13 ms·

Do games like Factorio or Eve Online sap the intellectual potential of humanity?

87 points by optimalsolver 6y ago

gwoefr 6y ago
If you can even begin to measure "sap[ping] the intellectual potential of humanity" then we should be talking about the most pointless brain-drain of our age - thousands of the most highly talented technical minds all being relegated to serving increasingly targeted ads. Yes there is a huge economic incentive for these individuals to pursue this work, but I don't think its a stretch to say it cant be benefitting humanity overall in any real useful way.
VLM 6y ago
The current economic system prevents virtually everyone in the system other than a few at the top of the pyramid from achieving their potential. How much extra money will the people at the top centrally controlling everything make if, for example, your plumber is a more intellectually well rounded individual? Possibly a negative amount of money. So the plumber plays modded minecraft. Some of the reddit apologists claim telecommunications will free us all, but its mostly bringing us purity spirals, cancel culture, and identity politics. If political demographic membership is more important than programming skill, such that a skilled programmer cannot be hired, that person should grind survival rations at walmart and play factorio for recreation. There's the optimistic view that maximizing intellectual potential means curing cancer and living on mars. But the people currently at the top make a lot of money off cancer, and won't make any money off mars, but we do know "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." so in that pessimistic sense I'm glad our propaganda driven prison is not as optimized as it could be. Unleashing autonomous walking AI robots to randomly kill people in the middle east to make oil cheaper would require amazing intellectual potential but is a negative outcome, and frankly it would make the people in charge a lot more money than positive stuff like curing cancer. People are already educated beyond the economies means to employ them. Having them pretend to work while remaining unable to employ them sounds like too much of a free lunch. Who benefits, follow the money, it won't be us. We already have too much intelligence and education to apply to our current economy, making even more structural underemployment isn't going to help. If under the current system there's 20 postdocs living in poverty trying to apply for that one paying job to cure cancer, creating a "fairer" system where 2000 people intellectually capable of being postdocs all living in poverty applying to that one paying job to cure cancer isn't going to provide statistically better results for the cancer curing program although it will make 1980 people highly dis-satisfied with life. Is it worth making 1980 people suffer if the overall program isn't more successful? Even if the program is more successful, which I find unlikely, how much torture of how many people is acceptable in exchange?
- thendrill 6y ago
  I was going to write something but then I started reading your comment. I couldn't agree more, and I couldn't write it better myself. Thank you
- js8 6y ago
  I upvoted you, and leftist in me agrees with you.. but then I am also not so sure. I spent a lot of time in Minecraft and Factorio, managing my virtual house/factory to perfection, while completely forgetting that I could (and in some sense, would love to) learn skills to maintain my apartment (and my parent's house). I often wonder why is that, and I doubt that it is because somebody (or the capitalist system itself) would actively prevent me from engaging in the hobbies that are more grounded to the real world. Lot of it has to do with the perception of freedom, and some of the perception comes from the fact you're not serious about something, and you don't have to deal with other people. So I suspect some (if not most) people are more productive in games precisely because they do not take them too seriously. Maybe in a different economic system, if we take the stress out (and have something like basic income), we could somewhat resolve that problem, but perhaps some component of it would still stay. Also, when you write "achieving their potential", I always remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r, who showed that we might be educating our children very much under their potential. However, his method is extremely time consuming - you would have to be a really dedicated parent to go for it (although understandably economic system might prevent it here as well). Most parents, I believe, do not have the patience for this, so they do not believe it. And many successful computer games (like Minecraft or Factorio) are really environments that are optimized for learning via immersion. So it is somewhat understandable that in the absence of direction for the real world, kids do gravitate towards such environments.
  - WindyLakeReturn 6y ago
    >I often wonder why is that, and I doubt that it is because somebody (or the capitalist system itself) would actively prevent me from engaging in the hobbies that are more grounded to the real world. I've thought about this and have since I was a kid who enjoyed Harvest Moon while not enjoying growing plants in the garden, something my parents didn't hesitate to call attention to. Speaking for myself (but expecting at least some of this to generalize to others) I think there are quite a few factors. * The immediate turn around between work and result. If I want to grow strawberries, I have to wait months from start to finish. In Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley I get results in under an hour. * The ratio between input and output. Strawberries can take many hours of labor over those months, and while I do get strawberries (or money if I sell them) in exchange for it, the overall enjoyment per hour spent is much lower than with virtual strawberries. * The clarity and simplicity of the rules of 'the game'. If I grow real life strawberries, there are many things that can destroy them that I have little knowledge about or that I can stop. Industrial farmers might be able to control for most of these, but as a kid with a family garden I'm at the mercy of these factors. In a game the rules are much simpler and the risks much easier to understand and account for. A game with too many risks for the reward ends up being an unfun game and I can pick a better one, but we are stuck with a single instance of reality. * Ability to avoid what I don't like. Expanding upon the freedom that games offers, I can avoid content I don't like. For example, I don't like spiders. In real life gardening, I can't avoid them. In a game, I can either avoid them or settle for a compromise involving virtual spiders that are simplified to the point they don't activate my phobia. This can even expand to avoiding laws of man (building things virtually that would never pass legal building code) and even laws of nature (building things that would collapse in reality). I don't think economic system plays a major role in these factors. Sure, it is related in a few areas, but even if were to pick the most optimal legal and economic systems I think the end result would still not be as good as a game because of the systems beyond our control which can't be changed.
faitswulff 6y ago
Blockchain is probably doing a lot worse for the world than either game. And intellectual output isn’t fixed - someone might be very productive in Factorio where they might not be in any other pursuit. And for some, cognitive transfer means that playing games will improve their performance in other arenas.
- dnautics 6y ago
  What about high energy physics? You could make an argument that bigger better colliders should wait till engineering makes building and operating them more efficient (like say, wait until space manufacturing).
  - majewsky 6y ago
    Taking the biggest individiual things for both colliders and blockchains, the energy draw of the LHC is absolutely miniscule when compared to Bitcoin (even if we take the most conservative estimates for the latter). I would consider that energy cost justified given the chance of discovering new knowledge about physics that could help in the process of space exploration. The chance that Bitcoin would help with that is really small in comparison, especially when contrasted with its ludicrous energy usage.
  - Stevvo 6y ago
    The obvious reply to this one is the secondary effects are worth it and not 'sapping intellectual potential'. i.e. CERN led to development of the web.
    - dnautics 6y ago
      It was the 70s. How many secondary effects have emerged from colliders in the last, say 20 years? I would say the biggest thing is generation of collimated X-rays for structural biology and materials science, but that was kind of late 90s.
jkhdigital 6y ago
