I also think it's at least somewhat questionable. I suspect there is some problems there, though, right? So they've done causal studies where they've tried to work out, do video games, make you more violent, if you're playing violent video games, that is. And they found that there was some causal effect. Now, every time I bring this up with people who like video games, and I love video games, I love video games, right? I play them all the time. I went through a period of not playing them, but it was just because I had a health problem that stopped me, and now I've overcome that and gone back to playing video games again. It's one of my favorite activities, and I spend tons of time on it. Like, I do not limit myself on video games, right? But that doesn't mean that there isn't potentially a problem, right?

[00:34:57]  Bruce: I would like to know if there is. I would like to know if violent video games does, across the population, lead to violent behavior.

[00:35:07]  Peter: Well, you know, we talked about a moral panic earlier, and I was reflecting on a moral panic that what I perceive to be a moral panic that I grew up in, which was during the 80s, where people had a perception that our society was becoming more and more violent, which it was, to be fair. I mean, the homicide rate was skyrocketing for various reasons, maybe the crack epidemic or whatever. You know, people had a perception that, well, oh yeah, all these movies are becoming so violent and all this, and my parents wouldn't let me watch a lot of these movies. Now, like, I think, I don't know, I would hesitate to say it's because I wasn't allowed to watch these movies that I love so many of them today.

[00:35:56]  Bruce: That might be, that might be.

[00:35:58]  Peter: I mean, you know, I think of my favorite movies, my favorite actor is probably Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I love Conan the Barbarian Terminator.

[00:36:08]  Bruce: I mean, come on, he plays Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[00:36:12]  Unidentified speaker: Fair enough, but he did it well.

[00:36:14]  Bruce: He did it well, you're right.

[00:36:15]  Peter: You consider the quality of these movies that he was in back to back in the 80s, it's quite amazing. They stand up to the test of time.

[00:36:25]  Bruce: That's okay, because Kevin Costner only plays Kevin Costner, and he does a great Kevin Costner.

[00:36:29]  Unidentified speaker: You could say that about all the actors.

[00:36:32]  Unidentified speaker: Kevin Costner.

[00:36:33]  Peter: Yeah, but anyway, I found, maybe that's one of the reasons I still love these movies, is because they were kept for me when I was a kid. I don't know, but now it's kind of like, I think it's more obvious to people that people can, people know the difference between real and fantasy, and that the vast majority of can consume violent media and not become affected by it. I remember taking my son to the, as just kind of a fun father, I'm not like real into guns or anything, but I took him to the shooting range. It was just kind of a fun father son thing. And I was thinking that he might think like, oh, this is Fortnite or something like that. It might have some kind of like all these games, these first person shooters might affect his attitude toward it. No, he, I mean, it was very, a very intense experience for him to shoot this gun IRL and to be around, you know, other people with guns.

[00:37:37]  Bruce: And he can tell the difference between that and Fortnite, right?

[00:37:40]  Peter: He did not think he was in Fortnite.

[00:37:43]  Bruce: So let me make a case here, though, just so that we can understand where people are coming from, even if we don't agree with them. Do advertisements influence people, like commercials on television back when we had commercials on television?

[00:37:55]  Peter: Well, they must a little bit, at least.

[00:37:58]  Bruce: Okay, you can't really make the case that they don't influence people. In fact, McDonald's, there's a story, I've never checked to see if it's apocryphal or not, so maybe it's just apocryphal, but that McDonald's thought that their brand was so strong that they wondered if they still needed to advertise, so they stopped advertising in one city and sales dropped off. I mean, that wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Of course, advertising makes a difference. This idea that advertising that just totally doesn't influence you just can't possibly be true. Okay, if we accept that, then the idea that we portray certain kinds of violence or whatever in media and that's going to impact culture must have some truth to it. Now, the question is, what does that mean? For an advertisement to influence culture, if I had to make a Lexus commercial, only one in maybe a million people who watch that commercial are going to be influenced by Lexus due to that commercial.

[00:39:01]  Bruce: It doesn't have to be much for the sales to suddenly be worth it. So it may be a very small amount. But what if that were true for violence? What if the vast majority of people were completely unaffected by violence in video games, but one in a million thought that real guns were Fortnite and went out and started shooting people? I would want to know that. That would be a legitimate thing for us to study and to want to find out. And so this is why I'm not advocating for the outcomes of the studies. Every study is tentative, of course, especially if you're dealing with anything with human nature, right? It always depends on culture. It always depends on lots of factors we don't understand. So there's going to always be issues around that. But I'm completely against the idea that we just dismiss the attempt to try to use science on these questions, because if we can figure out if advertisements affect people, then we can figure out if violent video games affect people.

[00:40:01]  Bruce: And I want to know how, and I want to know how much. I want to know if there's something we can do about it, if there's a problem, if there's something we can do about it. I don't know. I have much else to say. I'm not assuming it does strongly impact us. I don't know how it's similar or different from advertisements. Like, there's tons of questions I have. But I consider the question legitimate, if that makes any sense. And I'm unwilling to dismiss the question. I want to actually get to an answer on it. And I'm okay with whatever answer that is. I also think that let's say we found out that violence in TV or video games did raise levels of violence. Let's say we did find that, for sure, that there's a causal impact. I would still have a question as to whether that would mean we should do away with it. So let me give you a real life example of this, one that is actually well understood and well studied.

