Australia: Atkinson may change his stance should gamers start behaving

yeah, I mistyped.

O’Conner do you even analyze the post before replying? a couple of comments before I said “how can it even be an issue with the drug if the addiction is psychic,”.

so once again, what I said was : people can be psychically (I prefer to call it psyche instead of psychology) addicted to weed.

““It was once a single mans opinion that the world was round.”

Until it was *proven* that it was round.

It was opinion that cigarettes were good for you until it was *proven* that they weren’t.

See the correlation here?”

Yes, your point is that people have been wrong in the past and that people could be wrong in the present?

““And the actual debate was on why I (and neolucifer) don’t like people who smoke weed.”

That just makes you a bigot. Judge them based on who they are and how they treat people, not on what drug they take. If the people you meet that do that drug are like that, that is the *people*, not the drugs. Christ.”

Then I’m a bigot. I have seen many a stoner in my life and I’ve hated them all. To continue giving them the benefit of the doubt would be foolish on my part.

“Why you feel the need to enforce your beliefs as hard rhetoric is how you are pulling a shatner.”

I’m not “enforcing my beliefs”. I’m presenting hard fact. There is *nothing* addictive about cannabis, just as there is *nothing* addictive about video games. Any reliance on them is a *decision* made by a person, and *not* an side-effect of the substance.

This is fact. Fact. F.A.C.T.”

Do you not believe these facts? Can facts not be beliefs? Is it so alien to you that a person can be confronted with facts and still not accept them? It would be like asking a police officer to not trust their gut when the facts say one thing and their experience says something else.

Plus it’s totally not a fact.

“Lets never look into the psychological or physiological effects of cannabis again because someone at somepoint correlated a graph.”

Dear lord. Now you’re just clutching at straws.”

Clutching at straws or simply pointing out how the scientific method works? We can always be wrong. Like Lao-Tzu said: “To know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.” You say everything is fact and do not for a second entertain that you could be wrong. He knows a thing to too aswell… from personal experience!

“Here’s another fact: Nobody has ever overdose on cannabis.” No one has done, but it IS possible.

Thing is, Neo doesn’t like that he is more or less forced to use a substance that he has no desire to use. Even then, he doesn’t say the item is bad, just that said item had affected his habitat, and is still open-minded enough to consider a positive to legalization. You are being just as staunch in your stance as Michael is, yet he probably sees both positives and negatives. And again, you are only basing it on second-hand knowledge.

“Yes, your point is that people have been wrong in the past and that people could be wrong in the present?”

Are you actually so full of yourself that you believe your limited personal experience is more informed that the collective research, study and science of thousands of individuals over many decades, information that has been correlated, checked, and cross checked over and over?

And people say *I’m* egotistical…

We are not living in the middle age any more. There are no “borders” between countries in the world any more, and information is a infinite resource.

“Is it so alien to you that a person can be confronted with facts and still not accept them? It would be like asking a police officer to not trust their gut when the facts say one thing and their experience says something else.”

So all those millions of people who have taken the drug and suffered absolutely no problems because of it, along with the CHEMICAL STRUCTURE OF CANNABIS ITSELF… are beliefs?

No.

God is a belief. They are not comparable.

“You say everything is fact and do not for a second entertain that you could be wrong.”

No, I do not saying everything is fact.I say that facts are fact.

That Dragon Age: Origins is a great game is an opinion. To say that cannabis has no addictive qualities whatsoever is a fact.

“No one has done, but it IS possible.”

Considering you can overdose on water, and considering you can kill yourself on water much faster than you could on cannabis, makes that a completely moot point. It is *virtually impossible* for a person to consume enough cannabis to cause an overdose.

You can overdose on *anything*.

“Thing is, Neo doesn’t like that he is more or less forced to use a substance that he has no desire to use.”

I would be quite curious as to how exactly he is being “forced”. Forced is a very specific cause of word, as it implies a complete lack of choice in the matter.

Actually, I have made a point of not discussing if I have ever used drugs or not. Because broadcasting things like that on the internet is not something I wish to do.

My wife is reading this and cursing you to high heaven. You have little to no clue what you’re talking about, and I kind of wish I had never revived the topic. Today is a sad day, indeed. Edit: Michael: He said that they smoke right outside his house, and that he has gotten contact highs. He said (not word-for-word) that he asked said people to stop, but speaking ill of MJ in his neighborhood is almost seen as prudish. Not exactly forced, but as close as you could get in that situation, I would imagine.

“Yes, your point is that people have been wrong in the past and that people could be wrong in the present?”

Are you actually so full of yourself that you believe your limited personal experience is more informed that the collective research, study and science of thousands of individuals over many decades, information that has been correlated, checked, and cross checked over and over?”