Judging by the comments on that thread, I posit that social media sites like Reddit are sapping the intellectual potential of humanity.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  That presumes that Reddit is visited by intellectuals or thinkers. A pretty big assumption.
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    The same goes for HN, really. /s
MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
The irony of posting this on Reddit: huge. The irony of me replying on HN: priceless.
qsort 6y ago
Does Chess sap the intellectual potential of humanity? Does novel writing sap the intellectual potential of humanity? Does algebraic geometry sap the intellectual potential of humanity? Just let people do whatever they want with their free time. Nerdy hobbies are treated uniquely unfairly in this respect.
- RobertoG 6y ago
  A better answer to this question in reddit is "Does reddit sap the intellectual potencial of humanity?". Imagine if all those people was doing something useful, or myself instead of writing this.
  - travisjungroth 6y ago
    In my personal experience, yes. Absolutely yes. In a way that chess, novels and geometry do not. I think there's a strong correlation (I'll even say causation) for me between spending less time on sites like reddit and sharing/cultivating my own intellectual potential in meaningful ways.
    - hombre_fatal 6y ago
      I think it all comes down to fulfillment. Few of us particularly like how much time we spend on HN/Reddit or go “yeah really glad I’m spending my precious time in this way!” yet we do tend to feel fulfillment from activities like reading a novel or trying to write one or many of the activities we pretend are just the same as playing World or Warcraft and watching Netflix.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - TimTheTinker 6y ago
    Touché. Well played, sir. :-)
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Imagine if people didn't need rest, downtime, brain shut down, or activities outside of work :o I'm a bit snide here; I object to the "hustle" culture where people are guilted or self-flagellating for having downtime. I've seen too many of my excitable colleagues go too far there and end up with burnout, relationship problems, depression, etc. Me, I've been chooching along nicely for the past decade and will need to do so for another three decades in all likelihood, and I'm enjoying my downtime (including playing Factorio) while doing so, instead of postponing it until the magical After.
fuball63 6y ago
The irony of this question is that the OP is concerned about the maximum optimization of "intellectual potential" wasted by people that are seeking maximum optimization of a game system. There is more to life than a feverish march of scientific progress. There's value in wasted time, boredom, and frivolity. Furthermore, I'm certain that current/historic systemic oppression of large swathes of humanity contributes more to "wasted intellectual potential of humanity". And in those cases, it is actually detrimental to the person, whereas a game is usually provides benefit to a person in happiness, relaxation, or challenge.
- kiba 6y ago
  I don't want to spend all my time being slave to productivity goals, yet there are things that worthwhile to work on according to my value. I would like to be efficient. There are time that I decided I don't want to work more in th evening and spend my time intentionally just watching youtube instead. That wasn't procrastination. A game like factorio, I would like to ideally spend maybe 3-4 hours per week. But if I spent like 10,000 hours cumulatively, that might be too much for me. If I spent way too much time on video games, that start to become procrastination.
NoOneNew 6y ago
Anecdotal and speaking in terms of EVE, but I think there is a long term benefit to these types of technical games. I used to have zero idea how, "the markets" worked in my early 20s. No explanation ever "clicked". About 10 years ago, I was introduced to EVE. Played it and mostly played the economic aspect of the game. Later I found out, even though simplified, the economics are based on real world principles. They even have a PhD to monitor the ingame economy. After one or two years of playing, got bored, moved on. I later read something on the stock market and for the most part, I could follow. I decided to re try learning economics. It was a cakewalk. I'm not saying EVE taught me econ, it just made it super easy for me to understand when I tried again to learn it. As intros to complex concepts, I think these kinds of games have long term intellectual value. As long as you understand you only have a cartoon understanding that creates a decent jumping off point to learning the real thing.
- thedanbob 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure I learned the basics of international politics from reading Dune. Sometimes the most effective learning technique is tricking your brain into having fun.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > I'm pretty sure I learned the basics of international politics from reading Dune. Claims like this honestly scare me. It is fiction and thinking it teaches real world politics seriously mixes reality with fantasy.
    - NoOneNew 6y ago
      Unless it's used as a jumping off point to learn the real thing. You have to start somewhere to even care about a subject if you're going to dive into it.
      - watwut 6y ago
        The claim is "learned the basics of international politics". It is not "was inspired to learn about politics". The latter is not scary. The former is.
meheleventyone 6y ago
If it truly was a cause it would be a negligible one versus fighting poverty and discrimination.
kiba 6y ago
I don't play video games as much as I did in my youth, but I must note that the real world is a struggle to learn anything. Games have very tightly designed feedback loop that makes thing fun, while the real world has none of that. I have been trying and failing to cultivate an electrical engineering hobbies various time. Thankfully, I can 'save' my progress in Anki, in so far that I engaged in study. Perhaps this is wrong the approach. I want to be an electronic hobbyist, not possess the knowledge of an electrical engineer, although that is essential.
- korse 6y ago
  You don't really need EE knowledge (the ability to create schematics) to do hobby stuff. You need reasonable tools, (soldering station, multimeter/measurement tool, snips, stripper, tweezers, light and some sort of work holding solution) the ability to read an electrical schematic/match symbols with components, the ability to fully utilize a multimeter (audible continuity anyone) and physical practice. Eventually you may need to operate a very simple CAD program, but this is a last step, not a first. Once you get making, a 3D printer and associated skills can be nice for making enclosures for your projects. Start by looking up schematics for basic fun stuff like DIY audio amplifiers or start even simpler with a joule thief. Read the schematic, translate the symbology into a bill of materials, figure out how to buy your bill of materials from digikey/mouser/amazon and then get to work stitching the pattern together on a solder-able protoboard. It will look like crap at first and probably sound like crap if you made an amp, but at least it will work. Keep doing this and you will gradually build up a stash of 'homie knowledge' similar to 'but if I plug this circuit into this circuit, something cool happens'. Eventually you will have enough knowledge that you can solve some basic problems by building familiar circuit patterns from schematic/memory and tying them together in useful ways. As you practice more, your soldering and protoboard construction will get cleaner and your wire routing will likely improve. This is generally works by the magic of OCD. Eventually, you will get frustrated by the limitations of protoboards and jumper wires. You will want your wiring to be perfect. At this point, you should start messing around with PCB layouts. This is basically just etching wires on a non-conductive substrate. I would recommend starting simple and using a copper sticker and craft knife. Once you get the idea from practical experience, you can find a free PCB layout software tool and start laying out your wires in CAD and having the result fabricated via OSHpark or someone similar. Congratulations, you are now a level 4+ electronics hobbyist.
klmadfejno 6y ago
Whatever harm it does, it can take a ticket in the long line behind war, advertising, financial engineering, tax law, etc. etc.
PicassoCTs 6y ago
What saps the intellectual potential of humanity, is the marathon of horrors. From the first teacher out to extinguish curiosity in his students, for a easy time to the last professor, praising this golden age were all "important" things are discovered. In fact, one thing discoverers have brought to the table in the last century, is the ability to keep a distance to society from the start. Nothing good comes from mingling..
