"The point: anecdotal evidence is not very useful." Indeed, I'm not arguing that, I just wanted to share my anecdote because it was relevant to the article. "

"The point: anecdotal evidence is not very useful." Indeed, I'm not arguing that, I just wanted to share my anecdote because it was relevant to the article. "Also, the article and your comment seem to take a very naive view of human development. There is a lot more to this than just "video games made my son stupid"." Sorry if it sounds that way, I didn't want to imply that (though my father does believe it). I'm pretty sure there are lots of people that played video games a lot and turned out well. Also, all I have to show for it is an improved reading ability, I don't think it made me smarter or anything(1). I'm extremely bad at personal interactions, communications and other stuff, which is why I'm still programming and not in a managerial position. I will try out doing a startup on my own, but I doubt I'd climb the career ladder in a "traditional" way - I'm always being overtaken by the arrogant, self-confident, usually way less technically capable people-talkers on the way up, at least on the big corporate environments I've worked in (finance and insurance). (1)Edit: see these two other posts by maxawaytoolong and awakeasleep which seem to agree on it not being that useful: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1724089 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1724089 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1724269 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1724269