Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A link between video games and unemployment

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 177 posts

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#71

Post by jboggan »

sametmax wrote: post #53
J-dawg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been able to find it, but I remember a comment here on HN by a guy who basically said that gaming saved his life by helping him to zone out during a period of severe depression. I guess it's a form of mindfulness, in a way.

That's the exact opposite actually. Nit saying it's a bad thing though. But it's important to understand that screens are taking your attention away. You are not in the moment at all.

I agree with that, you are completely taken out of your actual context, or at least I am.

I used to game really heavily during a pretty terrible period (divorce + grad school) in an attempt to cope. Of course it actually just made things worse overall while distracting my brain to make it seem temporarily better, it diverted a lot of the energy I might have used towards engaging and fixing the problems.

When I game severely (FPS shooters are my crack) I can get focused for a dozen hours at a time. My body almost shuts down, I get into a trancelike state and my metabolism recedes. I forget to eat, I don't get tired. When I finally do sleep I will wake up the next day and actually have a headache until I play again for a little while. It was that kind of physical withdrawal that made me realize long ago how pernicious it was, at least for my particular physiology and brain. Now I will only play games like that in a social setting, never alone lest I fall back into that spell.

One time in grad school I stayed up all night gaming and I slept through my alarm. I missed an exam. That I was proctoring. I went straight to a pawn shop and sold my console when I realized what I was doing to myself.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#72

Post by posterboy »

jfoutz wrote: post #62
sametmax wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the exact opposite actually. Nit saying it's a bad thing though. But it's important to understand that screens are taking your attention away. You are not in the moment at all.

Would you be willing to elaborate on that a bit? Once upon a time, i played a few competitive games. I'd have to be very aware of my emotional state. Being aware of a sort of sick feeling when i'm falling behind, recognizing that that exists and not letting it affect my play seems like what people mean when they speak of mindfulness. And the converse, not getting cocky when pulling ahead. I also dealt with the random…

Maybe OP means the eu-stress from gaming is neglectable compared to the emotional trauma described. Getting used to and thinking that's normal stress might numb rather than build mindfulness, because just doing it frequently doesn't promise improvement. EG repetitive strain might hinder that. And it might be distractive in general.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#73

Post by jfoutz »

posterboy wrote: post #72
jfoutz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to elaborate on that a bit? Once upon a time, i played a few competitive games. I'd have to be very aware of my emotional state. Being aware of a sort of sick feeling when i'm falling behind, recognizing that that exists and not letting it affect my play seems like what people mean when they speak of mindfulness. And the converse, not getting cocky when pulling ahead. I also dealt with the random…

Maybe OP means the eu-stress from gaming is neglectable compared to the emotional trauma described. Getting used to and thinking that's normal stress might numb rather than build mindfulness, because just doing it frequently doesn't promise improvement. EG repetitive strain might hinder that. And it might be distractive in general.

That's a really good point. the gaming i talked about was in a pretty stable time in my life, more or less every other aspect of my life was working smoothly. Thanks!

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#74

Post by J-dawg »

pimlottc wrote: post #59
desdiv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NEO: The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity decreases as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you're telling me that their food is the bodies of the dead, fed to…

Now that's a movie I'd like to see. I mean, if you're going to simulate a universe, what's stopping you from playing around with the parameters a bit? Or at the very least, cutting some corners to save processing time.

Isn't this a theory that's sometimes used to support the simulation hypothesis? The idea that weird effects in nature such as wave/particle duality are the simulation's way of cutting down on processing time, something like reducing draw distance in a 3D game.

It's probably the kind of thing that will be easily debunked by a real physicist (if you are one, go ahead) but I find the idea quite mind-blowing if I think about it for too long.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#75

Post by szemet »

sametmax wrote: post #53
J-dawg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been able to find it, but I remember a comment here on HN by a guy who basically said that gaming saved his life by helping him to zone out during a period of severe depression. I guess it's a form of mindfulness, in a way.

That's the exact opposite actually. Nit saying it's a bad thing though. But it's important to understand that screens are taking your attention away. You are not in the moment at all.

I don't agree. As I understand these things:

You are mindful and react on direct stimulus - while gaming, you do not think on future or past, you are immersed in your actual activity - it IS mindfulness.

BUT it does not improve mindfulness - it is easy to be mindful at interesting times - that's normal, but not so when nothing interesting is around, and you are just left alone with your own thoughts or problems. Thats what various mindfulness practices trying to improve - to be mindful in common "boring" or bad situations too.

And like for any improvements you usually have to make some effort - not just do something when it is natural.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#76

Post by [deleted] »

sametmax wrote: post #53
J-dawg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been able to find it, but I remember a comment here on HN by a guy who basically said that gaming saved his life by helping him to zone out during a period of severe depression. I guess it's a form of mindfulness, in a way.

That's the exact opposite actually. Nit saying it's a bad thing though. But it's important to understand that screens are taking your attention away. You are not in the moment at all.

[deleted]

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#77

Post by orthoganol »

jboggan wrote: post #64
orthoganol wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're also at an organization that selects for personalities susceptible to that. So many people want to work at companies like Google because they care more about the recognition for working at a company like Google than the actual work they do or impact they make. And that's a recipe for its own type of acedia.

Great word. It's interesting how my desire to game has almost entirely disappeared since I left there and started a new company. I'm sitting here building deep learning rigs with fat GPUs, I could just add another partition running Windows and have a killer system for Overwatch . . . but nah, I'm having too much fun with Tensorflow to care.

I too am sitting here waiting for a TensorFlow language model to finish training :)

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#78

Post by posterboy »

quadrangle wrote: post #50
s_kilk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the logic of Late Capitalism: all problems and failings are those of the individual, never of the system.

While that may indeed be the propaganda, blaming addicts for their addictions can be victim-blaming. Some of the rhetoric blames the video game companies more than the consumers…

no, not if the addict's diction is directed ad everyone else's faults but his own. Of course I am bending the definition https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/addico#Latin

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#79

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

pimlottc wrote: post #59
desdiv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NEO: The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity decreases as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you're telling me that their food is the bodies of the dead, fed to…

Now that's a movie I'd like to see. I mean, if you're going to simulate a universe, what's stopping you from playing around with the parameters a bit? Or at the very least, cutting some corners to save processing time.

> cutting some corners to save processing time

I've seen this as an explanation for quantum uncertainty.

Re: A link between video games and unemployment

#80

Post by posterboy »

J-dawg wrote: post #74
pimlottc wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that's a movie I'd like to see. I mean, if you're going to simulate a universe, what's stopping you from playing around with the parameters a bit? Or at the very least, cutting some corners to save processing time.

Isn't this a theory that's sometimes used to support the simulation hypothesis? The idea that weird effects in nature such as wave/particle duality are the simulation's way of cutting down on processing time, something like reducing draw distance in a 3D game. It's probably the kind of thing that will be easily debunked by a real physicist (if you are one, go ahead) but I find the idea quite mind-blowing if I think a…

Rather, it's a reduction of our processing, in our head, if anything. The dialog is correct, noone in school manages to verify quantum physics.
Post reply on HN