Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

As with previous generations of politicians, Donald Trump is critical of pop culture, specifically violent video games, which he says are partly to blame for recent mass shootings (e.g., in Dayton).

(typical historical example: Tipper Gore was upset about pop song lyrics while then-husband Al Gore was fighting climate change with “an environmentalist named to a prominent cabinet position by Gore when he was vice president, a sexy Hollywood actress, a gorgeous massage therapist and a Tennessee Titans cheerleader.”)

Maybe the Second Amendment can be reinterpreted into irrelevance, but we still have the First Amendment that allows video game companies to publish shooting games.

If the Federales want to promote non-violent games, should there be a fund to compensate developers of games about pandas and other anodyne subjects? If the games are free, developers/publishers can compete for funds by demonstrating how many hours per day people are playing.

Presumably the typical mass shooting perpetrator is suffering from social isolation, so the funding would be increased for games that require participants to cooperate.

(I personally would rather see the U.S. rearchitected into Latin American-style towns with public squares rather than our current inherently isolating suburban sprawl; see my non-profit ideas page for what I wish our Africa-focused billionaires would spend their money on:

Latin Americans often come up near the very top of the world’s happiest people, despite a material prosperity that is very pale compared to that we enjoy in the United States. Nearly every small town in Latin America is built around a central plaza where the citizens gather at various hours to meet friends, play chess, eat meals in restaurants, etc. Small streets radiate from the plaza and hold all of the shops that are essential to daily life, including supermarkets and hardware stores. Housing is built up to a three story height, dense enough to support businesses, but not so dense that people are isolated in concrete towers with elevators. Smaller workshops are mixed in with housing, introducing young people to the texture of business.

The U.S. offers some enjoyable walkable neighborhoods, mostly developed before the rise of the automobile. Examples include many neighborhoods within New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston. These neighborhoods, however, are small and can hold only a tiny minority of Americans. Consequently, houses within walkable neighborhoods typically cost over $1 million. As the U.S. population heads toward 500 million, these livable neighborhoods will become even more out of reach of the average citizen.

It might also help if we didn’t offer the world’s most lucrative incentives for becoming a “single parent,” thereby leading to the world’s highest rate of children reared without two parents.)

Related:

• “Your Brain on Video Games,” by neuroscientist Daphne Bavelier (apologies in advance for linking to a TED talk, but this one was forwarded to me by a neuroscience professor)
• “Video game play may provide learning, health, social benefits, review finds” (American Psychological Association, 2014)
• https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/06/09/keep-obscure-languages-such-as-irish-alive-via-free-videogames/