[00:40:51]  Bruce: We know for sure that watching a news story about a suicide raises the suicide rate. They've done tons of studies on this. If you do a news story and it's a local news, the suicide rate will jump a lot just where that news story was broadcast. If you do it across the nation, it'll jump across the entire nation.

[00:41:14]  Peter: Yeah, it's similar in that if there's a suicide at a school, they usually don't make a big deal about it.

[00:41:21]  Unidentified speaker: They'll take a assembly and all this because there's always the danger of a copycat suicide.

[00:41:28]  Bruce: Okay, so this is a case where media is well known and easily testable that media does harm, okay? And yet, I'm still not sure I'm okay with just deciding some rule that we're not going to talk about suicides on the news, right? Because there may be enough benefit of open communication, there is enough benefit of open communication and freedom of the press and things like that, that we're going to have to accept the negative harmful impact of that kind of media because it's...

[00:42:02]  Unidentified speaker: Or the school...

[00:42:03]  Peter: I was going to make a comparison to the school shooting issue too. I mean, I think that Pinker even suggests that the media should... the best thing to do about these school shootings or just mass shootings in general is just to stop publicizing these shooters as much and looking into their motivations and all that. It's probably true, but at the same time, people want to know. There's almost like a right to know, a curiosity of like, who are these people? Why are they doing this kind of thing? So I don't know what the right answer is.

[00:42:35]  Bruce: So, okay, so relating this then back to video games and are video games harmful? Even if they are harmful, and they might be, certain types of violent video games, I'm saying. I'm not saying they are, by the way. I'm just simply being open-minded about it as a question. I'm not sure that that's reason enough to remove them. Like the fact that somebody else's child, one in a million, it's going to cause them to go shoot somebody, it's going to have a causal factor in causing them to go shoot somebody. That doesn't mean I shouldn't let my kids play video games. Like it doesn't mean that at all, right? And so I think wanting to know the answer to the question, wanting to understand it is legitimate, but the answer is going to turn out to be it's complicated. And that's even assuming that there is a negative, which there may not be, right? It may turn out that like one of the things that the causal studies I was aware of with video games, they pointed out that like you can find the same effect by watching football.

[00:43:42]  Bruce: Football is kind of violent. Both of them raise your adrenaline levels, and maybe raising adrenaline levels leads to more violence, but it's got nothing to do with whether you perceive the violence in the game or not, right? And so this complicates things. This means that it might have an impact, but for totally different reasons than you're assuming, right? Or something along those lines. And it may not be worth removing. What would be the point of removing video games from kids if watching football has the exact same impact, right? And you're a football fan. It would just be weird, right? Now you really are just being biased. So on the one hand, I consider it a fair question. On the other hand, you have to ask the question, even if it were true, how much would this actually change my opinion much? I'm going to stop on the video games and violence because I think that what I just said is probably about as far as we can go at this point.

[00:44:36]  Bruce: There's so much that's unknown. And even if it does turn out that it has a harmful effect, it's hard for me to believe that that would mean we need to do away with violence in video games. I think the stronger concern is... So let me see if I can... David Deutsch says, if you look at it closely, the evidence boils down to, the evidence for why parents think video games is bad for children, boils down to no more than the fact that children like video games. This seems to be a very common tendency among parents to regard children liking something as prima facie evidence that it is bad for them. If they are spending a lot of time doing something, parents wonder what harm it must be doing them. I think this is fundamentally the wrong attitude. Now, I can't say that there's never been a parent who has thought that way. There's enough crazy parents out there, you probably could find a parent who actually does think that way.

[00:45:32]  Bruce: But I doubt you would find many. Now, you might argue here, well, it's subconscious. Okay, but if we're talking about subconscious, then do we really know for sure that anybody's thinking that way? Like maybe, maybe not. To say if you look at it closely kind of implies we've looked at it in terms of studies, and we've done experiments, and we've done reason as severe testing. And I really don't think that's what's going on here. I think that Deutsch is explaining his own personal conjecture on the subject, right? I think the real concern, like if you were to actually, as a parent who's felt this way, talking to parents who feel this way, I think the concern actually goes something like this, right? That there is the potential, or so they believe, that the child will become so interested in video games and nothing else that they will end up not gaining certain kinds of skills that are actually necessary for that child to end up being successful in the job marketplace later in life, okay?

[00:46:37]  Bruce: Furthermore, we all know of cases where with adults, that has actually happened, right? Now, I want to point out it's not very common, but I have known adults and talked with adults who lost their marriage or lost their job because they spent too much time playing video games, and they could not stop playing this video game, and they stayed up all night. Then they couldn't perform at work. Like, that's an adult, right?

[00:47:04]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:47:04]  Bruce: So I know for a fact that there are some human beings where video games become detrimental to them.

[00:47:12]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah. Okay.

[00:47:12]  Peter: Well, I think that leads right into another important point that the article makes, is that when you might look around at the world and see, like you said, an adult that has lost their wife and lost their job, and they're just playing video games all the time, or you might, you know, but then it would be easy to make the assumption that it's because of the video games, but you could also be looking at a very troubled person for all kinds of reasons, and it could actually be a good thing that that person has that outlet to play video games.

