Science as Learning

Everybody learns from science; it's what you do with it that counts.

Gil Grissom said that at the end of last season's episode "I Like To Watch", a very good episode (then again, last season was one of their best seasons). And it's true. I don't know if criminals learn things that aren't meant to be life lessons from watching forensics shows. I feel that I learn a lot, but more about the inner workings of the lab, how detail-oriented the work is and how a killer's mind may work. But someone who is a serial rapist/killer doesn't think along the same lines as most people. Very often there is a history of some kind of abuse - maybe not physical but psychological or learning abnormal behaviour or thinking from someone like a parent or guardian. The wiring and the history combined may develop a person with weird fetishes - almost everyone has something a little odd or unusual that might "get them off" - or it may become a latent problem...

Most sex offenders start small. A normal thing, like a magazine collection, is one thing. My father had stacks of Penthouse in his closet for years. It was never a secret and it did not make him strange or a pervert. It made him a normal man, men being the mostly visual creatures that they are. But someone else with that collection may reach a point where the collection is not enough. Pleasure is no longer derived from viewing images in a paper format. Often the perp will escalate at a pace... peeping tom, then breaking and entering, then rape and finally murder. To an extent there are profiling techniques for this, but until the perp makes it into the system, through CODIS or some criminal database or sexual offender database, there are a lot of unknowns, more than knowns.

I seriously believe that science does indeed teach. Certainly where another person might read the bible or Koran or Quaballah to restore their faith, I read books about forensics, astronomy, history, etc. My comfort is in the knowing. Where religion is emotional answers to questions that have no proven scientific answers, science gives the world perspective and doesn't shrug and give generalities and vague, meaningless answers. So for me, the comfort is in the evidence, not the guessing.

I do think that there are plenty of things out there that don't teach the right things. Video games, natuarally, are not what I would want my child learning about life. I realise that kids love this stuff and heck, I'm married to what is essentially a large child! Luis is wonderful, but video games were not sophisticated then and didn't have the kind of visual input or impact that they have now. I don't know and have not seen any empirical data to suggest that children learn that auto theft, rape and killing is acceptable behaviour from playing "Grand Theft Auto". But I do feel strongly that a value for life is not taught in these games. Every game that Luis plays has a resurrection feature... you may get killed, but if you have the right mana, magic, reagents, potion or know the right character, well, all is not lost and you may end up - sorry, will end up - alive and kicking and fighting and killing others who will also be resurrected, or rejuventated or whatever. Is this teaching kids anything other than death is a transient state? Hmmm.

So when a kid is immersed in video games, clearly science is not what is stimulating the mind. I grew up with Atari, and Ray and I played Pong. Hardly the damning sort of game one would think. In PacMan, the character you had died and you needed another quarter. In asteroids, you were a little arrow that shot out dots. Now the games are very sophisticated and visually entertaining and often the characters have distinctive views and move fairly well (I would not compare it to television just yet... but it certainly improves constantly and movies like "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" prove that game animation is not far behind). But the lessons being learned are unlikely to be positive ones.

Give me the science any time.