tckerr 6y ago
I think this is the wrong angle from which to ask the question. It's not a problem for "humanity", but it's definitely a problem for some individuals. Some people's lives certainly could be improved if they redirected daily effort towards a skill which reaped real-world benefits. I personally have seen games like Factorio or Minecraft hijack my productive energy in such a way that held me back early in my career.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Since they appeal to complexity fetishists and predatory capitalists respectively, I sure hope so.
zemo 6y ago
this is like asking if exercise saps the fitness potential of humanity
wintermutestwin 6y ago
Surveillance capitalism saps the intellectual potential of humanity. Imagine what we could accomplish if our "best and brightest" were tasked with solving humanity's true problems instead of how to trick people into buying more crap they don't need.
- subjectsigma 6y ago
  Sleep saps the intellectual potential of humanity. Imagine what we could accomplish if our "best and brightest" didn't have to spend 1/3rd of their lives in pseudo-death. Social life saps the intellectual potential of humanity. Imagine what we could accomplish if our "best and brightest" weren't weighed down by thousands of hours in churches, concerts, funerals, bars, and birthday parties. etc, etc
  - temp10298385 6y ago
    Not sure what argument is posed by your rhetorical statements. The original comment lamented the fact that among the most lucrative positions within mathematics and computer science is ultimately tuning models for the purpose of spying on consumers. Be it an phd at Google trying to better categorize target demographics for advertisements or a high level engineer at Amazon trying to figure out what other products to recommend you. It can be argued that sleep and social life are productivity drains. It can also be argued that it is part of a well-rounded life which is key to happiness. A happy individual is likely productive. Even so, it is besides the point. People sleep and socialize because they enjoy it. People don't waste decades of education and experience on gaming consumer behvaiour because its enjoyable however. They do it because it is lucrative. My take on the original comment is that it encourages one to imagine a world where we instead incentivise the best and brightest of our generation to pursue nobler goals than consumer surveillance. It is also a natural response to the top level post. Why worry about video games as a productivity drain when there are far greater structural obstacles to building a better world.
    - subjectsigma 6y ago
      I was being heavily sarcastic. I don't like surveillance capitalism either, but my argument was that this line of reasoning is silly because you can use it to conclude that literally anything is a waste of time or resources. We shouldn't do surveillance capitalism because it sucks, not because everyone has some vague obligation to work on what you think is most important to society. We're agreeing with each other, kind of.
Pet_Ant 6y ago
Aren't most of us under employed? I currently work in a maintenance-only project that hasn't seen really change since Obama's first term. There is not much work here. These give me an outlet to think, problem solve, and express myself.
watwut 6y ago
I loled at this one: > What's Newton's modern equivalent doing right now? Probably perfecting a build order in Stellaris. Newton's modern equivalent is right now doing one of the following: science, technology, programming. Something of that sort.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  You forgot about wallstreet quants
jplr8922 6y ago
Looking back at it, I used to pay factorio too much because my day job was not satisfying. I hated the office politics, and felt in a no-solution situation. After work, my understimulated brain needed a challenge, and this is where the addictive game logic kicks in. In factorio, there is alway something to do to increase the efficiency of the project. No boss to tell you that your ideas were not selected for mysterious reasons, that you you should not be thinking about processes but only about your todolist, no favoritism or special privileges. You are in control. Being convinced that all workplaces were the same and that efforts in the real world were useless, launching that rocket was my redemption. It was a way to send my excess brainpower somewhere.
arithmomachist 6y ago
Quite the opposite: such complicated games are an outlet for creativity and cleverness that's stifled by our repetitive, heavily automated society. Most people don't get to make a movie or conduct a particle accelerator experiment. Even art forms like writing or music that can be done on a shoestring budget are generally a fool's errand. Everyone has a backlog of music to listen to and books to read that would occupy the remainder of their life without anything being added, so it takes marketing savvy and nigh-psychotic dedication to get anyone to pay attention to new work. The popularity of games like Factorio says more about how much intellect and creativity has nowhere to go.
meesterdude 6y ago
i would say of course they can and in many cases do - same for TV shows or drinking with friends or exercising. Everything can be taken to an unhealthy extreme. What about: Do video games like those impact the potential intelligence of a person? the shopify CEO is famous for saying Factorio counts as a business expense.
foxyv 6y ago
The real answer to this question is "Yes." But humanity isn't about optimization for something like intellectual potential. Most of us are just trying to damp down the constant suffering among ourselves and others. Unfortunately our current system is optimized to create suffering and then sell something to damp it down a little. We create extreme stress by attaching huge consequences to the smallest actions. We start with the kids by constantly grading them. Then once they become adults we slam them with financial pressures and advertisements. We give them jobs where if they make a mistake they will end up out on their ear and destitute. We then give them credit so they can feel anxious about not having enough to pay the credit card bill. Then when they eat the crud from the advertisements to feel better they get fat and anxious about that too! Factorio and Eve Online are a small balm for those people who haven't found a way out of that spiral of suffering we call western society. If you want to find the Intellectual Potential of a human being we're going to reach that limit not because of Factorio. Instead it will be because we have forced our children and friends to constantly run on a metaphorical treadmill.
- silicon2401 6y ago
  Do you believe in self-control, agency, accountability, personal responsibility, that kind of thing? Because much of what you mentioned isn't forced on anyone, and your comment overall is oddly despairing to me. > Then once they become adults we slam them with financial pressures and advertisements. What pressures? Buy food and pay your bills? If you're poor that's difficult, but if you're not poor then you don't need to do much nowadays. Pay your rent, utilities, phone, and internet online and you're mostly done. This is only difficult if you're financially illiterate or lack the self control to not make bad financial decisions. Both of these can be improved with studying and practice, though poverty is much more difficult to address > We give them jobs where if they make a mistake they will end up out on their ear and destitute. Again, unless you're already in a difficult place in life, you shouldn't be ending up homeless just because you lost a job. I lived frugally after graduating college and saved money towards an emergency fund rather than getting a flashy new car, a swanky apartment on my own, traveling lavishly. This falls into the same issue of being bad with finances (fixable) or poverty (can be fixable but much more difficult) > We then give them credit so they can feel anxious about not having enough to pay the credit card bill. Who's forcing you to get a credit card? I didn't have one until I was in my late 20s, and even now I only use it as a replacement for my debit card, not to buy stuff I don't have the money for. As a result I've never had an issue with payments or anxiety > Then when they eat the crud from the advertisements to feel better they get fat and anxious about that too! Even if you can't afford netflix or something like that without advertisements, you can always download an adblocker on your phone or laptop. Don't stare at the advertisements on your commute to work. Put some time to craft a food lifestyle and not be so suggestible to advertisement. I opened with questions about accountability and agency because there's a lot we can't control in our world, but almost all of the points you made can be completely controlled by a person, and they all have totally feasible solutions. Unless you're poor, self control and financial literacy pretty much take care of almost everything you mentioned
