• deletedmemberMD
    588
    Do video games have the potential to becoming an acceptable enough outlet for maladaptive behaviours? If they are of a successful quality of emulating more realism and injecting more stimulation to our senses that even the most sadistic and prolific killer prefers that to the real thing?

    If so;
    Could we also form an ethical life and consented sentence for criminals incapable of not committing crimes in the real world by just getting them to agree to go to a place where they can do whatever they want for the rest of their life, free of real consequences?

    Possibly, though I am not Sure whether there is such a thing as an outlet for behaviour. Repeating a behaviour that you find rewarding will usually reinforce that behaviour, so there's a chance this would make bad tendencies worse.
    - @“Echarmion”

    Excellent point to raise!
    Let’s imagine that people agree with what I have posited. Imagine you could put a sadistic killer into an RPG like environment. They can be offered stories and choices in those stories. Sure they might just go around killing people in the simulation. However if it’s consequence free, they can do this until they inevitably get bored and have purged and talked through their actions, behaviours and world-views with therapists and what not the entire time. While the explore and roam option is based entirely upon the participants free will, we can design stories with forced options and preplanned consequences for those choices through dialogue options and scripted events. Some stories can account for more diversity of choice while others may be more rigid forcing hero or positive roles on patients and emulating failure by denying more of the story if none of the script options are obeyed. People will inevitably get bored of anything and this is especially true of those who fit the criteria of anitosocial personality disorder. They can ignore the stories and forced narratives for awhile and ignore the therapists for awhile.. they will get bored of it though, especially if the therapists have control of how much free will and choice the patients are able to practice and what roles they are allowed to play and repeat. Over time you could turn access to the bad behaviour into a type of reward and bring it down to a level where so long as the person can live amongst the general population with nothing more than prescriptions of habitual gaming.

    Probably not a full proof endeavour as nothing is really. However, if a patient shows they want no part of a minimum behaviour standard for reentering society; how bad is it for them to stay in a video game and how is it worse than solitary confinement?

    Is anyone familiar with the concept of “The Justice Zone” from the British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf?

    It’s a type of prison system where if the inmates commit any act of injustice, the consequences immediately happen to them. Try to set something on fire, you only light yourself on fire. Steal something, and something of yours is taken. Hit someone, you feel the pain. Try to Kill someone, you die.

    Inmates would stay in the justice zone until good behaviour became second nature or they served their sentences and it was assumed it would be second nature by this time, or just had to stay in the zone bored for the rest of their days.

    Can we create the Justice/Karma Zone soon?
    1. Do they have the potential to do this? (3 votes)
        Yes
        33%
        No
        33%
        Maybe
        33%
        I don’t know
          0%
    2. Should we do this or is it still immoral? (3 votes)
        Yes we should do this, it is pragmatically moral
        33%
        It is immoral but we should do it anyway
          0%
        No we shouldn’t do this it is still immoral
        33%
        Unsure
        33%
  • Echarmion
    2.5k
    Do our computer simulated realities have the potential to allow us to free moral thought and diversity within improving simulated consequence free realities, while accepting an objectively human moral standard outside these simulations within our own reality?Mark Dennis

    Could you rephrase that? I find this sentence confusing.
  • deletedmemberMD
    588
    certainly, sorry it can be said much clearer.

    Do video games have the potential to becoming an acceptable enough outlet for maladaptive behaviours? So if they are of a successful quality of emulating more realism and injecting more stimulation to our senses that even the most sadistic and prolific killer prefers that to the real thing?

    Could they also form an ethical life and consented sentence for criminals incapable of not committing crimes in the real world by just getting them to agree to go to a place where they can do whatever they want for the rest of their life, free of real consequences?
  • Echarmion
    2.5k
    Do video games have the potential to becoming an acceptable enough outlet for maladaptive behaviours? So if they are of a successful quality of emulating more realism and injecting more stimulation to our senses that even the most sadistic and prolific killer prefers that to the real thing?Mark Dennis

    Possibly, though I am not Sure whether there is such a thing as an outlet for behaviour. Repeating a behaviour that you find rewarding will usually reinforce that behaviour, so there's a chance this would make bad tendencies worse.

    Could they also form an ethical life and consented sentence for criminals incapable of not committing crimes in the real world by just getting them to agree to go to a place where they can do whatever they want for the rest of their life, free of real consequences?Mark Dennis

    I think the technology will probably get there. I also think people will vehemently object giving criminals a fantasy world as "punishment". Humans have a strong psychological inclination to punish rule breaking.
  • deletedmemberMD
    588
    Done. Was late when I first wrote it. Sorry. :)
  • deletedmemberMD
    588
    Rewrote the OP with your constructive criticism included and addressed it. :) Thoughts?
  • Artemis
    1.9k
    Do they have the potential to do this?Mark Dennis

    I assume you mean create the Karma Zone? I'm confused, is this supposed to be a virtual reality or a real reality?

    Also, my initial thought is that it reminds me a lot of Rawls' Veil of Ignorance.
  • deletedmemberMD
    588
    yeah, in red dwarf it was called the justice zone but I added Karma there because it’s justice theory through karma as the method of justice.

