Resolving the gamer’s dilemma

Morgan Luck raises a potentially troubling problem for gamers who enjoy video games that allow the player to commit acts of virtual murder. The problem simply is that the arguments typically advanced to defend virtual murder in video games would appear to also support video games that allowed gamers to commit acts of virtual paedophilia. Luck’s arguments are persuasive, however, there is one line of argument that he does not consider, which may provide the relevant distinction: as virtual paedophilia involves the depiction of sexual acts involving children, it is therefore an instance of child pornography. I argue that virtual paedophilia involves the depiction of sexual acts involving children, which amounts to child pornography. I then draw on arguments to show that child pornography is morally objectionable. Finally, depictions of virtual murder are not instances of pornography, and so are not morally objectionable for this reason. So, there is a relevant moral distinction to draw between virtual murder and virtual paedophilia that is able to justify the former but not the latter.     

Has Ali dissolved the gamer’s dilemma?

In this paper I will evaluate Ali’s dissolution of the gamer’s dilemma. To this end the dilemma will be summarized and Ali’s dissolution formulated. I conclude that Ali has not dissolved the dilemma (at least not fully).     

Has Bartel resolved the gamer’s dilemma?

In this paper we consider whether Christopher Bartel has resolved the gamer’s dilemma. The gamer’s dilemma highlights a discrepancy in our moral judgements about the permissibility of performing certain actions in computer games. Many gamers have the intuition that virtual murder is permissible in computer games, whereas virtual paedophilia is not. Yet finding a relevant moral distinction to ground such intuitions can be difficult. Bartel suggests a relevant moral distinction may turn on the notion that virtual paedophilia harms women in a way that virtual murder does not. We argue that this distinction is only in a position to provide a partial solution to the dilemma.     

The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation

According to the amoralist, computer games cannot be subject to moral evaluation because morality applies to reality only, and games are not real but “just games”. This challenges our everyday moralist intuition that some games are to be met with moral criticism. I discuss and reject the two most common answers to the amoralist challenge and argue that the amoralist is right in claiming that there is nothing intrinsically wrong in simply playing a game. I go on to argue for the so-called “endorsement view” according to which there is nevertheless a sense in which games themselves can be morally problematic, viz. when they do not only represent immoral actions but endorse a morally problematic worldview. Based on the endorsement view, I argue against full blown amoralism by claiming that gamers do have a moral obligation when playing certain games even if their moral obligation is not categorically different from that of readers and moviegoers.     

Objections to Ostritsch’s argument in “The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation”

This paper raises three objections to the argument presented by Ostritsch in The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation, in which the amoralist’s mantra “it’s just a game” is viewed as an illegitimate rebuttal of all moral objections to (typically violent) video games. The first objection focuses on Ostritsch’s ‘strong sense’ of player enjoyment, which I argue is too crude, given the moral work it is meant to be doing. Next, I question the legitimacy of Ostritsch’s claim that certain video games are immoral. I examine what is involved in making this claim and what would be required for a normative position to be established: none of which is addressed by Ostritsch. Finally, I challenge the legitimacy of his claim that players are obliged not to play certain video games in certain ways (i.e., games endorsing immorality as ‘fun games’). I distinguish between immoral and suberogatory actions, arguing that the latter is in fact more applicable to cases Ostritsch has in mind, and that one is not obliged not to engage in these actions.     

The gamer’s dilemma: An analysis of the arguments for the moral distinction between virtual murder and virtual paedophilia

Most people agree that murder is wrong. Yet, within computer games virtual murder scarcely raises an eyebrow. In one respect this is hardly surprising, as no one is actually murdered within a computer game. A virtual murder, some might argue, is no more unethical than taking a pawn in a game of chess. However, if no actual children are abused in acts of virtual paedophilia (life-like simulations of the actual practice), does that mean we should disregard these acts with the same abandon we do virtual murder? In this paper I shall outline several arguments which attempt to permit virtual murder, whilst prohibiting virtual paedophilia.     