miga 6y ago
This question was asked whenever young found a new way of amusing themselves. The same was told about penny-thrillers that came with an advent of literacy, and internet discussion groups. It may well be that when we amuse ourselves in new ways, the other activities get less attention. But ultimately our creativity will bring scientific papers about Factorio and Eve Online, just like there are interesting papers about number theory, optimal strategies in Chess, or AI for StarCraft.
recursivedoubts 6y ago
We are richer than ever, far richer than during the renaissance, and one is tempted, when looking around, to ask "well, where is all the great art?" The great art, and artists, are in our video games. Physical art and architecture is sclerotic and adversarial, so the true creative geniuses have been funnelled into the digital.
CivBase 6y ago
My wife is a teacher and, like most people, she sometimes complain about her work. The most common complaint I hear is that students don't pay attention or do their assigned work, then turn around and complain that they haven't learned something or panic at the end of a semester and pester her for ways to improve their grade. Some of them exclaim that they are just too dumb to pass, so they wont even bother trying. When my wife advises these kids, she usually discovers that they have no (or very limited) career or academic aspirations. I bring this up because I think a person's ability (intellectual or otherwise) is usually nurtured by a passion. People with a passion put extra effort into developing the skills required to fulfill that passion. People with no passion simply don't invest the same level of effort and so are sometimes perceived as "dumb" in comparison. One of the ways in which my wife tries to help her students is by helping them find something to be passionate about. She talks to parents/guardians to help discover their passions and often references the Occupational Outlook Handbook to help the students and their guardians figure out what they can do with that passion economically and what to invest the most in academically. I think a person's "intellectual potential" is linked to their passion for a particular academic subject. I also think that intelligence is not a finite resource, but passion is. So when analyzing the opportunity cost of games like Factorio or Eve Online, I think you must consider their effect on a person's passion. If I stopped playing games like Factorio altogether and forced myself to invest all that time into improving my software development skills, I'm confident I would quickly "burn out" - or exhaust my passion for the subject. Rather than "sapping my intellectual potential", I think relaxing with games such as Factorio from time to time allows me to replenish my passion which fuels my intellectual potential. Everything should be enjoyed in moderation of course, but I certainly don't think the existence of games like those is a net negative for humanity.
supergirl 6y ago
I think people that would do something for humanity are not blocked by these games. that kind of people will not get satisfaction from building something virtual so they won’t play that much
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Do games like Factorio or Eve Online sap the intellectual potential of humanity? It uses some. It develops some. The net effect is unclear, but even if there was more available to use without it, the people indulging in it probably wouldn’t be using it in ways the author approves of more even if it wasn’t available, just as is the case with the author’s use of intellectual potential on this question instead of something less futile and more useful to humanity.
balls187 6y ago
No, no more than any other "reward based system" triggers that response. This question assumes people who play a lot of hours of Factorio are somehow more likely to drive innovation than a person who plays hours and hours of Call of Duty.
WindyLakeReturn 6y ago
I think it does, but I also think it sharpens it. I have been helping one kid with a programming class and one thing I've noticed is that they often lack a certain approach to problem solving that I personally developed by playing video games. They also played video games but far fewer and definitely less of the harder problem solving ones. It is entirely possible I liked the games because I already had the talent and the games didn't build the talent, but until we get a definite study on the correlation and causation my bet is going to be on them sharpening the skill. After a certain point it does begin to sap. This is the nature of all entertainment. A few good books can enlighten a mind but too many books can result in someone who reads but never does anything with the knowledge. Even one doing math for fun can end up spending all their time solving math puzzles that are created just to be math puzzles and which don't tie into any greater discoveries. I think this is fine. First, the system is far too hard to control so I don't see any way to improve it that wouldn't wreck the system. Maybe minor suggestions to diversify entertainment a bit and to be sure to share your experiences with a like minded community, but these are small tweaks and not massive overhauls. I also don't think we can predict when something will produce the best results. Even if 9 of every 10 kids who get heavily drawn into math problem solving end up just wasting time solving math problems that exist just for the sake of math problems, that last 1 might get into applying the problem solving to novel fields of math that expand the total knowledge of humanity. If one is too heavy handed in optimizing that they'll risk destroying the ability for that 1 who goes further. I doubt we can be sure that trade off is worth while.
- pedrosorio 6y ago
  > I've noticed is that they often lack a certain approach to problem solving that I personally developed by playing video games What does that consist of?
  - WindyLakeReturn 6y ago
    Ability to divide a problem in smaller problems recursively until you have problems that are more manageable while avoiding being overwhelmed by the overall problem. Anyone who has played a new 4x game blind likely has experienced a sort of information overload that can deter someone from learning the game at all. With experience, I learned to break down the new information and UI into parts that closely match existing experience, with verifying that the match does hold, and then slowly expand my knowledge of each area until I've figured out how to play the game. Often this involves playing against the easy AIs until I have the basics and then working my way up the chain until the level of optimization and understanding ceases to be fun. The same applies to handling a programming problem. Larger problems can involve many smaller problems that are mostly unrelated, but students new to programming can be overwhelmed and mentally shut down because they can't solve the entire problem at once. Once a student learns to break it down into much smaller problems, they can find the ones they know or can easily solve and separate it from the parts of the problem that requires googling around. If a teacher tells them to use a certain library, knowing how to break down the problem into smaller ones helps arrive at the problems that need the library and the ones that don't. Maybe you need to visualize the data, so knowing if it is possible generate and store the data while ignoring the entire visualization until you are ready, knowing how to handle visualizing sample data you create on the spot while ignoring how it should be created, and knowing how to merge these two partial solutions into a larger one can make a daunting problem much more manageable. This is a skill you can learn many ways. Just doing sudoku puzzles can teach a methodology approach to problem solving of solving the bits you know and seeing how that opens up more options. Board games are another great tool that can teach similar approaches. Even a game like Final Fantasy 12 where you can build basic programs your allies follow when fighting can help reinforce concepts like handling edge cases and the computer doing exactly what you specified. Do you keep wiping because you set heals to only happen <20% hp when the boss does 25% hp damage an attack?
k__ 6y ago
I was always a big gamer. All genres, multiple hours a day. But lately I try to avoid games that require too mich thinking and invest my time in work instead. Coding feels like playing a game anyway, so why not getting paid for it.