    The question; is it possible to create Red dwarfs Justice zone, In a virtual reality?

    in Red dwarf, it was a real reality. For our purposes, I think a virtual reality is more practical than building a computer that can enforce Karma across any area of space, probably defying laws of physics, let alone many prisons. Haha
  • ZhouBoTong
    837
    Could we also form an ethical life and consented sentence for criminals incapable of not committing crimes in the real world by just getting them to agree to go to a place where they can do whatever they want for the rest of their life, free of real consequences?[/quote]

    While I think you are on to something, society has not advanced far enough for this to become a reality. Surely, the "prison" you described is better than the lives of A LOT (most?) of people. Add in conjugal visits and it would be the ideal life for many.

    I doubt that people struggling to pay rent would vote for a massive increase in resources for criminals (or even for potential criminals).

    So I think it is a very interesting idea, but it may need to be postponed until we are closer to reaching the star trek utopia (elimination of scarcity).
    Mark Dennis
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    Very broadly speaking if we look at history and sexual repression based on ‘right and wrong’ then it could be argued that repressed sexual expression can lead to violent acts of sex. Sex is a particularly unusual biological mechanism though and most human drives are tangled up (fear, pleasure, pain, lust, love, envy, etc.,.)

    I’m not quite sure what to make of the scenario outlined. I think something extreme like a “Justice Zone” would turn out to hinder more than help in the long run, yet the idea of a “No Justice Zone” seems just as abhorrent in the long run. Generally speaking a little of each would suit certain people and it’s more a question of how to prescribe what degree of each zone each person would benefit most from. Personally I’d fear the person who set the standards more - covered in Red Dwarf too.

    It’s basically a matter of freedom of choice within set limits. I don’t have a problem with someone wishing to abstain from human society in principle, but I can’t imagine it being anything but the very last resort short of execution.
  • deletedmemberMD
    588
    Personally I’d fear the person who set the standards more - covered in Red Dwarf tooI like sushi
    @I like sushi

    Indeed, let’s hope we don’t build Simulants too haha Androids that hate humans don’t sound like something I want to be worrying about let alone where to lock them up! Although I think the episode kind of showed you just how powerful the Justice Zone could be. Sure a superhuman strong killing machine is dangerous outside of the zone, but once they got into the zone, the stimulant was his own worst enemy.

    What about a more toned down and less futuristic version of my idea; How does just RPG Game Therapy do? Let’s take a popular game with a lot of personal choice and influence in the game in question. For example; Assassins creed Odyssey. Say we took a violent inmate already in the system and for two hours a day he was going to play this multiple choice with a therapist spectating and discussing the inmates choices as they make them.

    You could examine their choices such as; Do they opt to Kill their characters father Nikolaus or not? In general, do they side with Athens or Sparta in the Polyponessian war?

    Or you could just build a video game with these inmates in mind. While a full dive VR experience does sound awesome, the journeys can still be made using today’s input systems via keyboard/controller/vr headset.

    Although; I do believe a prison in Canada went the route of teaching philosophy to its inmates and that had amazing results! It amazes me that philosophy isn’t part of education curriculums much earlier in life. I don’t remember ever really having the option of studying it until high school. I wonder if the RPG video game strategy would be a good way to open discussions into ethics with children..
  • Monitor
    227
    It amazes me that philosophy isn’t part of education curriculums much earlier in life. I don’t remember ever really having the option of studying it until high school.Mark Dennis

    Indeed. Too great a threat to religious indoctrination. You probably didn't get to study critical thinking either.
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    Although; I do believe a prison in Canada went the route of teaching philosophy to its inmates and that had amazing results! It amazes me that philosophy isn’t part of education curriculums much earlier in life. I don’t remember ever really having the option of studying it until high school. I wonder if the RPG video game strategy would be a good way to open discussions into ethics with children..Mark Dennis

    It would make sense to question children moe about the meaning and use of words. I think you’d get much done for pre-teens as their language is still kind of limited so more complex ideas wouldn’t stick. They have tried many times to teach logic but it never worked for the same reason.

    The best means would probably be by teaching foreign languages and getting the students to explain the meaning of words in their second language with a limited vocabulary.
  • deletedmemberMD
    588
    You're right. I mean, its importance was talked about, most teachers would tell us we have to think critically but what this meant and what it was to think critically, didn't become available until much later.
  • Monitor
    227
    And of course critical thinking is an impediment to marketing to the consumer. And we must consume.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    Do video games have the potential to becoming an acceptable enough outlet for maladaptive behaviours? If they are of a successful quality of emulating more realism and injecting more stimulation to our senses that even the most sadistic and prolific killer prefers that to the real thing?Mark Dennis

    They'd probably need to be more or less indistinguishable from reality for that. But we have a long way to go to get to that point.
  • IvoryBlackBishop
    299
    I think the more "serious" games (e.x. Esports games) are mentally stimulating, akin to chess or other mental games, but playing with anonymous people tends to be a negative social environment.

    I don't have any current interest in multiplayer games unless it's with a dedicated group of people who at least use basic etiquette.
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