[00:47:51]  Bruce: I think you're right that it's complicated.

[00:47:53]  Peter: And you could say the same thing about a kid. I mean, yes, troubled kids might spend all their time playing video games. It might be better if this kid was studying quantum mechanics and pursuing chess or whatever, but that's just not where their mind is at. They have problems and they need an outlet. Can I read a small section of the article?

[00:48:22]  Unidentified speaker: Could it be harmful?

[00:48:24]  Peter: Suppose a child is for some reason unhappy with his situation, his home life or school or whatever, and he has very few creative outlets. Playing video games is such a good thing in this respect that if he finds it and finds other avenues blocked off, he may devote all his attention to it. Later, if his circumstances change, he may not be as open to taking up other opportunities as he might have been. If that is so, it is not the video game that is doing him harm. It is that he has been funneled down a blind alley and not let out. The thing to do is to let them out, not to steal his last remaining source of joy and learning. If someone is in that state, just like with any compulsive behavior, the cure is simply to offer him other things which he might prefer. There will be some things which he prefers. Nobody actually spends 24 hours a day playing video games.

[00:49:17]  Peter: So, in the remaining time, try conversation, try anything. If that does not work, don't blame the video game. Be thankful that there is still something good in the child's life to tide him over.

[00:49:30]  Bruce: Yes, I think that that is exactly what I'm talking about. That you've got this concern that the parents have, which I'm going to declare a legitimate concern. At least a concern that needs to be legitimately addressed. What if my child... And we talk about video game addiction. And I need to take a moment to talk about the word addiction so I can explain something about this. So video games are not addicting in the clinical sense, because they have no withdrawal symptoms and things like that. Now I've had people say to me, video games are not addicting. When people claim video games are addicting, they're just wrong. They don't know what they're talking about. I want to point out to people who say that, that they're wrong. Because the word addiction existed long before that the clinical definition of addiction, right? It meant enslaved to something.

[00:50:20]  Bruce: Okay, that's just what the term means from back in the Latin or whatever.

[00:50:24]  Unidentified speaker: I don't remember Greek, Latin.

[00:50:25]  Peter: From a certain perspective, all kinds of things are addicting.

[00:50:28]  Bruce: That's right.

[00:50:29]  Peter: We say chess or love or, you know, all the...

[00:50:33]  Bruce: It makes sense that doctors took an existing word, addiction, that meant something, and turned it into a more narrow use clinically, right? But it would be a mistake to then say, anyone who isn't using the term clinically is therefore using the term wrong. That is wrong, okay? The word had a history far before doctors existed, right? Or modern doctors existed. I'm sure doctors have been around for forever, but witch doctors don't count. So because of that, when somebody says, I'm worried about video game addiction, what they really mean is the person's gonna be enslaved, like these adults who lost their marriage or lost their job, okay? They've seen it happen. They've seen somebody's life be, they think, damaged by this video game. And they're worried about their child. What if the video game, I don't care that it's not addicting like a drug.

[00:51:29]  Bruce: That's not even what I mean to begin with. I'm just worried they're gonna become enslaved to it and that it will, they'll end up living with me forever in their mother's basement. And they'll be incapable of getting married and having their own life, and they'll have a miserable life, okay? And this does sometimes happen, right? So you can't say it's a completely unwarranted worry. So no, I feel like Deutsch's answer's good here. He's pointing out that, well, don't confuse correlation with causation. There's a lot more you need to ask. No, having said that, let me point out that I have talked with adults who have said, yeah, I lost my job, and that was a wake-up call, so now I don't play video games because that allows me to not become addicted to the video game, and I'm a better father now.

[00:52:23]  Peter: Well, they made a rational decision for themselves.

[00:52:25]  Bruce: That's right.

[00:52:26]  Peter: There's nothing wrong with deciding not to play video games.

[00:52:29]  Bruce: Okay, but I would be hard-pressed to say that in that case, it wasn't the video game, right? So to take the stance, it can't be the video game. Don't take away the video game. It is. So again, I feel like we're talking about such margin cases here. Like, how many adults do I know that have actually lost their job because of video games? Like, I think one, you know, or two, you know? I mean, like, it surely isn't a super common-

[00:52:55]  Peter: Maybe they didn't like their jobs very much, though.

[00:52:57]  Bruce: That could be, right? It's-

[00:52:59]  Peter: Well, I think that the larger point, as Deutsch points out, is that humans are not laboratory rats, and we don't react like laboratory rats. You know, there's this assumption, I think, baked into so many of these psychological studies, is that we're just creatures who are just manipulated by the world rather than knowledge creators, as David Deutsch defines human beings. And growing up is a process of knowledge growth. That's what, I mean, living is, I guess, in general, but you know, especially when you're a kid, that's what you're doing. You're acquiring knowledge about the world. One more short part about the addiction thing, though, because he addresses this directly. She asks him about the addiction. I think that it's completely untrue. The only evidence that video games are addictive is that people play them. All this talk about excess energy and being drawn in and so on is not what the scientists would call experimental data.