DoctorNick 6y ago
no, capitalism leads people to live unfulfilling, unchallenging lives and it comes out in weird ways.
karlicoss 6y ago
I feel like 'sap' is maybe a bit strong of a word here which might trigger many people. I think that we shouldn't judge others' hobbies on some intellectual basis and that people need some downtime and rest. It's fine to play chess, or improvise on a musical instrument or go clubbing without thinking whether it benefits the humanity. Also I don't think it has to be restricted to 'obsessive tinkerer' games. You can make something cool in the 'real world' or learn more without being an engineer. Arguably tinkerer games or even chess are not any better in this respect than, say, call of duty, or some casual platformer. If I was asking the same question, I'd ask "how can we make 'real word' activities as entertaining and rewarding as games". To elaborate: I program a lot in my free time, I love building stuff, it's very rewarding when you reach milestones and do progress. On the other hand very often it's kinda meh. You know what you need to do, but then you spend massive amounts of time actually achieving it. You can easily spend hours and days debugging some crap, which results in a one-liner fix. This is not fun at all, it completely sucks! Compare this to a dopamine train while playing Minecraft or SimCity or Civilisation where you're doing steady progress all the time. I can completely understand people who prefer video games to building things. But at least I know that I'm doing something that has never been done before, it will be useful for me later and other people so it wasn't all for nothing. In comparison, after playing video games all I feel is regret is that I'll never get this time back. I'd imagine it's similar with many other 'real world' things. It's hard to push the boundaries of what you know or capable of, so brains resist it.. in comparison playing a video game is usually fun and easy since you know the drill.
tekromancr 6y ago
Wow, imagine thinking you are REQUIRED to put your intellectual energy into labor in order to make wealthy people wealthier... truly wild.
danaliv 6y ago
More productivity for the productivity god! Produce, produce, produce!
Borrible 6y ago
If humanity wants it badly enough, she can buy it. Considering the general waste of human ressources worldwide, I don't think she herself thinks she is in dire need of a higher intellectual potential. That may change at the moment of 'peak human'. With shrinking population, the then existing unused intellectual potential and others may be higher valued. Of course, just in case artificial intelligence and creativity are not more cost effective and profitable than the human one.
stereolambda 6y ago
At times, I've used to be a productivity nerd with elaborate systems (now I mostly rely on experience and common sense) and also I've spent many months cumulatively on gaming and "unproductive" endeavors. Today maybe I'm not doing anything sure-fire revolutionary, but I'm okay with my work, and I don't have to view my day job as the most meaningful part. The real life is often structured in such a way that there's little reward for (more) work. And your official position and environment matters so, so much. It's quite hard to get into many academic/industrial places where something actually happens, especially if you didn't spend your whole life checking the specific boxes expected by hiring committees for that particular domain. I would say this is the biggest block, when we raise that OP question. I'd also say it may be good, if you can, to spend some time detaching your mind from your local environment. Then you may be in a better mental state to make larger decisions about where to direct your time and effort. In my experience (and also my friends') there is a big threshold when you finally exit academia and your decisions suddenly start to matter, you aren't dependent on one bureaucracy etc. Although I'd advise to milk your studies for the credentials you can get. Maybe I've learned some resource management (it's brutal in NetHack) and such from games, but in truth I don't know.
RhodoGSA 6y ago
There's two things here that seem to be competing with eachother. A life well lived and the economic fecundity of a life. Two very separate things and only sometimes do they cross. Playing a single video game obsessively is bad for both. If you dabbled in many different creative and technical pursuits, you'd probably be happier than spending 10 hours reoptimizing your factorio line if you learned to speak spanish, play the sax and knew how to code in python. Learning in real life, without the immediate feedback of a game is harder for sure, but more rewarding in the end. However, you should never look at your time spent in the lens of economic fecundity for 'Others'. that never ends well.
RicoElectrico 6y ago
My friend is an IC layout engineer. He really enjoys Factorio. I'd say he excels at both.
arrosenberg 6y ago
Nahhh, I reject the hypothesis. Escapism has always popped up as an intellectual distraction during stressful or stagnant times. It's nothing about Factorio or Eve specifically, other than they are well designed to scratch certain itches. Present someone with a real world challenge to scratch that itch and they'll take it.
decasteve 6y ago
Gandhi's take on the "bread-labour" idea via Tolstoy/Bondarev puts a better perspective on issues of intellect. Bread-labour being the physical labours involved in the direct sustainment of human life. Based on their insights, I think that if we're privileged enough to live without worry of the basics needs of human life, and make our livelihoods on intellect alone, then that comes at the expense of humanity's potential for equality. If this is what is happening, then engaging some of our time in bread-labour becomes a concrete way to combat inequality.
sktrdie 6y ago
I understand the point of the post but what is “intellectual potential” really? Even if we’re discussing helping humanity as a whole, what does “helping” mean? Maybe we want to make society better, say by helping everyone involved to live the best lives they could possibly live, but this is also a quite vague and subjective concept. What I’m trying to say is that a fulfilling life is something that changes per individual. Perhaps a less-scientific and more art-driven society is preferable and would result in a much more enjoyable life for specific individuals. Others might prefer the complete opposite. For instance I want to go to the stars and conquer different worlds because I feel that a life worth living means exploring the unknown. But I also understand that using our resources to reach for the stars might also exploit some other parts of society in a negative way. So who’s to say that playing a video game that fulfils your needs is less valuable than doing anything else? Life is beautiful because it’s diverse. Let the billions of variables coalesce and generate an existence that fulfils the needs of the people that live it. Sure you can push the needle in a specific direction (like scientific research) but the variables are so many and the individuals so diverse that it’s hard to contemplate a formula that would work at scale for everyone. Instead of concentrating on the intellectual potential I would argue that “diversity” is a much more important variable. Life thrives in diverse conditions - we see this in how important biodiversity is for ecosystems (like plants). I think the same concept also applies for intellect.
bullen 6y ago
3D MMO action game engines are the final medium. The game of building games is the last revolution. All other potential has been discovered and most of it has been or will be discarded because of thermodynamics.
RobLach 6y ago
Foolishly presumptuous that the emergent culture from these interactive spaces isn’t an amazing realization of intellectual potential instead of a dismissive “waste of time”. I suppose it’s difficult to step back and analyze things beyond their purely productive economic utility and appropriately judge its value in the grand scheme.
dang 6y ago
It looks like this started as an HN comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26706821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26706821) and then made it to Reddit and back to HN in this format. Can you please not do that? We're trying to avoid repetitive/recycled/copy-pasted discussions here. I wouldn't normally post something like this, but it seems to be a bit of a pattern: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26686767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26686767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26411589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26411589
dw-im-here 5y ago
No

