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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1994 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 28, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Is there any reason to not forgo video games completely? Are they in a category with gummy candy, smoking, and lottery tickets - no benefit of any kind beyond a dopamine release - or more like classic movies, dime novels, and social media - escapism with some degree of social and intellectual benefit?

I’ve enjoyed my two-week trial run of Lex Fridman’s maximally productive daily schedule but do find myself missing my offline career-based sports games. How sturdy is the argument that “not everything has to be productive”? Are books and television and film so far above video games in the usefulness ranking (after all, they can confer knowledge and social benefits, if not maximally condensed) that it’s a no-brainer to stop gaming completely? Or should sedentary leisure as a whole be relegated to “break in case of emergency” status, never part of a daily routine but “around” when more productive options are not available, or only to be used in the company of others?

I’ve wrestled with this for every day of these two weeks and still see benefits of escapism, while simultaneously seeing the futility of time spent achieving nothing in the real world - even if only for an hour or two.

EDIT: I coincidentally just discovered the "End Poem" of Minecraft; a poignant take on this discussion:

[teal] and the universe said I love you because you are love.

[green] And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love.

[teal] You are the player.

[green] Wake up.

I’m pretty sure videos games are objectively inferior to their real life equivalences always. So, permitting you can do the real life alternative activity, you shouldn’t play video games. The competitive fun is best found in team sports. The adventure is best found in nature and one’s own life. The memories are best made with friends. The novelty is best spent on wisdom.

Productivity doesn’t factor into this at all. If your object of life is Superior Enjoyment, then it’s simply the case that real life offers superior enjoyment. Because when you’re done playing team sports, you have had fun plus some. You had a fun experience you don’t regret, and you’ve also had necessary socializing, sun light, nature exposure, and exercise. An hour spent on team sports is always going to be better than an hour (or even three hours) of gaming, in your unhealthy room, staring at pixels, not moving your body, alone, unchallenged, etc. The memorable adventures in reality are always better than in video games or books. The exploration of wisdom is always of greater benefit than anything in Oblivion.

Note that Abrahamic religions are against gambling and other vices, but don’t have a word to say on productivity. Christ doesn’t care whether you work hard at your job, and in one parable even seems to commend a man who wastes his boss’s money to make friends. The argument against video games is all about the fact that its enjoyments are base, lowering, and fleeting. They are inherently inferior than real life alternatives, and the base pleasure lowers your sum total enjoyment. In a year’s time you will be measuring your real experiences, not your dumb video game exp.

I’m pretty sure videos games are objectively inferior to their real life equivalences always.

Looks at my thousands of hours in Arma 3, Squad and other milsim games.

You sure about that? Because I think one of the overwhelming advantages of playing video games where people shoot each other is that nobody gets shot for real.

I'm sure actual trucking is less enjoyable than Eurotruck Sim, or farming than Farmdew Valley, not that you can get me to play either.

I'm skeptical that "it's simply the case that real life offers superior enjoyment", full stop. What real-life team sport offers the complexity, action and fast paced strategy of a RTS like Supreme Commander? What real-life pursuit offers a visually stunning, persistent imaginary world for thousands of players to live in and form communities like FFXIV? What real-life performance or play matches the worldbuilding and narrative depth of something like Disco Elysium?

For some people, sure. Winning that game of ultimate frisbee, climbing that mountain, seeing that play, might be more fulfilling than vidya. For others, I doubt it.

I’d argue that the human mind does not like “complexity, action and fast paced strategy”, instead it likes learning, risk-taking and figuring things out. Learning to play music is going to be more satisfying in the long run than a video game, because while you’re learning and figuring things out you’re also expressing the best emotions communicable (plus cognitive enhancement, plus a social dimension if you want). And if you want fast-paced action, there are sports for that, which again promote other benefits.

Similarly, we aren’t drawn to “immersive world building”, we are drawn to beauty, and I don’t think a lifetime of final fantasy could compete with an hour under a waterfall or in an Italian city. It lacks so much of the sensory. Walking in a pixelated world does not compare with walking through Reykjavik half-drunk with friends or family.

