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Strange7 comments on Open Thread: April 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong
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So, if easy access to violent entertainment leads to desensitization which leads to increased demand, and real/simulated violence are substitutes for this purpose, what happens when the supply of simulated violence is interrupted? That's the situation ancient Rome had, politicians compelled to maintain the gladiator games under threat of mass rioting.
If the best horror story you can come up with is people being 'forced' to create entertainment that there's a market for, then I'm not concerned.
No, the horror story is that the entertainment is interrupted for some reason, and then a bunch of bored people go torture real animals the same way they saw it on TV.
Extremely unlikely, unless movie theaters, DVDs and the Internet were obliterated. And if that happened, the (theoretical) resulting uptick in violence would be the least of most people's worries.
DVD players and computers both depend on centralized power generation, and movie theaters don't show crush videos. It's not necessary that the supply be permanently eliminated, just unexpectedly cut back for some reason. Even if the supply is constant, desensitization means there will be ongoing problems as a result.
A centralized power generation failure would probably be even more of a distraction from reenacting violent entertainment than the loss of DVD players and computers!
My mistake - I had thought you'd broadened what you were talking about to 'violent entertainment' and 'simulated violence' in general as that's what your parent comment refers to.
Fair enough - let's suppose that theaters/DVDs/computers are just temporarily inaccessible in some localized region. I suspect that most potential violent entertainment (or crush video, if we're staying specific) imitators in that region would be too concerned with regaining access to theaters/DVDs/computers to do violence themselves.
A constant supply is inconsistent with an 'unexpectedly cut back' supply; I wouldn't expect a constant supply to boost violence if it's decreasing supply that's supposed to boost violence.
In the short term, demand for violence is effectively fixed, so decreases in the supply of simulated violence lead to increases in actual violence as a substitution effect.
In the long term, exposure to violence leads to desensitization, so demand for simulated violence expands to meet the supply.
Given two otherwise-identical societies, in which one strictly limits the supply of violent imagery and the other does not, I predict that the latter will (eventually, due to desensitization) have a higher demand for violence, leading to more actual, physical violence during blackouts.
I've heard it argued that the one time when large-scale censorship would be morally justified is if a "Langford basilisk," that is, an image which kills the viewer, were found to exist. What if there were such an image, but it only killed a tiny percentage of the people who saw it, or required a long cumulative exposure to be effective? What if, rather than killing directly, it compelled the viewer to hurt others, or made those already considering such a course of action more likely to follow through on it?
This isn't a fully-general argument for censorship of any given subject that provokes disgust; it's quite specific to violent pornography.
This is undoubtedly possible, though I'd expect far less of a substitution effect than you because of the distraction effects I suggested above. Ultimately I suppose this is an empirical issue.
I suspect that once the level of simulated violence in a real society is above some saturation point, further increases in its supply would not be met by increased demand. Ideally there'd be some way to empirically test this too.
I smell a Freakonomics chapter!
Seriously, if there are any economists or sociologists reading this comment, I think something like this could make a cute topic for a paper. Some quick googling makes me think that the effect of blackouts in general on crime hasn't been researched rigorously - I'm mostly seeing offhand claims like 'looting during blackouts blah blah blah' or studies of individual blackouts like New York '77. I see even less about using blackouts to assess the effect of violent media specifically, but I'd be very interested in the results of such a study.
At any rate, your own prediction is an interesting one, if only in terms of thinking about how one could test it, or approximate testing it.
As for which variations on the Langford basilisk I'd be OK with banning: I'd work it out by putting on my utilitarian hat on and plugging in numbers.
More than that; it's specific to media that (1) desensitizes some viewers and (2) have actual violence as a substitute good, which arguably includes violent non-porn as well as violent porn.
If the supply of virtual violence is increasing faster than demand so that real violence is going down would you still support banning virtual violence for fear of this potential uptick? Presumably you would want to try and determine the expected value of virtual violence given the relative effects and probabilities?
If it helps your estimates, evidence suggests that increasing exposure to virtual violence and pornography correlates with reduced rates of real world violence and sexual violence.
In this case, my goal is to minimize the expected future amount of real violence, so yes I'd like to see the math. Including the long-term black-swan risks, that interruptions to non-critical infrastructure could create an unanticipated surge of sadism.
Other evidence, not of an increase in violence, but of hard-to-measure slow-developing side effects..
This just sounds like one more potential reason near the bottom of an already long list of reasons to mitigate against such interruptions. This argument looks analogous to the claim that making bullets out of lead is bad because someone who is shot multiple times will end up with an unhealthy dose of lead in their bloodstream.
Very interesting link-- I'm not sure that avoiding superstimuli is part of rationality, but it might be part of the art of living well.
I think you mean "I predict the latter will", since desensitization occurs more in the society with more violent imagery.
Thank you. Fixed.
I didn't notice this on the first read-through, but cupholder's comment brought this to my attention - the actual content seems to be an irrelevant factor in your general principle, especially the 'pornography' part. Surely we could say the same thing about non-pornographic violent media. Furthermore, if reading the Oxford English Dictionary or looking at Starry Night increases violent tendencies in the same way, then your argument works just as well.
Indeed it would. I am concerned about this because of the risks, not because of a moral objection to pornography (some kinds are rather pleasant).
For that matter, I think the moral revulsion evolved as a means to mitigate the risks associated with superstimuli, fascination with violence, etc.
Well, perhaps, though I would expect the effect to be much smaller today - see, for example, parts of this post.