Ask HN: What do you believe that most people don't?

Yes, it works. Eat a salad, rice, beans, fish, and vegies once a day and you're good. I'm fasting 18hrs/day and I lose fat + gain muscles. Also, I save lots of time which I can put into work since I don't spend my time on preparing/cooking meals that much.

That most life decisions for most people are based on their social and cultural environment that force them into a predefined path. Wandering out of it comes with a price of continual self-doubt. Staying into that path is an easy way to live an ok life but it comes with the greatest price of all: a terrible feeling of regret at the end of your life.

Something I also believe is that most people will not question those life decision and ask themselves if this is really what they want.

Sugar is as toxic as alcohol. People here may agree but try that one at a neighborhood block party.

One component of the 'gamers are lazy' stereotype probably comes from the fact that most of the people authoring that opinion are the gamers' parents; who'll just perceive it in the way they will. They are also the generation which like to hear their opinions reflected in prime-time news, which gladly obliges.

Gaming is ubiquitous, in another decade I imagine that attitude will be on the way out.

Those are the obvious points though, I think it's more interesting to think about how the mechanical and repetitive aspects of gaming replace a naive, deep drive for precise actions which demand focus and skill, and move chaotic or unordered things towards some goal. In the 20thC that was probably fixing cars or working in a factory or building stuff. Good ways for satisfying the drive, if you have it.

And in a nice continuation of this relationship, the more that AI replaces work, the more I think leisure, work and gaming will coincide. Many gaming environments are good examples of behavioural economics in action: incentives, rewards, how changes to game balance (even perceived changes to balance) or the price/availability of cosmetics nudge or shove player behaviour... We could stab guesses at how to implement these patterns in a way that considers them economic activity.

I don't think gaming necessarily has to be 'better' than life for it to take up a great deal of it. It just has to have the right kinds of 'APIs' to satisfy that messy, obsessive, predatory/reward-loop hunger which appears in most men and plenty of women.

My central thesis is that a couple of decades leads us basically to the Matrix (though I'm hoping for a sunnier version).