Now there’s also a second-order analysis. You should consider what the activities you do afford in the future by way of implicit practice. After a few months of final fantasy, you’re going to find it difficult to shlep to the bars to meet chicks and friends, or to decide to enroll in a course that requires boredom and travel. But after a few months of arduous but rewarding trekking in the wilderness, you’re going to find you have the energy to pursue all manners of outside enjoyment. If you can have fun while increasing your physical health and mind (and walking is excellent for the mind) this will pay off invisibly in the future.

Then there’s a third-order analysis: what memories will we remember? We remember the most sensory memories. In fact, we often forget the arduous parts of life and selectively remember the greatest parts (eg nostalgia). So if we want to collect enjoyable experiences, then we should be looking at collecting the most memorable and optimal experiences, which would involve sensory novelty and other people interspersed with long periods of waiting / wakeful rest to devote to memory. I actually wrote a post on here a bit ago about how the optimal life certainly consists of optimal memories; if all we wanted was pure pleasure then we would simply inject heroin and then die, because time/memory wouldn’t matter, but we don’t do this.

A fourth order analysis would be, like, what will produce less guilt? Society judges people by experiences and creations. You can play zero games and never have a wince of guilt, because society will likely not judge video games as a facet of a fulfilling life.

Leisure is important to life. Don't worry too much about all the blather from busybodies who say that every second of your life needs to be spent toward some productive aim. Sure that's a way to live, but far from the best way to live in my opinion.

I could drum up some sort of fancy quote for you, but it all comes down to what gives you meaning in life. If you have a deeply felt mission you burn to complete, which fulfills you, then sure dedicate yourself body mind and soul to that. Spend all of your waking hours bent towards making that goal a reality.

If not, don't work too hard. Working for the sake of being busy is a cancer on our society. Future generations will look back and curse us for our stupidity and senseless cruelty to one another.

Are they in a category with gummy candy, smoking, and lottery tickets

I'm inclined to say that games are more like movies and social media, but what I really want to object to is the idea that some candy, smoking, and gambling is to be frowned upon. Yes, moderation is required for the sake of health and wealth, but candy, smoking, and gambling are all quite enjoyable on their own merits and enjoying them in moderation has a salutary effect on my life. There is absolutely nothing I'm trying to accomplish in life that would be improved if I skipped the Mike and Ikes with a movie, cigar in the sun on the weekend, and annual bet on the Bills to win the Super Bowl.

Thinking about the grindset mentality of being "maximally productive", I mostly have a bit of contempt and pity for people suffering from the delusion that more time invested in their marketing career or middle management or writing code will somehow lead to a more fulfilling life. If someone eschews gaming because they want to invest that time in their family, more power to them, but if it's just to keep hustling, I have to ask what the actual goal is.

I don’t see why in the slightest that I should center my life on “productivity”. The greatest benefit of being someone in a rich Western country with an easy-ish email job is that one’s material needs are extremely easily met, meaning that there is no biological imperative (enough food, water, shelter, sex) to be especially productive.

I don’t think a life of pure leisure is necessarily satisfying, but so long as basic imperatives (pursuing a family, children, a job that pays enough to not worry all the time about providing for them) are met, I don’t see what the issue with games is. I have no aspirations of being a “10x person” or whatever the hustle culture term is. Those people will be forgotten almost as soon as I will.

While people with stable families and decent jobs are almost universally happier than NEETs, I see no evidence that hypercompetent life-optimizers are much happier than me. Lex Fridman himself does not seem like a hugely happy fellow relative to the average. Maybe he is.

“Achieving nothing in the real world” isn’t a grave point of pain for me, especially not if it’s only two hours. I’d caveat that I do think the pursuit of legacy through children is an important part of fulfilling our biological programming and most people’s psyche benefits from pursuing a family. But beyond that, and beyond the base needs, leisure is fun.

By the way, tons of rich people I know play the lottery or buy scratchers. I know I do, even though the (shockingly low) jackpot on my usual card of choice wouldn’t exactly ‘change my life’. I like the idea of imagining how I’d feel if I won, no differently to how I enjoy exercising my imagination while reading. And I love gummy candy, I enjoy the texture, the color, the taste, the sugar (obviously). In moderation I see no harm in it, although I make sure I avoid certain artificial food dye/colors.

Your argument for not doing these things seems flawed, or perhaps I just don’t understand it. From a “productivity maximizer” perspective they’re bad, but from a “candy maximizer” perspective consuming candy all day isn’t bad. From a “happiness maximizer” perspective, sedentary leisure in moderation might well have entirely decent utility.