To be blunt and not trying to wind you up. The problem I have is that I cannot rationalise the facts you have presented to me because of my life long experiences. It’s not a refusal to admit wrong, it is that what you say is true is not something I can see in the real world. It doesn’t match. To accept your facts would cause a state of cognitive dissidence.

Secondly, I’m not the only person in the world that holds this view.

“And people say *I’m* egotistical…”

You’re ego has nothing on mine.

“We are not living in the middle age any more. There are no “borders” between countries in the world any more, and information is a infinite resource.”

I don’t get this bit, sorry.

So all those millions of people who have taken the drug and suffered absolutely no problems because of it, along with the CHEMICAL STRUCTURE OF CANNABIS ITSELF… are beliefs?

No.

God is a belief. They are not comparable.”

The belief I am asserting is that you feel we have reached the pinnacle of chemical and biological understanding. This is again something I simply cannot believe. I will never accept in my life time that what we say is true today is what is true.

“No, I do not saying everything is fact.I say that facts are fact.”

This is a none statement which again does not mesh with my personal belief that we can know truth about this sort of thing. We probably know about 0.1% at most of what there is to know. To me a fact is something which can never be refuted. Tiger Woods humping a long line of blondes. That’s a fact. Those events took place. He is a rascal yes. A group of people looking at microbiology and rationalising what they saw with our current level of understanding is not a fact. You can do a thousand years into research and still be wrong despite the evidence showing otherwise. They said effect always follows cause but at a sub atomic level this is said to be incorrect. Maybe the problem is that they cannot understand fully what they are seeing or maybe they are not seeing everything there is to see. That’s my point. That is what I base everything I know and will know on and it’s not fair for you to say I am wrong in believing that.

That was then, none flippant hunam. Rational, no?

“My wife is reading this and cursing you to high heaven. You have little to no clue what you’re talking about, and I kind of wish I had never revived the topic. Today is a sad day, indeed.”

That doesn’t sound fun. I didn’t mean to ruin your day, I’m just a guy on the internet who doesn’t agree with you. To be fair though, drugs is always a contentious issue and there will always be conflict on the matter.

Thats insane. I don’t understand at all, especially the Tiger Woods part. How do you know ‘that’ is fact? Because it was told to you by a reporter and because hes a rascal (What do you mean by that?)? And now, you don’t believe in science? You blew my mind.

“I don’t get this bit, sorry.”

I was saying that back in the middle ages, people could say the world was flat and there was nothing to prove them wrong. They could check what other people in the world know at the touch of a button. Nowadays, the world is a much smaller place and information is far easier to find. Facts are far easier to find.

“To be fair though, drugs is always a contentious issue and there will always be conflict on the matter.”

I do believe that drugs *are* dangerous. There are many lethal substances out there, and I would *never* encourage the use of them. But the reality is that cannabis is not one of them.

You are basically trying to tell us that your personal experience is more right than concrete, decades long research. That’s a bit of a joke.

Galactic_Barret: I’d love to meet you and your wife. You actually seem to have some common sense on your shoulders.

He admitted to having extramarital sex is what I meant by rascal. Maybe it wasn’t the best explanation. I was trying to point out that to me a fact is something that has happened. Maybe a better one is to say that Obama is president. That is a fact, there is a job of president of america and he certifiably has that job.

Regarding science, I mean it’s educated guessing. That’s why theory has to be put into practice and why it doesn’t always turn out like they think it will. It’s like pharmaceuticals. They must test a thousand different variants of the same thing before they get the right version to combat what ever virus it was it was developed to fight and it has side effects. This demonstrates a lack of chemical and biological understanding on our part. If you drop a penny it always hits the ground, we have a pretty good idea of why that happens, but we learn things about gravity all the time when we look into space.

O’Conner, why did you miss out the entire point I made and focused on a bit part?

You are basically trying to tell us that your personal experience is more right than concrete, decades long research. That’s a bit of a joke.

That’s not what I said and infact entirely ignores that giant paragraph I wrote about the limits of human understanding when it comes to science. I am saying that you can only trust what you have seen to occur in the real world as a basis of what you know as science is re-written everyday.

Hmm, back on topic.
So, Australia is now considering using games to bribe people to be good?
And they think their population is corruptible.

“I receive abusive emails from anonymous senders on a daily basis

have some!

I like how he receives a death threat under his door at 2am and just “presumes” its from a gamer. Wouldn’t all proper gamers still be gaming at that time?

The guy quite obviously doesn’t understand games or gamers and doesn’t want to understand them. This alone is the perfect reason why he should have nothing to do with the decision.