[00:54:06]  Peter: The data is that the child is playing the video game. That is the only thing you can know for a fact. You can't see this drawn in business. That is just an interpretation parents put on what is happening. Pure theory based on their own preconceptions. I am not making a value judgment here. I am just stating the fact. My judgment is that these preconceptions are wrong and that children play video games because they instinctively recognize their educational value. He talks in another part about how the games do have a lot of, they teach you how to think, I guess. Not what to think, which is part of their value. I mean, I think there's something to that.

[00:54:45]  Bruce: So, okay. And this is actually the one thing I feel critical of David Deutsch on. So he says, here's the quote, people are so much more complicated than these simplistic theories of what influences them. Human beings are not laboratory rats and do not react like laboratory rats. Look at Eastern Europe, where they used to control what everybody read and gave them a constant diet of Marxist propaganda, which they had had to learn by heart and repeat with eagerness in their voices. In spite of all that, it did not rub off on the overwhelming majority of them. And even those people are rapidly regretting it, okay? So he's pointing out that you can't influence people so easily, okay? But then in a paragraph right before, he's talking about why women don't like video games. And his explanation is, it is an effect down a long chain of cause and effect, which began with things like being dressed in pink costumes when they were babies.

[00:55:40]  Bruce: The whole pattern of behavior towards girls rewards her for suppressing her creativity. One of the unpleasant side effects of this is that it makes girls suppress the side of them which would like video games. The reason why this effect is more marked in video games is that video games is so well suited for the development of creative skills. Okay, that's a clear contradiction to what he just said. Right?

[00:56:01]  Peter: Yeah, I'm not sure I completely agree with that.

[00:56:04]  Bruce: So, no, I'm not sure which one of those two is true though. Right? It could be that he's right that we are influencing women to not be creative and that's why they don't like video games and that's why they don't go into science.

[00:56:18]  Peter: Or maybe they're just creative in other ways.

[00:56:20]  Bruce: Or maybe they're just creative in other ways. Okay. Like, I don't really know. Like, I consider that a fair question. I'm not saying Deutsch is wrong. I'm not saying he's right. But if he is right, then that would be an example of how we are strongly influenced by things, by culture. So you can't have it both ways, right? My guess is, is that sometimes we are strongly influenced by culture and sometimes we aren't. And we don't quite yet know what causes us to be strongly influenced by some things and some things we aren't. And I don't know what it is either, right? It's this is something that we don't understand how the human brain works well enough to understand it yet. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe nothing influences us much and women actually don't like video games because women actually don't like video games. That could be, right? I don't know.

[00:57:09]  Bruce: So this is one of those things where I felt like I needed to call that out though, because there were like two paragraphs back to back and it's like, oh, that's like an outright contradiction right there.

[00:57:22]  Peter: Well, what Jonathan Haidt says about the gender difference is that at least what he was saying a few years ago, now he's saying that now it sounds like he's more down on video games, but at least what he was saying four or five years ago was that video games weren't that bad for you and it was really the girls and social media that was causing what he perceives to be a psychological health crisis where these young girls are chasing these clicks online. But I mean, all the same arguments I think you can make for letting kids, letting boys play video games, you can make for letting girls go on social media. I mean, aren't they just following their own desires about how they wanna interact with the world and what they wanna do and who are we to say as fallible parents that this is something that they shouldn't be allowed to do? I mean, I guess I agree with that, but I have maybe a little more mixed feelings too, like you.

[00:58:26]  Bruce: Yeah, so again, I consider it a legitimate question. I wanna know, right? I wanna know is social media harmful on girls? If so, I wanna know why it is. I also wanna know if maybe it's not harmful, but we're measuring the wrong things. You know, I mean, like I just wanna know what the truth is, right? I'm open to any possibility here. I admit that I feel some doubts about Jonathan Haidt. He's got great studies. I've never looked into them. I've never looked in the counter studies. I just am not interested enough because I honestly, I don't agree with it enough. Maybe it has just my bias coming out to even go look into it. Yeah, I didn't put any limits on my girls' social media. I sort of didn't encourage them to go on it, and I don't think they really did until they were past the age that he said it was a problem, since he thinks it's not a problem for girls in high school.

[00:59:18]  Bruce: It's really girls in junior high. I think I sort of remember reading in his book or whatever. This idea though, let's take a hard look at the idea itself, okay? Should a child be allowed to drink alcohol?

[00:59:36]  Unidentified speaker: That's, yeah.

[00:59:37]  Bruce: Okay, or is there a reason why they're better off to not start until they're older? Now, they've got some science. Maybe it's pseudoscience, but there's some science behind this that there's a problem with children drinking alcohol or taking drugs at too young an age. It's not as severe past a certain age because the brain has developed at that point, okay? Let's, I know that if you're a follower of David Deutsch, you probably think all those studies are complete junk. My opinion of having talked to the people who say that is that they don't have any sort of non-ad hoc explanations to back up what they're saying. So I think it's an open question at this point. If they actually did have good studies that could show why these studies are wrong, and instead of just simply citing universality, which as far as I can tell, it does not imply that there couldn't be a developmental stage that you have to pass through for the reasons we've talked about on this podcast.