I don’t see why in the slightest that I should center my life on “productivity”. The greatest benefit of being someone in a rich Western country with an easy-ish email job is that one’s material needs are extremely easily met,

Productivity construed in material terms is indeed shallow. I don't think the same is true for recognising that becoming a better person in a virtue ethics sense is going to take a lot of time that you really shouldn't be wasting.

Lex Fridman himself does not seem like a hugely happy fellow relative to the average. Maybe he is.

He's 39 and unmarried. Whatever he's succeeding at, I'll take my life over his.

I confess I find him extremely boring. He’s like the inverse Joe Rogan. Rogan is the star character on his show, his fans tune in for the guests to some extent, sure, but he’s the main character, his idiosyncrasies and mannerisms are amusing. I don’t personally listen to him, but I understand why people do. Fridman is an empty shell, he’d never have been made an interviewer by a TV network or radio station. I suppose because he’s such a nonentity, he’s able to draw quite a lot out of some of his guests.

Yeah, I tried Lex's podcast out because he has some great guests and he seems like a nice enough guy, but he really isn't a good interviewer. Rogan's ridiculousness and curiosity makes any episode with a half decent guest a pretty good background listen, but Lex pretty much needs to be carried by guests.

I'd put them in the same category as sex: not to the detriment of your health or other activities, not instead of self-fulfillment, ideally social and not masturbatory, etc.

I was going to push the artistic analogy but found the sexual one more compelling: artistic endeavors have too much of a positive connotation, gambling and smoking too much of a negative connotation, whereas sex straddles the boundary between puritanism and appropriate hedonism.

Video games can make you gasp and shake your head in wonder, can bring friends together to laugh and share, they can be a portal into a universe of creation, where the only limits are of the mind and the machine.

They can also be addictive and predatory, think of the people found dead at their computers, or with 6 figure debts from Candy Crush addictions. Is that any different than heroin or slot machines, or prostitution and camgirls?

My biggest issue with videogames is that they don't contribute to real world development. It's just dopamine. Dopamine in a way that doesn't (directly) destroy the body or mind, but can be engaged in for longer than sex.

After a while you need to avoid the dopamine trap and engage in things which give real meaning.

Does protected sex/whoring contribute to real world development? What about pickup artists who go to bars every night to try to find women? Does that provide real meaning?

What I'm trying to get at here is that real meaning is ill-defined and most philosophers do include some form of pleasure and hedonism as an intrinsic value.

The worst fallacy, however, would be to try to argue meaningless work is more virtuous or valuable than meaningless pleasure. To argue that a substitutable office drone that shuffles emails around and does his 40 hours a week somehow is doing something intrinsically important than someone who plays MMORPGs all day. You can assign more value/respect to either of these activities, but I don't see how it's intuitively or aesthetically obvious that either is fundamentally superior.

What I'm trying to get at here is that real meaning is ill-defined and most philosophers do include some form of pleasure and hedonism as an intrinsic value.

Your examples at least don't show that it's ill defined. I think most people would say those pursuits are meaningless or even harmful without hesitation.

Perhaps you can't objectively determine the meaningful ahead of time but it becomes quite clear when things are compared.

Yes, the concept of 'meaning' is nebulous. There is nothing wrong with gaming or whoring except when it gets in the way of bringing meaning. Meaning is a bit like pornography in the 'I know it when I see it' sense. You're also correct that work for work's sake is a false path.

They engage your mind, which is in the real world. Why this strong distinction between the virtual world and the 'real' world?

If your body and social skills atrophy while you are playing games it is an issue. If you are just gaming as a hobby with moderation, there is no problem.

I play a lot of video games. Its probably most of my free time. Though I try not to let video game time intrude into my time on other activities like family, social, work, and sleep. So it is actually my free time, and not an expanding black hole of time.

I can sort of claim that balance right now, but I haven't always been able to claim it. I'd say when video games start being more than the sum of my free time I have been uncomfortable with them as a negative presence in my life.

There is a privileging of the "real world" in your thinking and most people's thinking. But I think this privileging is incorrect, or at least badly applied. Much of the "real world" is actually just taking place in people's heads. Consider an election. Imagine you spend dozens of hours reading about the various candidates and researching political philosophy. You spend time discussing politics with people on the street. On election day you go and vote. The only thing you've really done "in the real world" is take a few trips outside, and make some motions on a piece of paper, everything else happened in your head and other people's heads.