87 points by optimalsolver 6y ago

If you can even begin to measure "sap[ping] the intellectual potential of humanity" then we should be talking about the most pointless brain-drain of our age - thousands of the most highly talented technical minds all being relegated to serving increasingly targeted ads. Yes there is a huge economic incentive for these individuals to pursue this work, but I don't think its a stretch to say it cant be benefitting humanity overall in any real useful way.

VLM 6y ago

The current economic system prevents virtually everyone in the system other than a few at the top of the pyramid from achieving their potential. How much extra money will the people at the top centrally controlling everything make if, for example, your plumber is a more intellectually well rounded individual? Possibly a negative amount of money. So the plumber plays modded minecraft. Some of the reddit apologists claim telecommunications will free us all, but its mostly bringing us purity spirals, cancel culture, and identity politics. If political demographic membership is more important than programming skill, such that a skilled programmer cannot be hired, that person should grind survival rations at walmart and play factorio for recreation. There's the optimistic view that maximizing intellectual potential means curing cancer and living on mars. But the people currently at the top make a lot of money off cancer, and won't make any money off mars, but we do know "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." so in that pessimistic sense I'm glad our propaganda driven prison is not as optimized as it could be. Unleashing autonomous walking AI robots to randomly kill people in the middle east to make oil cheaper would require amazing intellectual potential but is a negative outcome, and frankly it would make the people in charge a lot more money than positive stuff like curing cancer. People are already educated beyond the economies means to employ them. Having them pretend to work while remaining unable to employ them sounds like too much of a free lunch. Who benefits, follow the money, it won't be us. We already have too much intelligence and education to apply to our current economy, making even more structural underemployment isn't going to help. If under the current system there's 20 postdocs living in poverty trying to apply for that one paying job to cure cancer, creating a "fairer" system where 2000 people intellectually capable of being postdocs all living in poverty applying to that one paying job to cure cancer isn't going to provide statistically better results for the cancer curing program although it will make 1980 people highly dis-satisfied with life. Is it worth making 1980 people suffer if the overall program isn't more successful? Even if the program is more successful, which I find unlikely, how much torture of how many people is acceptable in exchange?

thendrill 6y ago
I was going to write something but then I started reading your comment. I couldn't agree more, and I couldn't write it better myself. Thank you
js8 6y ago
I upvoted you, and leftist in me agrees with you.. but then I am also not so sure. I spent a lot of time in Minecraft and Factorio, managing my virtual house/factory to perfection, while completely forgetting that I could (and in some sense, would love to) learn skills to maintain my apartment (and my parent's house). I often wonder why is that, and I doubt that it is because somebody (or the capitalist system itself) would actively prevent me from engaging in the hobbies that are more grounded to the real world. Lot of it has to do with the perception of freedom, and some of the perception comes from the fact you're not serious about something, and you don't have to deal with other people. So I suspect some (if not most) people are more productive in games precisely because they do not take them too seriously. Maybe in a different economic system, if we take the stress out (and have something like basic income), we could somewhat resolve that problem, but perhaps some component of it would still stay. Also, when you write "achieving their potential", I always remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r, who showed that we might be educating our children very much under their potential. However, his method is extremely time consuming - you would have to be a really dedicated parent to go for it (although understandably economic system might prevent it here as well). Most parents, I believe, do not have the patience for this, so they do not believe it. And many successful computer games (like Minecraft or Factorio) are really environments that are optimized for learning via immersion. So it is somewhat understandable that in the absence of direction for the real world, kids do gravitate towards such environments.
- WindyLakeReturn 6y ago
  >I often wonder why is that, and I doubt that it is because somebody (or the capitalist system itself) would actively prevent me from engaging in the hobbies that are more grounded to the real world. I've thought about this and have since I was a kid who enjoyed Harvest Moon while not enjoying growing plants in the garden, something my parents didn't hesitate to call attention to. Speaking for myself (but expecting at least some of this to generalize to others) I think there are quite a few factors. * The immediate turn around between work and result. If I want to grow strawberries, I have to wait months from start to finish. In Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley I get results in under an hour. * The ratio between input and output. Strawberries can take many hours of labor over those months, and while I do get strawberries (or money if I sell them) in exchange for it, the overall enjoyment per hour spent is much lower than with virtual strawberries. * The clarity and simplicity of the rules of 'the game'. If I grow real life strawberries, there are many things that can destroy them that I have little knowledge about or that I can stop. Industrial farmers might be able to control for most of these, but as a kid with a family garden I'm at the mercy of these factors. In a game the rules are much simpler and the risks much easier to understand and account for. A game with too many risks for the reward ends up being an unfun game and I can pick a better one, but we are stuck with a single instance of reality. * Ability to avoid what I don't like. Expanding upon the freedom that games offers, I can avoid content I don't like. For example, I don't like spiders. In real life gardening, I can't avoid them. In a game, I can either avoid them or settle for a compromise involving virtual spiders that are simplified to the point they don't activate my phobia. This can even expand to avoiding laws of man (building things virtually that would never pass legal building code) and even laws of nature (building things that would collapse in reality). I don't think economic system plays a major role in these factors. Sure, it is related in a few areas, but even if were to pick the most optimal legal and economic systems I think the end result would still not be as good as a game because of the systems beyond our control which can't be changed.

faitswulff 6y ago

Blockchain is probably doing a lot worse for the world than either game. And intellectual output isn’t fixed - someone might be very productive in Factorio where they might not be in any other pursuit. And for some, cognitive transfer means that playing games will improve their performance in other arenas.

dnautics 6y ago
What about high energy physics? You could make an argument that bigger better colliders should wait till engineering makes building and operating them more efficient (like say, wait until space manufacturing).
- majewsky 6y ago
  Taking the biggest individiual things for both colliders and blockchains, the energy draw of the LHC is absolutely miniscule when compared to Bitcoin (even if we take the most conservative estimates for the latter). I would consider that energy cost justified given the chance of discovering new knowledge about physics that could help in the process of space exploration. The chance that Bitcoin would help with that is really small in comparison, especially when contrasted with its ludicrous energy usage.
- Stevvo 6y ago
  The obvious reply to this one is the secondary effects are worth it and not 'sapping intellectual potential'. i.e. CERN led to development of the web.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    It was the 70s. How many secondary effects have emerged from colliders in the last, say 20 years? I would say the biggest thing is generation of collimated X-rays for structural biology and materials science, but that was kind of late 90s.

jkhdigital 6y ago

Judging by the comments on that thread, I posit that social media sites like Reddit are sapping the intellectual potential of humanity.

ekianjo 6y ago
That presumes that Reddit is visited by intellectuals or thinkers. A pretty big assumption.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  The same goes for HN, really. /s

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago

The irony of posting this on Reddit: huge. The irony of me replying on HN: priceless.

qsort 6y ago

Does Chess sap the intellectual potential of humanity? Does novel writing sap the intellectual potential of humanity? Does algebraic geometry sap the intellectual potential of humanity? Just let people do whatever they want with their free time. Nerdy hobbies are treated uniquely unfairly in this respect.

RobertoG 6y ago
A better answer to this question in reddit is "Does reddit sap the intellectual potencial of humanity?". Imagine if all those people was doing something useful, or myself instead of writing this.
- travisjungroth 6y ago
  In my personal experience, yes. Absolutely yes. In a way that chess, novels and geometry do not. I think there's a strong correlation (I'll even say causation) for me between spending less time on sites like reddit and sharing/cultivating my own intellectual potential in meaningful ways.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    I think it all comes down to fulfillment. Few of us particularly like how much time we spend on HN/Reddit or go “yeah really glad I’m spending my precious time in this way!” yet we do tend to feel fulfillment from activities like reading a novel or trying to write one or many of the activities we pretend are just the same as playing World or Warcraft and watching Netflix.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  Touché. Well played, sir. :-)
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Imagine if people didn't need rest, downtime, brain shut down, or activities outside of work :o I'm a bit snide here; I object to the "hustle" culture where people are guilted or self-flagellating for having downtime. I've seen too many of my excitable colleagues go too far there and end up with burnout, relationship problems, depression, etc. Me, I've been chooching along nicely for the past decade and will need to do so for another three decades in all likelihood, and I'm enjoying my downtime (including playing Factorio) while doing so, instead of postponing it until the magical After.

fuball63 6y ago

The irony of this question is that the OP is concerned about the maximum optimization of "intellectual potential" wasted by people that are seeking maximum optimization of a game system. There is more to life than a feverish march of scientific progress. There's value in wasted time, boredom, and frivolity. Furthermore, I'm certain that current/historic systemic oppression of large swathes of humanity contributes more to "wasted intellectual potential of humanity". And in those cases, it is actually detrimental to the person, whereas a game is usually provides benefit to a person in happiness, relaxation, or challenge.

kiba 6y ago
I don't want to spend all my time being slave to productivity goals, yet there are things that worthwhile to work on according to my value. I would like to be efficient. There are time that I decided I don't want to work more in th evening and spend my time intentionally just watching youtube instead. That wasn't procrastination. A game like factorio, I would like to ideally spend maybe 3-4 hours per week. But if I spent like 10,000 hours cumulatively, that might be too much for me. If I spent way too much time on video games, that start to become procrastination.