A new mechanism found for the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s

CAS scientists recently discovered that activation of a protein called β2-adrenergic receptor may lead to the abnormal formation of the amyloid plaques, which are believed to be the hallmark and primary cause of Alzheimer's disease.     

A confluence of new technology and the right to water: experience and potential from South Africa’s constitution and commons

South Africa’s groundbreaking constitution explicitly confers a right of access to sufficient water (section 27). But the country is officially ‘water-stressed’ and around 10 % of the population still has no access to on-site or off-site piped or tap water. It is evident that a disconnect exists between this right and the reality for many; however the reasons for the continuation of such discrepancies are not always clear. While barriers to sufficient water are myriad, one significant factor contributing to insufficient and unpredictable access to water is the high percentage of broken water pumps. Previous studies have reported that between 20 and 50 % of all hand operated water pumps installed on the African continent are broken, or out of use. Monitoring and maintenance of pumps, which in South Africa is the responsibility of local municipalities is often ineffective, in part due to the distances between municipal centres and rural communities and the consequent costs of site visits, as well as breakdowns within the local bureaucratic system. The emergence of new telemetry tools that can remotely monitor water applications constitutes a novel and cost-efficient alternative to undertaking regular sites visits. Sustainable, appropriate, low-cost telemetry systems are emerging that could be used to monitor the operational performance of water pumps, or a wide range of other field parameters, and to communicate this information swiftly and cheaply to water service providers, using SMS messages. Data on the performance of water pumps could also be made available to the public online. This is an example of how ICT can be used for water resources management and environmental regulation, as well as in the governance of socio-economic rights: helping to optimize water allocation by improving communication and strengthening accountability.     

Mysterious cave stirring hopes for new clues to man’s early evolution

Renzi Cave, the mysterious relic of a population of hominids located in Fanchang County, Anhui Province in eastern China, has gained much spotlight because of its fascinating age, 2 million years. This age suggests that this unknown population might have been the earliest arrival of human beings from Africa, pushing it to the forefront of a big controversy concerning early hominid evolution.     

A new look at Akaike’s Bayesian information criterion for inverse ill-posed problems

Akaike’s Bayesian information criterion (ABIC) has been widely used in inverse ill-posed problems. Little has been done to investigate its statistical aspects. We present an alternative derivation of the marginal distribution of measurements for ABIC under the assumption of normal distributions and show that the principle of ABIC is to statistically estimate the variances of measurements and prior data by maximizing the marginal distribution of measurements. The determination of the regularization parameter with ABIC is essentially equivalent to estimating the relative weighting between measurements and prior data. We prove that ABIC theoretically would produce a biased estimate of the variance of measurements. Since the prior mean is generally unknown but arbitrarily treated as zero in inverse ill-posed problems, ABIC is shown to fail to produce any reasonable estimate for the prior variance. Although ABIC is constructed under the Bayesian framework, it essentially plays more or less the same role as biased regularization from the frequentist’s point of view. ABIC error evaluation cannot be performed under the Bayesian framework but should be more appropriately done with the frequentist’s standpoint in terms of mean squared errors. ABIC is sensitive to prior distributions. In the case of non-informative prior distribution, ABIC leads to the conventional weighted least squares (LS) estimate of parameters and cannot be used to solve inverse ill-posed problems. It is not linked to the regularization parameter but only straightforwardly produces an unbiased estimator for the noise level of measurements, which is only applicable numerically for well-posed problems but not for inverse ill-posed problems. Numerical simulated examples are used to demonstrate the statistical performances of ABIC.     

A Proposal to Strengthen China’s R&D Capacity for Scientific Instruments

In the present-day world, the focus of competitionamong countries has apparently shifted from theterritories or market shares as a conventional prac-tice in the 20th century to the race at the S&T frontiers.It is predictable that the future challenge facing Chinaas a primary strategic restraint will be the high-tech mo-nopoly by developed countries since science and tech-nology are the critical and fundamental factor in theinternational contest of overall national strength in com-ing years. O…