For the people saying "the imaginary stuff in our head doesn't matter" my claim is that none of them ever actually go down the rabbit hole of all that implies. Most of what just about everyone does is just a thought inside their head and other people's heads.

And you can take that realization and be a nihilist and say nothing matters. Or you can go the opposite direction and say meaning is what we make of it. If your imagined participation in "politics" makes you happy, then do that. If your imagined participation in a video game world makes you happy, then do that.

Video games, if anything, are one of the more positive hobbies to engage in. Most of them are designed to leave you entertained and coming back for more (some are just designed to milk people of money that have gambling addictions). Other hobbies like engaging in politics, watching the news, or watching sports do not have any specific design for positive sum human enjoyment. They are much closer to zero sum games, where one person's happiness is offset by another person's disappointment.

Which type of games do you play?

Lately I've been playing starship troopers extermination.

My favorite games tend to be strategy and survival games. I really enjoy multiplayer PvE experiences.

Bro, I think your comment on here is what got me to buy that. Been having a blast with my friends. We should squad up, citizen.

I'm cjet799 on steam, or friend code 49603174

Most of what just about everyone does is just a thought inside their head and other people's heads.

But this phrase is not true of video games, specifically the thoughts in "other people's heads". Politics and sports and news are shared human experiences, and while many people have the shared experience of playing a game, they do not have the same experience of the game itself - that is the whole appeal of player-led video games. Even an unhealthy fixation on any of your three examples will still produce opinions and actions based on shared human experiences. They incentivize interaction with other human beings, whether positive (people who agree with you) or negative (people who can argue with you). Ultimately, the many adventures, lessons, trials, and triumphs of video games are solitary experiences curated for the player in a controlled environment in which even one's greatest accomplishments will always carry the tinge of having occurred on artificially fixed terms.

in which even one's greatest accomplishments will always carry the tinge of having occurred on artificially fixed terms.

I think this is a far more important point than that of 'shared experiences'. In one sense I would define 'being in contact with the world' as being exposed to the possibility of genuine novelty and discovery - a war game has a meta that teenagers can figure out - real war will regularly surprise even the best minds.

We do our best to pierce the real world and bring it into the realm of intelligibility. Learning what others have made intelligible before us is an important part of that, but you have to venture into the difficult and unintelligible to make real conquests.

The virtual world isn't necessarily distinct from the real world on this definition, and solitary pursuits can still produce genuine insight - but in a standard game as in a grammar textbook you're never going to learn more than the author has set out for you to learn.

I played a bunch of Diablo IV with my wife yesterday. This is a shared experience and not an uncommon one. Talking about what Aspects she should use to increase Twisting Blades damage doesn't strike me as all that different from discussing what our plans are for a given marathon training cycle.

I suppose that is an argument against single player games. But it also seems like an argument against reading fiction books, watching movies, and consuming stories in general. Are you suggesting people should give up all of those things as well?

Other hobbies like engaging in politics, watching the news, or watching sports do not have any specific design for positive sum human enjoyment. They are much closer to zero sum games, where one person's happiness is offset by another person's disappointment.

You're going to have to explain that one for the examples you provided.

I'll use an example: when Trump won in 2016, Trump supporters were happy. But Hillary supporters were very unhappy.

Other hobbies like engaging in politics, watching the news, or watching sports do not have any specific design for positive sum human enjoyment. They are much closer to zero sum games, where one person's happiness is offset by another person's disappointment.

This seems like a fairly pessimistic view on politics. Do you not think that political problems can be ameliorated? I'd say the difference between war and peace lies in that realm.

If there were a bunch of p-zombies that all the real humans could beat them that would help.

The problem of politics seems unavoidable. People want to have more resources than their rivals. Their rivals want the same in turn. The winning move for humanity is not to play zero sum games.

I think war is a negative sum competition. Politics is an improvement over that, but that doesn't make it good.

The problem of politics seems unavoidable. People want to have more resources than their rivals. Their rivals want the same in turn. The winning move for humanity is not to play zero sum games.

People want more resources than their rivals sure, rivalries can also be dissolved or transferred into healthier forms of competition.