NoOneNew 6y ago

Anecdotal and speaking in terms of EVE, but I think there is a long term benefit to these types of technical games. I used to have zero idea how, "the markets" worked in my early 20s. No explanation ever "clicked". About 10 years ago, I was introduced to EVE. Played it and mostly played the economic aspect of the game. Later I found out, even though simplified, the economics are based on real world principles. They even have a PhD to monitor the ingame economy. After one or two years of playing, got bored, moved on. I later read something on the stock market and for the most part, I could follow. I decided to re try learning economics. It was a cakewalk. I'm not saying EVE taught me econ, it just made it super easy for me to understand when I tried again to learn it. As intros to complex concepts, I think these kinds of games have long term intellectual value. As long as you understand you only have a cartoon understanding that creates a decent jumping off point to learning the real thing.

thedanbob 6y ago
I'm pretty sure I learned the basics of international politics from reading Dune. Sometimes the most effective learning technique is tricking your brain into having fun.
- watwut 6y ago
  > I'm pretty sure I learned the basics of international politics from reading Dune. Claims like this honestly scare me. It is fiction and thinking it teaches real world politics seriously mixes reality with fantasy.
  - NoOneNew 6y ago
    Unless it's used as a jumping off point to learn the real thing. You have to start somewhere to even care about a subject if you're going to dive into it.
    - watwut 6y ago
      The claim is "learned the basics of international politics". It is not "was inspired to learn about politics". The latter is not scary. The former is.

meheleventyone 6y ago

If it truly was a cause it would be a negligible one versus fighting poverty and discrimination.

kiba 6y ago

I don't play video games as much as I did in my youth, but I must note that the real world is a struggle to learn anything. Games have very tightly designed feedback loop that makes thing fun, while the real world has none of that. I have been trying and failing to cultivate an electrical engineering hobbies various time. Thankfully, I can 'save' my progress in Anki, in so far that I engaged in study. Perhaps this is wrong the approach. I want to be an electronic hobbyist, not possess the knowledge of an electrical engineer, although that is essential.

korse 6y ago
You don't really need EE knowledge (the ability to create schematics) to do hobby stuff. You need reasonable tools, (soldering station, multimeter/measurement tool, snips, stripper, tweezers, light and some sort of work holding solution) the ability to read an electrical schematic/match symbols with components, the ability to fully utilize a multimeter (audible continuity anyone) and physical practice. Eventually you may need to operate a very simple CAD program, but this is a last step, not a first. Once you get making, a 3D printer and associated skills can be nice for making enclosures for your projects. Start by looking up schematics for basic fun stuff like DIY audio amplifiers or start even simpler with a joule thief. Read the schematic, translate the symbology into a bill of materials, figure out how to buy your bill of materials from digikey/mouser/amazon and then get to work stitching the pattern together on a solder-able protoboard. It will look like crap at first and probably sound like crap if you made an amp, but at least it will work. Keep doing this and you will gradually build up a stash of 'homie knowledge' similar to 'but if I plug this circuit into this circuit, something cool happens'. Eventually you will have enough knowledge that you can solve some basic problems by building familiar circuit patterns from schematic/memory and tying them together in useful ways. As you practice more, your soldering and protoboard construction will get cleaner and your wire routing will likely improve. This is generally works by the magic of OCD. Eventually, you will get frustrated by the limitations of protoboards and jumper wires. You will want your wiring to be perfect. At this point, you should start messing around with PCB layouts. This is basically just etching wires on a non-conductive substrate. I would recommend starting simple and using a copper sticker and craft knife. Once you get the idea from practical experience, you can find a free PCB layout software tool and start laying out your wires in CAD and having the result fabricated via OSHpark or someone similar. Congratulations, you are now a level 4+ electronics hobbyist.

klmadfejno 6y ago

Whatever harm it does, it can take a ticket in the long line behind war, advertising, financial engineering, tax law, etc. etc.

PicassoCTs 6y ago

What saps the intellectual potential of humanity, is the marathon of horrors. From the first teacher out to extinguish curiosity in his students, for a easy time to the last professor, praising this golden age were all "important" things are discovered. In fact, one thing discoverers have brought to the table in the last century, is the ability to keep a distance to society from the start. Nothing good comes from mingling..

tckerr 6y ago

I think this is the wrong angle from which to ask the question. It's not a problem for "humanity", but it's definitely a problem for some individuals. Some people's lives certainly could be improved if they redirected daily effort towards a skill which reaped real-world benefits. I personally have seen games like Factorio or Minecraft hijack my productive energy in such a way that held me back early in my career.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

Since they appeal to complexity fetishists and predatory capitalists respectively, I sure hope so.

zemo 6y ago

this is like asking if exercise saps the fitness potential of humanity

wintermutestwin 6y ago

Surveillance capitalism saps the intellectual potential of humanity. Imagine what we could accomplish if our "best and brightest" were tasked with solving humanity's true problems instead of how to trick people into buying more crap they don't need.

subjectsigma 6y ago
Sleep saps the intellectual potential of humanity. Imagine what we could accomplish if our "best and brightest" didn't have to spend 1/3rd of their lives in pseudo-death. Social life saps the intellectual potential of humanity. Imagine what we could accomplish if our "best and brightest" weren't weighed down by thousands of hours in churches, concerts, funerals, bars, and birthday parties. etc, etc
- temp10298385 6y ago
  Not sure what argument is posed by your rhetorical statements. The original comment lamented the fact that among the most lucrative positions within mathematics and computer science is ultimately tuning models for the purpose of spying on consumers. Be it an phd at Google trying to better categorize target demographics for advertisements or a high level engineer at Amazon trying to figure out what other products to recommend you. It can be argued that sleep and social life are productivity drains. It can also be argued that it is part of a well-rounded life which is key to happiness. A happy individual is likely productive. Even so, it is besides the point. People sleep and socialize because they enjoy it. People don't waste decades of education and experience on gaming consumer behvaiour because its enjoyable however. They do it because it is lucrative. My take on the original comment is that it encourages one to imagine a world where we instead incentivise the best and brightest of our generation to pursue nobler goals than consumer surveillance. It is also a natural response to the top level post. Why worry about video games as a productivity drain when there are far greater structural obstacles to building a better world.
  - subjectsigma 6y ago
    I was being heavily sarcastic. I don't like surveillance capitalism either, but my argument was that this line of reasoning is silly because you can use it to conclude that literally anything is a waste of time or resources. We shouldn't do surveillance capitalism because it sucks, not because everyone has some vague obligation to work on what you think is most important to society. We're agreeing with each other, kind of.