[01:00:38]  Bruce: I think I would feel differently about people who are taking that stance. Now again, I'm not trying to imply that we shouldn't put, shouldn't allow girls on social media because even if it were true that we shouldn't allow kids to take drugs and that it's safer, let's not even say not allow because that's even now getting to the question of how much coercion should parents be using. Let's just say, is it a negative for children to take drugs at a young age? And let's assume the answer is yes, because most people think it is. And there's science that at this point—reason is severe testing. Our best theory is that it is. And the counter theories that exist that I've seen are ad hoc, so I don't count them as of today. They need to become non-ad hoc before I'm going to take them seriously. So my best guess at this point, my best explanation at this point is that there is something about developing minds and that we don't want to give children alcohol or drugs, or we want to discourage it as much as possible prior to a certain age.

[01:01:42]  Bruce: Okay, that's the current science. It could be wrong because I'm a fallibilist. All right. But once I accept that, well, why couldn't it be that there could be a mental health crisis caused by girls being introduced to social media too soon? I know it's a stretch, right? And I'm not saying it's not. I mean, of course it's a stretch. But this is what critical rationalism is all about, right? Is whatever your gut tells you could just be wrong. Your gut is a source of conjectures, not a source of inference. And the fact that you personally feel like it shouldn't, fact that I personally don't think it's an issue doesn't mean I'm right.

[01:02:24]  Peter: You know, we're talking in a very theoretical way about something that is generally harmless, video games. But then, you know, you also kind of have to think about it in the extremes too. I mean, if your 14 year old daughter comes to you and tells you, oh, I've got a new boyfriend, he's 30, we're doing fentanyl together and drinking, you're not gonna be like, oh, well, I'm a foul, who am I as a fallible person?

[01:02:56]  Unidentified speaker: I can tell you not to do that.

[01:02:58]  Peter: Oh, yeah, and life is about making mistakes and learning from him. I mean, I'm thinking even you, Bruce, are going to react pretty in a much more, let's say-

[01:03:10]  Bruce: I'm not gonna wait for the studies. I'm not gonna wait for the studies.

[01:03:13]  Peter: More in line with folk epistemology.

[01:03:15]  Unidentified speaker: We'll say that, but-

[01:03:17]  Bruce: You're right, you're right, I would. I totally would, okay? This is actually one of the things, is critical rationalism does have a big flaw compared to folk epistemology. It's the fact that critical rationalism reason as severe testing, means that most of the time you can't draw inferences. So we use folk epistemology instead, and it's worked. You make a snap judgment based on your gut feel, and you use your vibes, and that's just sort of how it works, and it's worked well enough. Right, it's the Bayesians try to put a number to it, but we can talk about whether that's a wise thing to do or not. But it would appear that human beings are able to reason in terms of snap judgments and why they get a lot wrong that way. They get enough right that it's effective. And so you're right. I think that in a severe enough case, it just doesn't matter what the science says.

[01:04:14]  Bruce: You're gonna go, you know what? My daughter is not getting a 30 year old boyfriend and they're doing, what did you say? What was the drug? [Ventinol/Bensinol/fentanyl] or something together. Like it's just a bridge too far for me. I'm done, you know? So I mean, if for no other reason, then because culturally and legally, I'm legally responsible for my child, right? And so there's reasons why we have to do a separate podcast on what the reasons are for why that is. We can discuss whether that's right or wrong. But the fact is, is as of now, I do have certain legal responsibilities for my children. Society is going to legally hold me responsible for it. And so if nothing else, I'm going to stop her because this is something that I do have a legal responsibility on at this point. Of course, probably more has got to do with the gut feel that I think it's wrong.

[01:05:05]  Bruce: So, okay, your point's completely fair. And in many ways, it sweeps away everything I've said up to this point where I've said, sure, let's look at the studies. So, but we do have to look at it across timeframe, right? That the study is legitimate, but you probably aren't making decisions based on the studies, at least not initially. You're probably going with what you feel, right? And I guess this does in some ways get back to why are parents scared of video games, right? They know the guy who told them, yeah, I lost my marriage and my job because of video games. I'm an adult. So I had to quit and I had to intentionally decide to use my wisdom as an adult to change my life and not include video games so that I could be a productive member of society. And maybe they only know the one guy, right? Because it's only happened one person they know in their life, right?

[01:05:53]  Bruce: And yet somewhere in the back of their mind, there's this gut feel they're going with, where they're going, what if that happens to be my child? You know, and it's kind of this moral panic or scare. And it's not a completely unwarranted one because it's already happened once in their life, right?

[01:06:09]  Peter: I mean, it's a completely valid impulse to be afraid of these things. I mean, your kids can go wrong a million different ways. And yeah, parenting is a very scary thing in some ways, but...

[01:06:26]  Bruce: Sorry, I was going to say, you know, I have to, now that I've said all that, I've actually been building up to now kind of undermining the point. Have you ever read Don Quixote?

[01:06:34]  Peter: No, I have not.

[01:06:36]  Bruce: So the whole premise of Don Quixote is that he read too many books because back then, novels were the video games of the day. They were, they corrupted.

[01:06:46]  Peter: Oh yeah, there were moral panics about novels. They thought they were [growing?] the minds of young people.

[01:06:51]  Bruce: So he read too many novels and now he thought he was a fictional character.

[01:06:55]  Peter: Yeah.

