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Please don't let gaming consume your life

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Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#121

Post by chris_wot »

surement wrote: post #98
cletus wrote: post #71

I've had conversations on similar aspects to this many times. There are many psychological issues involved but the highlights are: 1. People eat for many reasons, sustenance being only one. People eat for enjoyment, because they're happy, because they're sad, to deal with stress, as a substitute for something else arguably more destructive and so on. The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as noth…

"The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as nothing more than fuel, the better off you'll be" Better off how? Eating for enjoyment is one of the best pleasures in life. To quote someone else, if you spend your life eating no butter, no lard, no salt; you're gonna feel like a damn fool lying on your hospital bed, dying from nothing.

Actually, you'll get used to it and probably enjoy the more healthy food a lot!

It's sort of like smoking. Nobody enjoys smoking when they first start. It's disgusting! But they think: "If it's this bad then I can stop at any time" - then they can't. A similar thing happens with coffee and sugar. If you have 3 sugars in your coffee and slowly start to reduce it, then eventually cut it out then for the first few cups when you cut it out you won't like it, but then you'll actually be OK with it. Then you won't be able to drink it with sugar at all!

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#122

Post by einhverfr »

chc wrote: post #115
einhverfr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that there are physiological effects from computer gaming. I know that I occasionally will play a bit excessively (though not extremely so) for a few days when I am having other issues, but I have learned to moderate even that because of these things. Among others I find: 1) Interference with sleep. Will continue to see video game images when I close my eyes to sleep and won't sleep well. 2) Changes in how…

This is based on somewhat worse evidence than the antivax movement. What you describe largely sound like symptoms of eye strain, probably combined with lack of proper exercise and nutrition. These are unpleasant conditions, but not really deadly in the way you seem to mean. Without clinical or scientific evidence, I don't think we should be spreading pet medical theories Jenny McCarthy-style.

Suspect means "I have a hypothesis." It doesn't mean I have tested it rigorously.

I don't think it is as simple as eyestrain. Also no nutritional changes can be shown during these times, and being sedentary doesn't cause these for me.

The point is you start with observations, you form hypotheses, and hope that someone will test them.

Regarding the antivax movement though, there really are two submovements. The first ("vaccines cause autism") is pretty silly given that the hypotheses that float dont even match the demographic data they claim it does.

The second movement though which I am relatively sympathetic to is a relatively generalized hostility towards vaccine proliferation. This isn't anti-vaccine really. It is rather hostility towards ever-growing lists of mandated vaccines. I know a lot of people who say "I don't care what the CDC says. I am not giving my kid a yearly flu shot!" And many of them also question many of the newer additions to state vaccine mandates as well while often supporting requirements for the older and more major vaccines (polio, MMR, DTaP for kids, not for adults). I don't think you can just lump these together.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#123

Post by klipt »

einhverfr wrote: post #109
cletus wrote: post #71

I've had conversations on similar aspects to this many times. There are many psychological issues involved but the highlights are: 1. People eat for many reasons, sustenance being only one. People eat for enjoyment, because they're happy, because they're sad, to deal with stress, as a substitute for something else arguably more destructive and so on. The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as noth…

I suspect that there are physiological effects from computer gaming. I know that I occasionally will play a bit excessively (though not extremely so) for a few days when I am having other issues, but I have learned to moderate even that because of these things. Among others I find: 1) Interference with sleep. Will continue to see video game images when I close my eyes to sleep and won't sleep well. 2) Changes in how…

> Interference with sleep. Will continue to see video game images when I close my eyes to sleep and won't sleep well.

This effect actually has a name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

Neural plasticity is an amazing thing. For example in blind people the visual parts of the brain can get rewired to process sound or other senses instead. The flipside of that is that if I spend a significant portion of my life focusing on video game scores, (or how much karma my posts get on reddit), it feels like my brain rewires itself to play those games better - potentially at the cost of other types of performance.

In effect, I think that "garbage in, garbage out" applies to humans too.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#124

Post by ShabbyDoo »

cletus wrote: post #71

I've had conversations on similar aspects to this many times. There are many psychological issues involved but the highlights are: 1. People eat for many reasons, sustenance being only one. People eat for enjoyment, because they're happy, because they're sad, to deal with stress, as a substitute for something else arguably more destructive and so on. The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as noth…

I live in Cleveland, but I've been working during the week in Chicago for the past year. When I first started spending time in Chicago, I noticed how thin the average person in the city is compared to Clevelanders. A year into this contracting gig, I've lost 35 pounds without much effort. Want some coffee? The good coffee shop is around the block. Want to meet some friends-of-friends for lunch? It's only a few blocks away. Nice night, maybe I should just walk "home" (I bought a condo in Chicago) -- only 1.5 miles. Oh, and because that condo was an icky short-sale condo, I end up doing stuff like scrubbing floors in the evenings. It's the little things which seem to add up. Stocking my kitchen with mostly stuff which is not awful health-wise surely helped as well.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#125

