4 ms·

Here is one of the actual studies, which is much less annoying to read: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234325/?mod=article_inline https://www.ncb

Here is one of the actual studies, which is much less annoying to read: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234325/?mod=article_inline https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6234325/?mod=ar... I was particularly interested in the participant selection section; they did go to an effort to select male and female participants with similar gaming habits. However, this doesn't mean that the only explanation for the different "craving" response is a fundamental difference between men and women. Just because you end up with a similar population with similar habits, doesn't mean that the path those individuals traveled to get there is the same. As an example of how the observed differences could still be due to nurture rather than nature, suppose that across all young boys and girls, there is a subset of people that are predisposed to addiction. Also suppose that in many cases, an addiction can begin the first time you're exposed to something. Even if both boys and girls were equally predisposed to become addicted to both video games and social media, they would not be equally likely to be exposed to those two addictive digital activities. It would be more likely that a boy's friends would introduce him to video games, and that a girl's friends would introduce her to social media. Once they are addicted to one or the other, they will spend more time on that activity, and will be unlikely to explore the opposite. Eventually, these hypothetical boys and girls grow up, and our hypothetical scientists select participants for their version of this fMRI experiment. They do a good job selecting male and female participants who play games for similar numbers of hours, but the potential female video game addicts in this universe are much less likely to ever start playing games, before getting addicted to something else. Since these hypothetical people have selected themselves out of this hypothetical study, they discover a difference in fMRI responses to images of video games that's correlated with gender, but still 100% caused by existing gender roles and stereotypes.

solidsnack9000 7y ago
This argument is superficially compelling but I fear that it is ultimately argument from ignorance. It is true that we don’t know everything. You even offer a fairly elaborate example of something that we don’t know whether it happened or not. It could be true. The problem here is that you offer no evidence to support whether it is true or not. Now it’s story time and instead of evaluating the studies and working with a minimal conclusion supported by the evidence, the task becomes telling the better story.
- mjevans 7y ago
  It's worth considering that in complex systems sometimes it is impossible (or extraordinarily unlikely/expensive) to be able to disentangle specific elements and that thus they might always be present, even in a rigorously considered study. Arguably the only ethical way of removing external social conditioning might be to find a regional social setting which lacks that specific element in order to evaluate the statistical impact by comparing results that should be similar between the two environments.
  - numismatex 7y ago
    Especially in communities. For ease, people lump things such as social media and gaming in with "addiction". I'm sure 100 years from now in many cases the "social media addicts" will have a subset that leans toward success beyond their local community, and the gamers have a longer life expectancy than many in their community. I'd rather my kid game than go outside even in our middle-class neighborhood. I'd rather have my kid keep in touch with friends via social media than having them all in my kitchen when I'm not home. There're tradeoffs, pros and cons to social media and gaming, but framing it in an addiction narrative isn't helping matters. This is what led many Chinese people to put their kids in "camps" that used Electro Convulsive Therapy to "fix their internet addiction". This is born of ignorance, and the addiction narrative. I think elements can be intuited, and more studies done, but when you're bashing the cheapest forms of entertainment and social contact, and safest to boot, as addictions... that's just ignorant.
    - ytwySXpMbS 7y ago
      You're arguing gamers would have a longer life expectancy than others, and that you'd rather have your child game than go outside. Do you disagree with the widely accepted fact that exercise is beneficial to health, and thus a longer life?
      - donkeyd 7y ago
        And not just physical health, but also mental health, which is a massive factor in many aspects of life.
abathur 7y ago
It isn't massively distinct, but another way the observed differences could still be due to nurture rather than nature is that the connectome of the subjects could literally be shaped by how we raise and socialized the genders. This is more like an expanded version of the parent argument--these experiences play a role in structuring the eventual-participants brains, and the study is (unknowingly) measuring past-exprience rather than biological destiny.

solidsnack9000 7y ago

This argument is superficially compelling but I fear that it is ultimately argument from ignorance. It is true that we don’t know everything. You even offer a fairly elaborate example of something that we don’t know whether it happened or not. It could be true. The problem here is that you offer no evidence to support whether it is true or not. Now it’s story time and instead of evaluating the studies and working with a minimal conclusion supported by the evidence, the task becomes telling the better story.

mjevans 7y ago
It's worth considering that in complex systems sometimes it is impossible (or extraordinarily unlikely/expensive) to be able to disentangle specific elements and that thus they might always be present, even in a rigorously considered study. Arguably the only ethical way of removing external social conditioning might be to find a regional social setting which lacks that specific element in order to evaluate the statistical impact by comparing results that should be similar between the two environments.
- numismatex 7y ago
  Especially in communities. For ease, people lump things such as social media and gaming in with "addiction". I'm sure 100 years from now in many cases the "social media addicts" will have a subset that leans toward success beyond their local community, and the gamers have a longer life expectancy than many in their community. I'd rather my kid game than go outside even in our middle-class neighborhood. I'd rather have my kid keep in touch with friends via social media than having them all in my kitchen when I'm not home. There're tradeoffs, pros and cons to social media and gaming, but framing it in an addiction narrative isn't helping matters. This is what led many Chinese people to put their kids in "camps" that used Electro Convulsive Therapy to "fix their internet addiction". This is born of ignorance, and the addiction narrative. I think elements can be intuited, and more studies done, but when you're bashing the cheapest forms of entertainment and social contact, and safest to boot, as addictions... that's just ignorant.
  - ytwySXpMbS 7y ago
    You're arguing gamers would have a longer life expectancy than others, and that you'd rather have your child game than go outside. Do you disagree with the widely accepted fact that exercise is beneficial to health, and thus a longer life?
    - donkeyd 7y ago
      And not just physical health, but also mental health, which is a massive factor in many aspects of life.

abathur 7y ago

It isn't massively distinct, but another way the observed differences could still be due to nurture rather than nature is that the connectome of the subjects could literally be shaped by how we raise and socialized the genders. This is more like an expanded version of the parent argument--these experiences play a role in structuring the eventual-participants brains, and the study is (unknowingly) measuring past-exprience rather than biological destiny.