Then it ceases to be politics, but there are always other things that remain political. Almost any group larger than 5 people has politics, and certainly every group larger than 50 people.

The division between "productive" and "unproductive" activities is a false dichotomy - or at least it should be:

Time and time again, when questioned or interviewed, one is asked about one’s hobbies. When the illustrated weeklies report on the life of one of those giants of the culture industry, they rarely forego the opportunity to report, with varying degrees of intimacy, on the hobbies of the person in question. I am shocked by the question when I come up against it. I have no hobby. Not that I am the kind of workaholic, who is incapable of doing anything with his time but applying himself industriously to the required task. But, as far as my activities beyond the bounds of my recognised profession are concerned, I take them all, without exception, very seriously. So much so, that I should be horrified by the very idea that they had anything to do with hobbies – preoccupations with which I had become mindlessly infatuated merely in order to kill the time – had I not become hardened by experience to such examples of this now widespread, barbarous mentality. Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them. On the other hand I have been fortunate enough that my job, the production of philosophical and sociological works and university teaching, cannot be defined in terms of that strict opposition to free time, which is demanded by the current razor-sharp division of the two.

TL;DR is that if you do give up video games it shouldn't be because they're not "productive".

I don't see the relation between your first assertion and the quoted text. The quotation is referring to activities which have demonstrable benefits, and the author takes issue not with the idea that they're forms of leisure, but that they're unproductive forms of leisure, which they assume "hobby" to insinuate. Video games are absolutely unproductive in any real-world sense; music and reading are real-world activities in the actual, non-simulated world. The question is whether activities in the simulated world have any worth in our real one.

Reading can most certainly be simulated: consider smut, or cheap fantasy and fiction.

Same goes for music, the distinction between popular and highbrow musical productions has nothing to do with productivity.

What about "games" that straddle the line between real-world activites and simulated ones? Poker, sports gambling? People make a living off such "games". And pushing that idea further, what about the gamification of financial markets? Is there any productive purpose to the microsecond race to the bottom with high-frequency trading?

Let's put it this way: you seem to already agree that listening to music is something that can be "taken seriously" (or at least, you didn't challenge that claim). If listening to music can be taken seriously, then why can't playing video games be taken seriously?

You seem to claim that video games are "simulated" and music is not. But I don't know what this means. You sitting in your room and listening to Beethoven's 5th on your laptop is surely no more or less simulated than you sitting in your room and playing Minecraft on your laptop. You could get together with other people and play music on real instruments. But you can also get a bunch of people in a room and play video games together. Again, neither activity seems more or less simulated than the other.

I'll start with the caveat that I know some very successful people (career, romantic, fitness etc) who are heavy gamers (and a caveat to that caveat that I know some very successful people with a cocaine habit) and the confession that I've found life just as difficult in the times I've chosen to abstain from gaming as the times I've gone overboard with it.

I hope it will be uncontroversial to say that the escapist and the addictive nature of gaming can seriously stifle the development of some people. A lot of people probably know someone like this, as for myself I've got friends approaching their 30s who have yet to form a romantic relationship or move out of their parents house and who aren't otherwise hampered by autism, ugliness, stupidity or anything else that would have made life hard regardless. They're intelligent and likeable enough that they could have already done a lot in life but gaming specifically seems to have been what stopped them. Like the dangers of a drug habit, this isn't a convincing argument as long as you conceive yourself as not being in that minority (hopefully it's a minority) who can't game with moderation.

The best argument I can think of for the moderates is in terms of opportunity cost, and this is one which has convinced me to make attempts to abstain in my personal life: "Tallying up the hours displayed on your (my) steam account what kind of person would you be if you had spent that on solving practical problems in your life or pursuing meaningful intellectual inquiries? Let's grant that it's implausible that you could have been doing something better for all of those hours since you only game when you're too tired for anything but escapism, what portion of those hours could have been put to real use? Are you being honest with yourself if you say that each of those 50 hours playthroughs were time that would have been wasted anyway? Are there not other forms of escapism that could satisfy your desire which don't have a tendency to eat into your productive hours and might have even brought some incidental benefits?"

This is an argument that convinced me. I doubt I'm half as productive as most of the people here so I'm not claiming a position of authority on how to live life well, though like my successful friends who drink too much or indulge in cocaine I do wonder how much more of an impressive person you could be if you chose something else.

How sturdy is the argument that “not everything has to be productive”?

