Live data from Hacker News

Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

nida.nih.gov

261–270 of 332 posts

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#261

It’s also associated with dropping out of college because of your hopeless WoW addiction.

And you KNOW those are the people reading this study to feel good about their hobby "This makes me smart"

When I was 14 I thought playing an RPG with lots of text was as good as, if not better, than reading a book.

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#262
post #228
post #49

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strategy skills. I credit StarCraft with training my mind to travel at warp speed. Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.

You should credit your parents with allowing you to have so much free time and good nutrition.

Or in most cases, it's parental neglect with both parents working full-time jobs with barely enough time to take care of themselves?

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#264

> Executing problem solving tasks in virtually limitless different domains in a rewarding and fun way may be associated with better cognitive performance in children Wow, you don't say ...

But it's fun! Nothing fun can be good for you!

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#265
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I owe my career to World of Warcraft. Started running my own server in 2008 when the burning crusade was released on my ADSL connection for friends, then I started "scripting" shit in C++ (server software is a good framework (CMaNGOS)), so while it was compiled in it wasn't really like writing C++, never had to think about ownership, threading, lifetimes etc... Eventually I stared messing about more inside the framew…

Blizzard doesn’t embrace what you did, running a private WoW server. If they could have, they’d have shut you down. Certainly though it sounds as if your server was simply too small for them to ever notice. They focused their legal efforts against large private servers that sold access.

Yeah in the WoW case they didn't embrace it, but Warcraft and Overwatch has workshop solutions, that's what I was referring to. (Understand since I didn't mention it that it wasn't obvious, wrote the reply on my phone).

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#266
Read about the methods: They used visual cues on computer screens to test who was better in responding to visual cues on computer screens.

Let me guess.... The kids who were experienced in responding to visual cues on computer screens scored better (-‸ლ)

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#267
post #86

Kids are playing more and more video games than ever before, and test scores across the board are way down to some of the lowest levels recorded. We conclude video games are helping kids. Something tells me they'll not be able to replicate this.

Correlation does not equal causation?

Of course not, I was just pointing out that the poorly designed study that goes against all of the actual observable data makes the results a bit suspect. Like many things, I suspect that in moderation video game playing doesn't have any impact on standardized testing.

I suppose if this study can be replicated then we can all be thankful that excessive video game playing has made kids dumber at a lesser rate than they already would be.

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an old joke: An economist is walking down the street when he steps on a $100 bill lying on the ground. He spots it, but decides to keep walking and doesn't pick it up. “After all,” he thinks to himself, “if that had really been a $100 bill, someone else would have picked it up already!”

It took me until this moment to finally realize this joke relies on inefficient market to work . Consider: what if everyone in the joke's universe was a rational market actor? The $100 bill would lie there until it got consumed by rats or otherwise destroyed by natural events. For the economists' reasoning to work, there must exist some actors who don't reason this way, and instead pick up the bill on sight. How does…

I think it's a good example of how rationality is a construct. We arbitrarily choose which rational framework makes the most sense in the situation and apply it.

Do you want to rely on the prior actor framework, or the react to what you see framework? That decision is not rational.

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#269
post #49

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strategy skills. I credit StarCraft with training my mind to travel at warp speed. Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.

I'm happy you got all of that from video-games and in no way I'm advocating against video games for everyone.

But, in my life, I credit sports for everything you said.

With the added benefit of a healthy neurology and biology in general. Something video games - and the digital world, as a whole - have been demonstrated to be detrimental. I mean, by serious studies.

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me until this moment to finally realize this joke relies on inefficient market to work . Consider: what if everyone in the joke's universe was a rational market actor? The $100 bill would lie there until it got consumed by rats or otherwise destroyed by natural events. For the economists' reasoning to work, there must exist some actors who don't reason this way, and instead pick up the bill on sight. How does…

I think it's a good example of how rationality is a construct. We arbitrarily choose which rational framework makes the most sense in the situation and apply it. Do you want to rely on the prior actor framework, or the react to what you see framework? That decision is not rational.

I like to view it this way: optimal decisions are not computable in practice. We never have enough data, nor enough time, nor is our brain particularly well-suited for this. We have no choice but to approximate, to use heuristics. This applies to both snap decisions and carefully applied formal models. The problem is, even the most rational of us sometimes forget they're just approximating, fudging both data and models at the edges, in order to get some result in finite time. They also forget to mention this.

The difference I see between what I wrote above and what you described as not rational choice of a framework is that, per my personal experience, it is possible to reconcile two conflicting seemingly rational frameworks. It just takes time to extend them past their edges until they meet. That is, extend each past the approximation cut-off point.

Post reply on HN