Lizard Brains

[nomadthethird]

One thing worth mentioning probably is that only film footage of people doing things is taken as "real" by the limbic system (thereby producing fear, anger, arousal, etc.), video games are probably different in that respect since they're cartoon-like.

I did a bunch of research in a class on violence in video games and it's pretty clear that violent video games aren't even a secondary cause of juvenile violence/delinquency, anyway...

 

[luka]

yeah? that doesn't tally with my research (which involved um, intuition or something)
can i see the sources? i reckon even music can fool you into responding to its artificial, created enviroment as if it were real. i think thats part of the appeal of aggressive music, that it makes you feel hostile in response.

 

[jambo]

Did anyone notice Stewart Home 'blogging' about similar things on myspace?

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=353159049&blogID=460421273

Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere.
The left hemisphere is the seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and critically analyzed. The right brain, however, treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body's own natural opiates--thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able to kick the television habit. It's no longer an overstatement to note that the youth today that are raised and taught through network television are intellectually dead by their early teens.

Is this actually his writing though? Seems like it's pasted from somewhere else.

 

[nomadthethird]

yeah? that doesn't tally with my research (which involved um, intuition or something)
can i see the sources? i reckon even music can fool you into responding to its artificial, created enviroment as if it were real. i think thats part of the appeal of aggressive music, that it makes you feel hostile in response.

I know, for a while I was really convinced that video games could only hurt the latently ill, but these days I don't really feel so certain. Especially given the complete lack of adult supervision that most kids get to begin with...

The research was all pre-Grand Theft Auto I'm pretty sure...I will find the paper... it ended up being more about eXistenZ or however that's written because I didn't feel like doing an actual focus group.

 

[Mr. Tea]

One thing worth mentioning probably is that only film footage of people doing things is taken as "real" by the limbic system (thereby producing fear, anger, arousal, etc.), video games are probably different in that respect since they're cartoon-like.

That seems intuitively obvious if you're talking about Pac-Man or Space Invaders, or even Street Fighter II (or for that matter most Wii games by the look of them), but a lot of developers for PCs and the more 'grown up' consoles are pushing closer and closer towards photorealism, or at least Hollywood-realism.

 

[nomadthethird]

That seems intuitively obvious if you're talking about Pac-Man or Space Invaders, or even Street Fighter II (or for that matter most Wii games by the look of them), but a lot of developers for PCs and the more 'grown up' consoles are pushing closer and closer towards photorealism, or at least Hollywood-realism.

True, my bf always makes fun of really nerdy gamers by saying things like "Lara Croft is hotter than a real girl" in a dorky voice.

Here are a couple of references:

A survey method for assessing perceptions of a game: The consumer playtest in game design, John P. Davis, Keith Steury, and Randy Pagulayan

http://gamestudies.org/0501/davis_steury

On Video Game Death and the Possibility of Extra Life, The Journal of New Media and Culture, Volume 3, Number 2, (Summer/Fall 2005), George Esplin

The Game of Love & Chance: A Discussion with Paul Virilio 8/22/05

http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/001605.php

“Thou, the player of the game, art God”: Nabokovian game-playing in Cronenberg’s eXistenZ Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Spring 2003, by Mark Browning

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4092/is_200304/ai_n9183870/pg_2

Unsettling the military entertainment complex: Video games and a pedagogy of peace Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education;

Volume 4, Issue 4 (November 2004), David Leonard

The rest were focus groups and sociological studies that are easily googled.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Alyx Vance (Half-Life II) is the thinking man's Lara Croft:

She's also INVINCIBLE, which is a bit annoying as she's a non-player character. If only she'd just stand in front of you and absorb bullets for the whole game, lol.

 

[luka]

what people dont' seem to get about icke is that the lizard bit is the best bit. if its not your planet why worry about it? just take what you want and when it's all gone, be on your way.
last lizards airlifted from burning planet vengeful mob rattles rescue ships in hail of missiles
monsterous plumes of black smoke conceal the rescue ships/metal planet recedes in rust and smoke.
exhausted mine. dead earth.

Board Meeting on Mothership.
fat middle-aged comedian with stock 1970s repotiore; racism, sexism, assorted other prejudices, mother-in-laws, pub life, birds, beer, fags,
entertains the board, crumbs from mini-sausage rolls down shirt fronts, lager breath, red faced and racous.
viscious reptile laughter....
burning earth recedes on nav-screen.

 

[Agent]

not sure if this is correct but i think the limbic system responds to fuzzy data, or large perceptual structures (gestalts), and the neo-cortex is digital, syntactical, combinatory, etc. So it would interpret video signals as a real stimulus in the environment (a dead body, sex, violence, assassinations, etc.), but the higher cortices would understand it as mediated, a televised image. I think it's that parallax that leads to the most alarming effects (paranoia, depression, lethargy, anxiety, poor health) because the neo-cortex is forced to numb the CNS with endogenous opioids (sometimes exogenous if a person makes the decision to anesthetize) iirc - i think virtual interfaces will fuse with drug delivery systems at some point, either as therapy (PTSD) or entertainment.

 

[nomadthethird]

not sure if this is correct but i think the limbic system responds to fuzzy data, or large perceptual structures (gestalts), and the neo-cortex is digital, syntactical, combinatory, etc. So it would interpret video signals as a real stimulus in the environment (a dead body, sex, violence, assassinations, etc.), but the higher cortices would understand it as mediated, a televised image. I think it's that parallax that leads to the most alarming effects (paranoia, depression, lethargy, anxiety, poor health) because the neo-cortex is forced to numb the CNS with endogenous opioids (sometimes exogenous if a person makes the decision to anesthetize) iirc -

Makes sense...

i think virtual interfaces will fuse with drug delivery systems at some point, either as therapy (PTSD) or entertainment.

In a more enlightened society we'd already have everyone on a pain management regimen that took care of medicine and bread/circuses all in one go.

That's a fascist regime I'd live in.

 

[jambo]

what people dont' seem to get about icke is that the lizard bit is the best bit. if its not your planet why worry about it? just take what you want and when it's all gone, be on your way.
last lizards airlifted from burning planet vengeful mob rattles rescue ships in hail of missiles
monsterous plumes of black smoke conceal the rescue ships/metal planet recedes in rust and smoke.
exhausted mine. dead earth.

Or we've been programmed to 'prepare' the planet for them and one day they'll return in their droves. That was a short story I wrote years ago.

I like Icke but I wonder if he's at all familiar with the various gnostic traditions? He actually makes more sense these days and talks about lizards very little AFAICT, but the lizards thing always struck me as a reasonable metaphor for the way that politics / big business attracts and cultivates psychopathic personalities.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jan/21/kurtvonnegut

 

[jambo]

what people dont' seem to get about icke is that the lizard bit is the best bit. if its not your planet why worry about it? just take what you want and when it's all gone, be on your way.
last lizards airlifted from burning planet vengeful mob rattles rescue ships in hail of missiles
monsterous plumes of black smoke conceal the rescue ships/metal planet recedes in rust and smoke.
exhausted mine. dead earth.

I like Icke but I wonder if he's at all familiar with the various gnostic traditions? He actually makes more sense these days and talks about lizards very little AFAICT, but the lizards thing always struck me as a reasonable metaphor for the way that power broking 'professions' attract and cultivate psychopathic personalities.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jan/21/kurtvonnegut

 

[luka]

exactly, the metaphor is the best bit.