'Not everything has to be productive' can be an argument against video games also. Instead of letting yourself be bored for a while you're choosing to simulate productivity in the times you're too lacking in motivation for real productivity. Boredom might be a negative stimulus that prompts motivation for more substantial actions which you're choosing to block out with something that makes you contented with your present state.

'Not everything has to be productive' can be an argument against video games also. Instead of letting yourself be bored for a while you're choosing to simulate productivity in the times you're too lacking in motivation for real productivity. Boredom might be a negative stimulus that prompts motivation for more substantial actions which you're choosing to block out with something that makes you contented with your present state.

I actually agree that the theoretical value of boredom is the primary argument against the massive availability of sedentary leisure activities. Still, I’m unsure of how much boredom drives motivation. Prisoners are (they often report) extremely bored, and yet they only rarely decide to be highly productive (although some do). They’re a heavily selected population, but I’m still skeptical. I think back to the endless boredoms of my childhood, my brother occupying our shared Game Boy Advance, my books finished, nothing on TV, sitting in a hotel room on vacation bored out of my mind. What did I do? Fucking nothing lmao.

I absolutely hate being bored (could anyone tell that I have ADHD?) and there's no way in hell I'd take a time machine back more than 10 years in the past.

I like having a phone, as a kid I killed boredom by exhausting every library I could, watching TV or playing games.

My phone makes both dead tree books and the TV obsolete, and I actually have a good pc I paid for myself instead of the old junker I had in the past.

Call me a big fan of modernity, but boredom just tells me that I'm burning the limited negentropy of the universe and not even having fun in the process.

I don't know what options prisoners have but it seems what they have in common with kids is a genuine lack of options and both may lack enough of an introduction to books to make them seem interesting (which I see wasn't true in your case). As an adult I can't really count all the other things I could be doing with my time, exploring the woods nearby will take a bit of effort but will probably be something I look back on as more rewarding than the same time spent gaming.

I think back to the endless boredoms of my childhood, my brother occupying our shared Game Boy Advance, my books finished, nothing on TV, sitting in a hotel room on vacation bored out of my mind. What did I do? Fucking nothing lmao

Hotels can be very boring places for kids to be fair, you're pretty dependent on your parents' schedule to leave and do something.

I had similar experiences arguing with my brother about who got to play the Xbox this time. Even having a strong stimulus like a Game Boy nearby can be disruptive as instead of finding something new to do you can just wait or argue for your turn, your sibling isn't going to put his mind to the same problem because he's occupied. Things were much more relaxed when we visited my grandparents' house and there was genuinely nothing to do but go out in the garden and look at bugs.

What a brilliant response. Your takedowns of the common "cop-outs" are of such an undeniable verity that, I think, you sufficiently lance any notion of video games as worthy of inclusion at all in a life not be wasted. Even cocaine seems to confer greater benefits - real productivity in the real world - albeit with much greater costs. Your hours-spent thesis is a fatal blow to simulated productivity, as even one minute of real productivity in those 50 hours is infinitely greater than the faux-accomplishments of a simulated world. Your last paragraph is a very clever retort to a common excuse that I'd neither heard nor considered before.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. If so I'll have to be more careful not to sound sanctimonious (a hard thing when expressing strong opinions on how one should live), if not then thanks for the praise.

Even cocaine seems to confer greater benefits - real productivity in the real world - albeit with much greater costs.

Hah well I wasn't thinking about replacing gaming with cocaine when I wondered about better forms of escapism. I know a few friends who have wasted years gaming and a few friends of friends who have died from the other thing.

It's not just you. That felt a bit too glowing.

Not sarcasm; I really do think your response was fantastic. I tend to overenthusiastically react to good points that I hadn't considered before.

That thought was not to say that cocaine is a viable, more productive alternative to gaming, but simply that, if even one of the most dangerously addictive substances on Earth has the potential to leave more of a positive impact on the progress of one's work, that's a pretty good indicator of where video games should sit on the hierarchy.

Oh then thanks for the praise.

I still want to stress that cocaine is lower on the heirachy of the best uses of one's time and my argument would risk falling into absurdity if I said otherwise. The similarities I wanted to highlight were just that people can be very successful despite their vices and that the excuses made for something obviously bad can be seen regarding the thing I wanted to argue was bad.

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New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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