Post by klipt »

Periodic wrote: post #114
klenwell wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About a year ago, I picked up a set of Perfect Pushups, those rotating pushup handle things you see advertised on TV. I try to do a set of 10 each hour while I'm at work. Co-workers looked at me askance at first -- probaby still do. I've cited the studies warning about the health risks of sitting at your desk too long. Nevertheless, I try to be discreet. I still work out most days after work. But the push-ups get me…

I used to do something similar. Luckily, I had a cube at the end that faced a wall. After I started feeling some wrist pains I set up a keyboard-timer, a program that was part of Gnome that locked the screen after a given interval of continuous activity. I set it to 2 minutes every 30 minutes that didn't include at least a 1 minute break from typing. During my 2 minute break I had enough time to do a set of push-ups…

Bikes are awesome. I just moved from a college town to a big city for summer internship and I'm toying with the idea of buying a second hand bike for the duration (cheaper than public transit?) but this city doesn't have the same ubiquitous bike-rack infrastructure as the college town, so I'm not sure where I'd park it...

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#126

Post by SamReidHughes »

humbledrone wrote: post #85
shasta wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probability of 1.0? Are you sure you're doing the right math? What's the probability after 6,400 years? 2.0?

I meant expected value, but I wrote "expected probably".

That's still wrong. If you have x chance of surviving each day of rock climbing then you have an x^n chance of surviving n days of rock climbing, not a 0 chance of surviving.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#127

Post by klipt »

daenz wrote: post #27
boredguy8 wrote: post #8

There are more subtle ways of gaming ruining your life, as well: slowly losing the drive to do anything more than what's necessary to pay the cable bill, rent, and the gaming subscription. Slowly the only friends you have are people you know from your guild. When the only source & output of creativity and energy are all wrapped up in playing a video game. I've also seen people similarly consumed by pornography, alcoh…

> When the only source & output of creativity and energy are all wrapped up in playing a video game. One day I imagine we'll be able to map real world problems to video games, in a way that doesn't require knowledge of the solution to create the mapping. Programming itself is very similar to a game. If someone could make it into a virtual world, where I "write" code simply by putting together various machines in 3D s…

The real zen moment is when you realize you don't need someone to "gamify" life for you, but can simply choose to see life as a game.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#128

Post by nazgulnarsil »

surement wrote: post #98
cletus wrote: post #71

I've had conversations on similar aspects to this many times. There are many psychological issues involved but the highlights are: 1. People eat for many reasons, sustenance being only one. People eat for enjoyment, because they're happy, because they're sad, to deal with stress, as a substitute for something else arguably more destructive and so on. The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as noth…

"The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as nothing more than fuel, the better off you'll be" Better off how? Eating for enjoyment is one of the best pleasures in life. To quote someone else, if you spend your life eating no butter, no lard, no salt; you're gonna feel like a damn fool lying on your hospital bed, dying from nothing.

butter lard and salt are all perfectly fine. portion control and micronutrient density are the problems, not any particular substance.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#129

Post by jvoorhis »

mbell697 wrote: post #76
kika wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> consumed by pornography, alcohol, gambling, day trading, and I'm sure other things other things being startups?

Or how about work in general? If doing something 6 hours a week is borderline what is doing something 40-60 hours a week? Assuming most people work for money, isn't this just an extreme cultural addition to money?

If by addiction to money, you mean necessity for it to pay the bills, then this is true for most workers.

I suspect those of us electing to work upwards of 60 hrs/week at startups have other issues to work out beyond the allure of money.

Re: Please don't let gaming consume your life

#130

Post by pemulis »

Dylanlacey wrote: post #82
vm wrote: post #57

At what point is it wrong to engineer a product to be addictive? Tobacco companies are evil for doing this. But when it comes to things like fast food, gambling and games , I hear things like "everyone knows those are bad for you" so you should "be responsible" Like all things, not everyone submits to urges. But I bet most gamers don't know there are sophisticated teams fine-tuning the gaming experience to maximize t…

Evil comes when the user is expected to lose significant amounts of something for no return. Tobacco companies expect you to lose years of your life, tens of thousands of dollars and return you yellowing teeth and nails, smelling bad and lessened taste and smell. Evil. WoW expects your monthly subscription fee and you'll probably put some time into it as well. They don't actually care how MUCH time you put into it, j…

There are people who enjoy smoking and playing Zynga games, though. Positive benefit is relative. Just because you don't like cigarettes or Farmville doesn't mean that no one does. The argument that Blizzard doesn't care how much time you put into World of Warcraft doesn't hold up, either. The lower levels have a lot of grinding and the higher levels have multi-hour raids. World of Warcraft has addictive properties baked in to keep you playing, just like Zynga games. You could make the argument that Zynga is "evil" for milking addicted players for thousands of dollars, but Diablo III's auction house creates a similar dynamic. Isn't it enough to say that you think Zynga's games suck, but Blizzard's are good?
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