[01:06:56]  Bruce: So he goes around chasing windmills, having delusions, etc. Now, of course, we have to talk about whether we're talking about the book where the outcome is negative or the movie, the play, Man of La Mancha, where it actually shows that those hallucinations he's having are maybe better than the real thing and maybe even truer than what people say are the real thing. I love the movie because it upends the original point of the book and points it going the other direction. So basically he goes around and he thinks he's a knight and he meets a whore and he convinces her she's a princess. And in the end, she ends up getting beaten and raped because she thinks she's a princess now. She doesn't really believe she is, but she's trying to act like one. And it undermines her protection mechanisms. And so it seems like they're going the way of the book, that this is a bad thing, that he's having these hallucinations.

[01:07:54]  Bruce: But in the end, she realizes she does have the same worth as a princess and that it doesn't matter who she is and that he is seeing her as she truly is. And she actually encourages him to continue to see himself as a knight, because he is in some sense more a knight and a truer knight than what we would consider a real knight. And she is in some sense a truer princess than even though she was this whore, than what a true princess would be like. And they kind of make you come back around and realize that the falsehood, the hallucination, was the truth after all. Even with the suffering it brought, it was still worth it. It was kind of where it goes. So they upend it. So this is an example of how you can make one point going one way and then you can take the exact same story and you can flip it slightly and you can make an entirely opposite point, right?

[01:08:49]  Bruce: But Don Quixote, they were trying to say, Novels are dangerous for you, and it's going to... And it's just... No one can even imagine saying that today. Oh, no, my kid is reading too many novels.

[01:09:06]  Peter: And you know, maybe that will be the direction that this conversation on video games are going. There's nothing inherently wrong with escaping into another world. To quote J. R. R. Tolkien on this, fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape? If we value freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it is our plain duty to escape and to take as many people as we can with us and play Minecraft, I guess.

[01:09:42]  Bruce: I completely agree. And all the arguments we've used with video games, even the ones that I said we need to take them seriously, they all apply to books. What if books are too violent?

[01:09:53]  Peter: Exactly. I mean, there are real downsides to reading too much, too. You're just sitting there doing nothing or not moving your body.

[01:10:00]  Bruce: There are people who have destroyed their lives reading books.

[01:10:03]  Unidentified speaker: Sure, sure.

[01:10:08]  Peter: I think we should probably wrap this up soon, but one more point I was going to make. When I reflect upon my life and being a teenager, and probably most of the people I knew, not that I was exceptionally bad, but I was doing relatively reckless things. And people I knew were even worse. They weren't spending their time learning about science and knowledge and work. They weren't using their time in a very good way. We'll say that. And sometimes it was dangerous. And to have this outlet where my sons can interact with their friends at home safely and get on the headset and have conversations and explore this digital world, I mean, maybe it's not the best, but it's definitely not the worst thing they could do. And there is actually a lot of data, speaking of data, that indicates that lots of this dangerous behavior that children, teenagers engage in, I'm talking about sex and drug use and all this, these are all going, it's all going down.

[01:11:22]  Peter: In a lot of ways, children are making more responsible decisions than ever. Let me just end on an optimistic note here. I am a, for better or for worse, a public school teacher. I know that makes me maybe a questionable character to certain people, but it's...

[01:11:42]  Bruce: But by the way, I definitely don't feel that way.

[01:11:46]  Peter: I know you don't, I know you don't. This is the path I've chosen and this is what I'm doing. But you know, I will tell you, I'm with children and 15 year olds in a geometry classroom. I spend several hours a day with them and they seem fine.

[01:12:06]  Unidentified speaker: They're happy, rambunctious, well-adjusted people.

[01:12:11]  Peter: I don't really see them as some of the people who get really invested in these negative, pessimistic narratives about young people. I wish they could spend a couple hours talking about geometry with teenagers sometimes or other things. I mean, we have all kinds of interesting conversations, but yeah, they're fine.

[01:12:36]  Bruce: So I think that's a great way to end. And let me give my final thought that I want to kind of leave people with. So one of the things David Deutsch says is, one of the ways you can tell that playing video games is not something which captures people and then holds them to their detriment is that each video game has only a finite lifetime. And then he goes on to talk about how you go through a natural process of going through a learning curve, and then when you're not learning anymore, you quit. Now, that may well have been true back at the time of, back when David Deutsch wrote this article. I want to point out that it just clearly isn't true for some video games today. Specifically, massively multiplayer online games. Where my daughter started playing Guild Wars when she was a little tiny girl because she wanted to dress the little girls and make characters.

[01:13:28]  Bruce: And she still comes home every weekend so that she can play Guild Wars because it's a game she's still playing. She's an adult now, right? And so this is clearly, she's gained the skills at this point, right? So why is she still playing, okay? I think what you have to accept here is that massively multiplayer games, they actually, what they do is they do create a feeling of accomplishment. They encourage you to, they've figured out how to grasp into that feeling of accomplishment that is meant to help drive you through life. And they reward you for playing their game by having these things that you want. Oh, I've got this, I need to get this cool looking sword that has this trailing butterflies or something. And my daughter will spend enormous amounts of time playing the game, and I did too for a while before I started to hurt, playing the video games and going through this.

