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Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

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Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#291

Post by Turing_Machine »

dragonwriter wrote: post #287
Turing_Machine wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It should be respected and fought for. " Sorry, 100 million dead bodies is more than enough to convince me that Marxism doesn't work.

If you think Leninism is Marxism, you are a dupe of Leninist propaganda.

Ah, yes. "No true Scotsman".

Nope, not going to play that.

Edit:

At this stage, enough so-called "Marxist" governments have descended into slavery, starvation, and mass murder that the burden of proof should lie on those who advocate such governments, and that burden should be heavy indeed.

But nope, it's always "but that wasn't REAL Marxism".

After a century of trying, with dozens of attempts, it is quite clear that either those hellhole governments are "real Marxism" or, conversely, that "real Marxism" does not and cannot exist.

Otherwise someone would've gotten it right by now.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#292

Post by mos_basik »

callmeed wrote: post #236

Someone should figure out a way to embed mechanical turk tasks into video games. Then young men can at least get paid a little bit for their game play.

The MMO Eve Online partnered with the Human Protein Atlas to embed a protein-mapping minigame in Eve. It was fitted into the game's overarching storyline and gives in-game rewards for participating. A month or two after it was introduced they released some numbers; something like 37 man-years of classification labor had been performed. And because it's in a game with an existing playerbase and provides reward as long as it is played, it is still continuing to yield results (naturally it slowed down after the first peak of interest) in contrast to the tendency (they claim) of most standalone crowdsourced data science projects to struggle to gain traction and dry up fast.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3060692/software-games/how-ev...

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#293

Post by Turing_Machine »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #288
Turing_Machine wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Senseless violence of the sort you almost seem to be advocating (am I misreading?) could be easily suppressed by a modern police force." What makes you think the police are going to be on your side in such a situation?

It's true that of late, the police do seem to look the other way when anti-intellectual thugs assault political dissidents (e.g. Murray, Milo). They do obey the orders of the ruling class. But why would the cops side with a bunch of layabout gamers seeking only to pillage and plunder?

Well, the presumed scenario here is that all but the 1% are starving in the streets (including the friends and relatives of said cops).

Why wouldn't they side with them?

Just to be clear here, I think the outcome of such a revolution scenario would almost certainly lead to even more suffering. But it would happen nonetheless.

It behooves us to not allow things to get that bad.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#295

Post by petre »

politician wrote: post #282
petre wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather get drafted and go to war? Because everything you say hints at politicians creating a war just to divert attention and offer the unemployed "a job": playing a first person shooter with real victims.

Those sorts of wars are largely in America's past. The real money is made in high-tech munitions: cruise missiles, anti-missile missiles, and drones with missiles. If you're a defense contractor, you're not interested in selling "hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground," but rather guns (weapons systems) and ammo. As a corollary, no one is lobbying politicians on behalf of a force increase at the scale you're su…

What I was saying was give the hoards of men games to play: piloting drones, UUVs, playing Red Alert with robotic infantry, mostly against a weaker economy, the real victims. And let's not forget the amount of jobs created to build those drones.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#296

Post by fmihaila »

sonthonax wrote: post #290
fmihaila wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing that's great about gaming as an addiction: it's very inexpensive. It can be extremely expensive in opportunity costs, unfortunately.

As with all addictions.

Well, it depends. Some other addictions, while they may consume parts of you, can on balance be more contained (if they don't kill you first). Video games, on the other hand, are sure to eat away inordinate amounts of that which you can never get back: time.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#297

Post by mozumder »

researcher11 wrote: post #238
proudofyou wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much did you save before you retired?

I have a $20K passive income of and living expenses of $10K. My hobbies are really cheap and centered around building skills. Programming / construction / sports. I do miss my friends in SF though. That's the biggest downside. I've been trying to encourage more to come down.

That still seems expensive. You can get by with that much in rural areas of the US or Detroit.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#298

Post by astrange »

chongli wrote: post #138
astrange wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens when technology progresses to the point where they can't be productive at all? If nobody can ever improve on anything, either everything is free or we're all dead, and in neither case do you need a job in the first place. Just having a lot of manufacturing robots does not mean there is nothing to do!

do you need a job in the first place The real reason people need jobs, as evident by the number of able-bodied people who don't work at all, is for acquiring status. UBI (nor any other welfare measure) will not solve this problem.

Although it would if we lived in a Cory Doctorow novel.

http://craphound.com/down/download/

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#299

Post by hyperpallium »

laughfactory wrote: post #150

It's not just video games either. Add Netflix and social media, and soon, VR, to the equation, and it's pretty clear that the game of life offers insufficient rewards relative to one's efforts. I don't believe we ended up here due to some grand conspiracy, but I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else. Even as a relative…

I've been thinking about gradients in evolution, what directions are fruitful for an organism to evolve in. The acceleration in intelligence in our line would seem to require an ongoing survival-advantage gradient for intelligence (that somehow, wasn't available to other apes...).

It also relates to the brain-body ratio for species, because investing in intelligence works for them - it says something about that species' environment/niche, and not just the species itself.

If games now provide the best gradient of reward for effort...

Another solution is to change the problem: what if games did provide a survival or reproductive advantage? Quite possibly, social media already is, being better connected has long been an advantage ("it's who you know, not what you know").

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#300

Post by mozumder »

laughfactory wrote: post #150

It's not just video games either. Add Netflix and social media, and soon, VR, to the equation, and it's pretty clear that the game of life offers insufficient rewards relative to one's efforts. I don't believe we ended up here due to some grand conspiracy, but I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else. Even as a relative…

> and soon, VR, to the equation,

I can guarantee you that VR will never be part of the equation.

There are far too many safety-related user-experience problems with it.

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