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

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

#71

Post by BigHatLogan »

alimw wrote: post #43
BigHatLogan wrote: post #10

I may be preaching to the choir here (because this is largely a tech audience) but I don't buy into the stereotype that gamers play videogames (video games?) because of laziness or sloth or some other unfairly negative characteristic misattributed to them. I saw a post on Reddit where a group of gamers had recreated King's Landing, the main city from Game of Thrones, in Minecraft. The entire project looked like it to…

> If the real world has been disappointing to you for whatever reason, why wouldn't you seek out a more "perfect" world in a simulation? You could call this a lazy decision.

You could, but then how do you explain the activity? For example, I agree it would be a lazy decision if the culprit passively consumed some sort of content. What if they are active? What if they actively collaborate with friends and strangers alike, set their own goals, and then work to meet them? Isn't that what people do in reality?

In Western society, a traditionally good life has a few components to it: friends, family, community, a sense of place, achievement. What if a video game provides this? Why would 100 hours spent towards building a building in Minecraft or learning new strategies in Starcraft be any different from spending 100 hours learning to chop wood and create a garden in your backyard? (By the way, there are popular garden simulator games too, like Stardew Valley).

Something in me tells me the two are different, but I'm grasping as to why, without placing my own sense of morality on the thing.

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

#72

Post by BigHatLogan »

rwnspace wrote: post #39
BigHatLogan wrote: post #10

I may be preaching to the choir here (because this is largely a tech audience) but I don't buy into the stereotype that gamers play videogames (video games?) because of laziness or sloth or some other unfairly negative characteristic misattributed to them. I saw a post on Reddit where a group of gamers had recreated King's Landing, the main city from Game of Thrones, in Minecraft. The entire project looked like it to…

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 obviou…

I love the example of fixing cars and building stuff. I never thought about it like that, but now that you mention it, I do think a lot of modern games are replacing the 20th century hobby of coming home and working on your car on weekends.

What you said is also what I'm suggesting: that gaming satisfies that drive in its own way. It's a simulation that can provide most of those same feelings.

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

#75

Post by muzz »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #66

The only way to be truly happy is to be ignorant of all the ills we are inflicting on the world and each other. Once you attain this awareness as part of growing up, the only way to drown out the awareness of this deplorable state of the human existence, is to numb the mind with drugs or to damage the brain to such a degree that it stops mattering to you.

Does it require ignorance of those ills, or can knowledge of them but with resignation be sufficient?

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

#76

Post by agitator »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #66

The only way to be truly happy is to be ignorant of all the ills we are inflicting on the world and each other. Once you attain this awareness as part of growing up, the only way to drown out the awareness of this deplorable state of the human existence, is to numb the mind with drugs or to damage the brain to such a degree that it stops mattering to you.

I think there are two sides to this. Either ignore it, or embrace it and accept it as part of the human experience. If you accept that suffering is inevitable, you recognize the positives in life more readily. To me, this approach allows me to be present in life, as opposed to numb with drugs, waiting to expire.

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

#77

Post by agitator »

laex wrote: post #7

That you don't need to eat three or four meals a day. You can compress all the meals into one and still stay productive, energetic & healthy. ( Speaking from 2+ years experience of daily fasting and strength training )

My understanding is the cyclic fasting causes a fat storage response in the body to prepare for periods of low caloric intake.

Personally, my brain, emotions, attention, all shuts down when I'm hungry. I bet I could get used to it, but the transition would definitely be tough. Also from past experience, my body consumes all of my muscle fairly quickly when I don't eat at regular intervals.

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

#78

Post by charlesdm »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #65
charlesdm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think you need to find a balance. Don't blow through everything, but also enjoy life because you only live once. I know guys who save up to the last penny to try and achieve financial freedom. It's infinitely easier (and more efficient) to try to make more money than it is to, for example, not buy the occasional starbucks coffee.

It depends, if you are in a minimum wage job then absolutely try and raise your income and improving skills is the obvious way to do it. On the other hand if you are already progressing through a career I suspect it's easier to trim spending than work further up the ladder. The Starbucks thing is a red herring, most people overspend on cars, housing and food.

One can literally not overspend on food. Good food (i.e. fresh fruit, vegetables, good meat and fish, etc) are 100% worth the investment in my view. But to each their own priorities in life.

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

#79

Post by jstewartmobile »

BigHatLogan wrote: post #69
jstewartmobile wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just adding a data point here: I played video games (90s super nintendo) when I was a kid primarily for the music/artwork. Then the internet came along where I could enjoy the art without hitching my time to a game. With my time unencumbered, it wasn't hard to discover that reality is a better game with better music.

What makes it specifically better and why was that so easy to discover? Additionally, if it is obvious, as you say, then how do you reconcile that with the number of people who are checking out of society to disappear into video games, particularly in Japan? I guess what I'm curious of is this: What do games offer these people that reality doesn't? I'm not talking about people who play casually here and there, but ra…

Reality is better because it is all connected. A truth regarding one thing reveals more than one truth. Fiction is nice because it fires your imagination and helps you see things from a different perspective. Video games are fictions concretized into equations. Solving fantasyland physics and logistics problems by feel doesn't seem like a particularly good investment of my time, but that's just me. "Brave New World" only took an hour or so to read, but it helped me through a number of real-life problems. "Final Fantasy VI" was the fruitless expenditure of 30 hours.

I'm sure there are some professional MMORPG players out there fuming right now, thinking, "I made XXX dollars selling equipment on ebay." or "I made XXX dollars winning such and such tournament." Porn stars also make a lot of money.

If I had to make a wild guess as to why people stay on the smack into adulthood, it would be escapism. When life paints you into a corner, it is very easy to retreat into the virtual world with netflix and xbox. Urban Japan is hard mode, so probably a much higher percentage of people being painted into corners. Still probably better than netflix though. At least it's an active pursuit rather than a passive one.

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

#80

Post by jstewartmobile »

agitator wrote: post #6
jstewartmobile wrote: post #5

That most ailments in the western world are ones of modernity: over-nutrition, over-medication, physical inactivity, excessive hygiene, lack of sunlight, non-ancestral diets and/or environments, environmental pollutants, etc, etc. If something is bothering you that the doctors can't fix, it's a pretty good heuristic for plan-B.

I strongly agree with this. It irks me that doctors often prescribe drugs first without seeking to find the root cause of a problem. But I guess such is the culture these days. People want a quick fix without being told to change their lifestyles.

Most docs I know feel the same way, but when you get shaken-down for pills all-day every-day, most people are just going to give up and start passing out nexium and lipitor like it was candy on halloween.
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