[01:14:25]  Bruce: And then like something new comes out and then she kind of goes through a learning curve with that, but then that comes to an end and they've got these end games. The thing I would make a point here though, and I'm not against this by the way, right? I can see how in rare cases it might turn into a bad thing. And the guy I know who lost his job over video games, it was a massively multiplayer game, right? It was specifically that he had fallen into an addictive behavior with a game where he was starting to feel like the accomplishments in the game were more important to him than the real accomplishments in real life, and therefore he started losing his ability to take care of himself. So, I mean, like, you know this can happen, but this is why you can never make any final pronouncements, right? Is your average video game that's not a massively multiplayer game, it was about trying to teach you something and utilize that, and now they have other things they do.

[01:15:18]  Bruce: And there's even been really clever ideas about how to create massively multiplayer games where we get kids addicted to these games, addicted in the looser sense, not the clinical sense, but instead they get points for creating positive benefit in the world. And there have been a number of video games that were written to do that, right? Where they're trying to utilize what we've learned from video games. I don't know how successful they were, but at least for some kids that played the game, it was very cool. And they would go out and they would have, they would gain points for creating, you know, going and doing something, maybe even in real life, or maybe using their skills as a programmer or something like that, and creating positive benefits for the world and leveling up by doing that. And you can see how, in rare cases, it might get hijacked.

[01:16:10]  Bruce: Like it might turn into, I'm going to spend all my time on this video game and I lose my marriage and I lose my job. And that's bad. Like it really is bad, okay? Because you shouldn't be imposing, taking your hobbies to the point where you're imposing on the other people that are in your life, right? That is coercive for you to do that. On the other hand, it's super rare. And there's nothing wrong with it in the vast majority of cases. To use the example of the ads, we can do specific interventions maybe for someone who is a case where it is addictive, since that is so rare.

[01:16:47]  Peter: But this is not the case with your daughter.

[01:16:49]  Bruce: That's right. Now, having said that, let me now give an example of my son. Now, I've mentioned I have an autistic son, so many people will say, oh, but he's different because he's autistic. I doubt there's any clear-cut boundary between being autistic and not. You're either more in it or more out of it. I'm not considered autistic. What we define as autistic keeps changing. Maybe someday I will be considered autistic.

[01:17:16]  Peter: You're just a little different.

[01:17:17]  Bruce: Yeah.

[01:17:18]  Unidentified speaker: As we all are.

[01:17:20]  Peter: I mean, there's a lot of gray areas.

[01:17:22]  Bruce: So, like, no one would consider me autistic today because I can read people's emotions, I can read their faces, I can look into their eyes, I'm completely socially capable. I don't do so well in text. In the lower fidelity channel, I struggle more. But I do just as well as probably anybody, maybe better than most, as long as I'm face-to-face or whatever. And that's why I actually prefer interact with people in that way, is because then I can kind of read their emotions, I can see if I'm making them uncomfortable with what I'm saying, and I can kind of adjust, things like that. Whereas my son would struggle with that. He would struggle even if he were talking to you in person and he's got the no filter and things like that. He's an adult, by the way, so everything I'm about to explain, we're talking about an adult child in this case, not a child under the age of 18.

[01:18:18]  Bruce: And there's a very real danger with him, and he has acknowledged this to me at this point, that if we coddle him too much and we just sort of let him play video games all day, he does tons of screen time when he's allowed to. And he struggles with jobs because of his autism. We had to find him a special job that was understanding of his autism, and that was a way of getting him to learn to work and things like that. He started liking earning money, so now he does it. That eventually led to him choosing to go back to school. He had a two-year degree, but he had intentionally dropped any hard classes to get that two-year degree, and he ended up with a university studies degree, and he wasn't willing to go try and do hard things. And that was undermining his ability to find the kind of job that he wanted, and he was struggling with understanding that that was the connection because of the autism.

[01:19:12]  Bruce: So at some point, we do have to interfere. Now, he's not a child. We don't have the ability to legally coerce him. So what we actually did is we sat down with him, and we said, you are old enough. You need to start paying rent. And all our kids know that if they're not full-time in school, that in theory, they're going to be paying rent. And I said, you know what? I don't care what you do, as long as you are paying rent, as long as you are being productive enough that you are adding to the family finances and taking care of things, then if you want to get a part-time job and spend the rest of your time playing video games, I'm fine with that, right? But you do need to not be a burden on me. That's perfect. And he understood that. He's like, yep, I don't want to be like that. And then he admits, he goes, my life's just not really very good when I play video games all day.

[01:20:06]  Bruce: Like, I'm depressed all the time. I don't feel good about myself. I want to be developing skills. You know, there's reasons why it's hard for him, and we acknowledge that. But he really wants to move forward with his life. He would like to eventually reach the point where he can leave home, live by himself, get married, have kids, have a normal life. He's very high IQ, so he's not a person with autism that's a lower IQ or a disabled level. So there's no reason why he couldn't do all these things, right? If he can just kind of figure the emotional side out that is difficult for him because of his autism. So paying rent was the thing that got him to really stop, think, and think, you know what? I don't want to just spend my life playing video games, and the only reason why I can really get away with that is because I don't pay rent. So if I pay rent, or at least if I decide I'm going to go back to school so I don't pay rent because that's the out he's allowed, then that makes sense because I'm an adult and that will drive me forward.

