Groucho wrote:
The point is: having fun in playing weapons of mass destruction is an offense to all those people in the world having suffered from the nuclear threat or real application of it the same way as reenacting civilian bombings in WW2 or reenacting the Holocaust is. This is a fact independently of being right or wrong.
(...)
So there is no evidence about the offensive character of holocaust glorification because we only assert that there is? Holocaust reenactments are illegal in various countries and there are obvious reasons for this.
Oh, there is evidence for the offensive character of holocaust glorification all right. But that doesn't make your first statement true, because in your first statement you claim that
having fun in playing weapons of mass destruction is an offense to all those people in the world having suffered from the nuclear threat or real application of it (...) This is a fact independently of being right or wrong.. There is no transitivity of evidence - if you make statements A and B and believe that A and B are equivalent and can offer evidence for B, that still doesn't imply A. You have to either prove that A and B are really equivalent or produce evidence for A.
So, is there any evidence for public outrage at nuclear weapons in computer games like there is at holocaust reemactments? I know of many computer games which depict the use of nuclear weapons, yet I am not aware of a big public controversy. They are not illegal in any country I know. I doubt that a newspaper headline 'Mushroom clouds in computer games!' would cause a scandal or a public outrage. What is discussed to some degree in public are games with close-ups on personal violence like the Grand Theft Auto series or Counterstrike - yet they are
not illegal in any country I have knowledge of, so they are manifestly
not equivalent to holocaust reenactments, despite of what you may think.
Some precision in the analysis is needed. That you consider A equal to B doesn't mean that it is. That you think X a fact does not equal that X is a fact - that requires to produce evidence. That you think Y is universally accepted does not mean that it is universally accepted - again, that requires evidence. You use 'fact' and 'right' and 'wrong' and 'universally accepted' far too liberally, given the evidence you have actually been able to produce.
Take Mr. Mandela's speech:
We must face the fact that after countless initiatives and resolutions, we still do not have concrete and generally accepted proposals supported by a clear commitment by the nuclear-weapons States to the speedy, final and total elimination of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons capabilities.(...)This is appropriately titled: "Towards a Nuclear Weapon Free World: The Need for a New Agenda".
That's Mr. Mandela arguing for a worled free of
real nuclear weapons. He doesn't talk about banning virtual nuclear weapons from computer games. So, leaving aside your (unproven) assertion that they are somehow the same - what is the relevance? That's not supporting evidence. Several people (including myself) have told you that they are very much against real nuclear weapons but don't see virtual nuclear weapons as the same thing.
Take the Human rights group statement. There is an interesting comment at the end:
Now it's your turn. Should games depict violence that would be illegal in real life? Do human rights laws extend to video games? Let us know in the comments below.
In other words, the editor of the article does
not think it obvious that human rights laws extend to video games. Neither do I.
But yes, I don't doubt that you can find evidence in terms of people speaking out against virtual nuclear weapons. The question is - how many, and how justified are they.
In more general terms - whatever action
A you perform (insert for
A e.g. 'develop a virtual nuke', 'do an abortion', 'be a religious Muslim', 'have a child with your partner without being married', ...) you will find a number of people
n1 who are opposed to this action and would like to ban it, the number
n2 who support it and oppose a ban and the number
n3 who don't care. The question is not
if you can find anyone. You may have some prejudice about
how large n1 and
n2 are, but that's really an empirical question. You can have a poll to get an answer.
The second question is, even if
n1 is large, how justified the opposition is. That's
not an empirical question, and it can
not be solved by a poll. It's a deep and complicated philosophical question. In past times, there was a majority in parts of the US which was of the opinion that slavery is okay - yet I (and probably most of us) would argue that even a majority opinion can't justify slavery. There are clearly a large number of people who thinks abortion is not right and are very much offended by the existence of abortion clinics. Yet in many places it is felt that these people just have to put up with it and do not get the right to interfere with women who want to do abortion.
So even if you can produce evidence for
n1 being large in the case of virtual nuclear weapons and
n2 being small, i.e. a large number of people being offended and hurt by virtual nuclear weapons, and a small number arguing for the freedom to do what they want as long as no harm in the real world is done, it still doesn't mean that the offense they take would be justified - maybe (even probably), just as in the case of street violence in computer games, the society feels that they just have to put up with it.
To deny a group of people freedom is a serious step in a democratical society, and if you look at the pattern, it's not done lightly. The usual solution is that a potentially offended group, even if it is the majority, has to tolerate things for the sake of the freedom of others (even a minority) unless there is evidence for actual harm. Yes - there are counterexamples - but they are relatively few. Holocaust glorifications being illegal in Germany is one - but (as has been mentioned), in the US it is not illegal. You may (if you like) worship the devil - that's protected by freedom of religion, although a
huge number of people are offended and a tiny number of people gaining from devil-worship. You may also make a cartoon of a crazy pope and make fun of christianity - that's perhaps not too wise, hugely offensive to a significant number of catholics - and yet is it protected by freedom of expression.
I doubt that you could argue the case against virtual nuclear weapons to the point that the US or Europe would actually decide to make it illegal.
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