[01:21:15]  Bruce: So he ended up not minding. He kind of complained first, and he paid some rent. Now, we actually have paid, I think, almost all the rent back to him. Like, we'll then take the money and we'll say, we'll give you this if you do this or something like that. And we get him to do, and so he kind of gives us the money that we then use to give back to him. So I don't think he'll end up actually paying rent in the long run. It's more of a psychological thing. But it caused him to say, you know what, I do want to go back to school. And there's other reasons why he did. He went and he got some help from the state and he took a test and he thought about what he wants to do with his life and they kind of talked with him and coached him. And he decided, I'm gonna go back to school and I'm gonna actually take hard classes now and I'm going to pursue an actual interest in graphic design.

[01:22:01]  Bruce: And so he still plays lots of video games, but now he plays a lot less because he has to go to school, he has to do work. And I think this is where parents are actually coming from. They're worried about their kid being like my son when he isn't worried about paying rent, right? And that it is a self-destructive way to live your life. And even he acknowledges that it is, right? And there is a real danger of that with some kids. And therefore, that's why I say, I'm just in no position to judge you, right? Everything's going to come down to the relationship between the parent and the child. In this case, it's an adult relationship. Maybe all of our relationships with children should be more like an adult relationship, okay? But that doesn't mean the child gets to just coerce you, right? They don't just get a pass, and that's the way it is, right?

[01:22:49]  Bruce: And I do think, and we can do a podcast on this sometime, where I'll explain my view on this further, but at the end of the day, I sort of did end up limiting his video games, but I did it indirectly as an adult by saying, you need to pay rent, right? You need to act like an adult. You need to take care of your life, at least this much. And that was what got him to stop, think, and decide, you know what, I need to not spend so much time playing video games, I need to go get a degree. I need to get serious about getting a degree. I need to get serious about getting a job and things like that. And he's had a lot of very positive changes. He's moving slowly because he's autistic, but he's moving. He is moving forward with his life, right? And I suspect at some point, he will be completely independent of us. Like, I see no reason at all that day won't come, right?

[01:23:39]  Bruce: And this is, in some sense, me parenting him, even though he's technically an adult, right? And there's nothing wrong with that. That's a very positive thing in this case. And I think most people would probably, even most people who were non-coercive parents or something, would probably say, well, you're right. He sort of does owe you rent, and it is your house, and it's not really right for him to coerce you either. And so we're going to, all those need to come into the conversation.

[01:24:10]  Peter: Yeah, the no coercion thing is complicated when it plays out in a family. I think that we both realize that, because we have children and have a family. We'll leave it at that for now, but I would love to continue this line of thought with you on another podcast.

[01:24:29]  Bruce: Yeah, let's do that. We'll have to do a Popperian approach to parenting or something like that. What I've learned from Popper on parenting, I wish I had actually come across Popper, and honestly, non-coercive parenting when I was younger, because by the time I actually got to know about it and really think about it, I only had like two of my kids were adults and the other two were late teenagers. So I did end up implementing a number of things, which I could talk about in a separate podcast that I did pull from Popper and that I think are really good ideas in terms of parenting that I haven't heard talked about as much as I think it should get talked about. And I did try them out with my kids near the end of life and it really turned out to be something very positive.

[01:25:16]  Peter: No, I agree. This philosophy has been extremely positive influence on the way I interact with my family. And if I had to do my life over again and I discovered this when the kids were little, I probably would have raised them in a much less traditional way.

[01:25:35]  Bruce: Well, and that's the value of having these alternative approaches to life. Even if you end up not agreeing with it, even if you end up believing, you know what, the way that non-coercive parents handle things doesn't really work for me, which is fine if you think that, right? The very fact that it existed forced me to think about what am I just doing out of tradition? And to really start questioning my own traditions and then figuring out how to improve them and to air correct them. And so that's why I feel even if you end up never implementing it, they're valuable just to make you stop and think about things. And this is the value of having diverse ideas.

[01:26:12]  Peter: Well, thank you, Bruce. We could go on and on, but this was supposed to be a short episode. I don't know if we're capable of doing a short episode, really, but that's okay. It was fun for me and I hope our audience likes it.

[01:26:24]  Bruce: Thank you very much.

[01:26:26]  Peter: Thank you, Bruce. Bye.

[01:26:35]  Bruce: The Theory of Anything Podcast could use your help. We have a small but loyal audience, and we'd like to get the word out about the podcast to others so others can enjoy it as well. To the best of our knowledge, we're the only podcast that covers all four strands of David Deutsch's philosophy as well as other interesting subjects. If you're enjoying this podcast, please give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. This can usually be done right inside your podcast player, or you can Google The Theory of Anything Podcast Apple or something like that. Some players have their own rating system and giving us a five-star rating on any rating system would be helpful. If you enjoy a particular episode, please consider tweeting about us or linking to us on Facebook or other social media to help get the word out. If you are interested in financially supporting the podcast, we have two ways to do that.

[01:27:21]  Bruce: The first is via our podcast host site, Anchor. Just go to anchor.fm slash four dash strands, F-O-U-R dash S-T-R-A-N-D-S. There's a support button available that allows you to do reoccurring donations. If you wanna make a one-time donation, go to our blog, which is fourstrands.org. There is a donation button there that uses PayPal. Thank you.