Pet_Ant 6y ago

Aren't most of us under employed? I currently work in a maintenance-only project that hasn't seen really change since Obama's first term. There is not much work here. These give me an outlet to think, problem solve, and express myself.

watwut 6y ago

I loled at this one: > What's Newton's modern equivalent doing right now? Probably perfecting a build order in Stellaris. Newton's modern equivalent is right now doing one of the following: science, technology, programming. Something of that sort.

aidenn0 6y ago
You forgot about wallstreet quants

jplr8922 6y ago

Looking back at it, I used to pay factorio too much because my day job was not satisfying. I hated the office politics, and felt in a no-solution situation. After work, my understimulated brain needed a challenge, and this is where the addictive game logic kicks in. In factorio, there is alway something to do to increase the efficiency of the project. No boss to tell you that your ideas were not selected for mysterious reasons, that you you should not be thinking about processes but only about your todolist, no favoritism or special privileges. You are in control. Being convinced that all workplaces were the same and that efforts in the real world were useless, launching that rocket was my redemption. It was a way to send my excess brainpower somewhere.

arithmomachist 6y ago

Quite the opposite: such complicated games are an outlet for creativity and cleverness that's stifled by our repetitive, heavily automated society. Most people don't get to make a movie or conduct a particle accelerator experiment. Even art forms like writing or music that can be done on a shoestring budget are generally a fool's errand. Everyone has a backlog of music to listen to and books to read that would occupy the remainder of their life without anything being added, so it takes marketing savvy and nigh-psychotic dedication to get anyone to pay attention to new work. The popularity of games like Factorio says more about how much intellect and creativity has nowhere to go.

meesterdude 6y ago

i would say of course they can and in many cases do - same for TV shows or drinking with friends or exercising. Everything can be taken to an unhealthy extreme. What about: Do video games like those impact the potential intelligence of a person? the shopify CEO is famous for saying Factorio counts as a business expense.

foxyv 6y ago

The real answer to this question is "Yes." But humanity isn't about optimization for something like intellectual potential. Most of us are just trying to damp down the constant suffering among ourselves and others. Unfortunately our current system is optimized to create suffering and then sell something to damp it down a little. We create extreme stress by attaching huge consequences to the smallest actions. We start with the kids by constantly grading them. Then once they become adults we slam them with financial pressures and advertisements. We give them jobs where if they make a mistake they will end up out on their ear and destitute. We then give them credit so they can feel anxious about not having enough to pay the credit card bill. Then when they eat the crud from the advertisements to feel better they get fat and anxious about that too! Factorio and Eve Online are a small balm for those people who haven't found a way out of that spiral of suffering we call western society. If you want to find the Intellectual Potential of a human being we're going to reach that limit not because of Factorio. Instead it will be because we have forced our children and friends to constantly run on a metaphorical treadmill.

silicon2401 6y ago
Do you believe in self-control, agency, accountability, personal responsibility, that kind of thing? Because much of what you mentioned isn't forced on anyone, and your comment overall is oddly despairing to me. > Then once they become adults we slam them with financial pressures and advertisements. What pressures? Buy food and pay your bills? If you're poor that's difficult, but if you're not poor then you don't need to do much nowadays. Pay your rent, utilities, phone, and internet online and you're mostly done. This is only difficult if you're financially illiterate or lack the self control to not make bad financial decisions. Both of these can be improved with studying and practice, though poverty is much more difficult to address > We give them jobs where if they make a mistake they will end up out on their ear and destitute. Again, unless you're already in a difficult place in life, you shouldn't be ending up homeless just because you lost a job. I lived frugally after graduating college and saved money towards an emergency fund rather than getting a flashy new car, a swanky apartment on my own, traveling lavishly. This falls into the same issue of being bad with finances (fixable) or poverty (can be fixable but much more difficult) > We then give them credit so they can feel anxious about not having enough to pay the credit card bill. Who's forcing you to get a credit card? I didn't have one until I was in my late 20s, and even now I only use it as a replacement for my debit card, not to buy stuff I don't have the money for. As a result I've never had an issue with payments or anxiety > Then when they eat the crud from the advertisements to feel better they get fat and anxious about that too! Even if you can't afford netflix or something like that without advertisements, you can always download an adblocker on your phone or laptop. Don't stare at the advertisements on your commute to work. Put some time to craft a food lifestyle and not be so suggestible to advertisement. I opened with questions about accountability and agency because there's a lot we can't control in our world, but almost all of the points you made can be completely controlled by a person, and they all have totally feasible solutions. Unless you're poor, self control and financial literacy pretty much take care of almost everything you mentioned

miga 6y ago

This question was asked whenever young found a new way of amusing themselves. The same was told about penny-thrillers that came with an advent of literacy, and internet discussion groups. It may well be that when we amuse ourselves in new ways, the other activities get less attention. But ultimately our creativity will bring scientific papers about Factorio and Eve Online, just like there are interesting papers about number theory, optimal strategies in Chess, or AI for StarCraft.

recursivedoubts 6y ago

We are richer than ever, far richer than during the renaissance, and one is tempted, when looking around, to ask "well, where is all the great art?" The great art, and artists, are in our video games. Physical art and architecture is sclerotic and adversarial, so the true creative geniuses have been funnelled into the digital.

CivBase 6y ago

My wife is a teacher and, like most people, she sometimes complain about her work. The most common complaint I hear is that students don't pay attention or do their assigned work, then turn around and complain that they haven't learned something or panic at the end of a semester and pester her for ways to improve their grade. Some of them exclaim that they are just too dumb to pass, so they wont even bother trying. When my wife advises these kids, she usually discovers that they have no (or very limited) career or academic aspirations. I bring this up because I think a person's ability (intellectual or otherwise) is usually nurtured by a passion. People with a passion put extra effort into developing the skills required to fulfill that passion. People with no passion simply don't invest the same level of effort and so are sometimes perceived as "dumb" in comparison. One of the ways in which my wife tries to help her students is by helping them find something to be passionate about. She talks to parents/guardians to help discover their passions and often references the Occupational Outlook Handbook to help the students and their guardians figure out what they can do with that passion economically and what to invest the most in academically. I think a person's "intellectual potential" is linked to their passion for a particular academic subject. I also think that intelligence is not a finite resource, but passion is. So when analyzing the opportunity cost of games like Factorio or Eve Online, I think you must consider their effect on a person's passion. If I stopped playing games like Factorio altogether and forced myself to invest all that time into improving my software development skills, I'm confident I would quickly "burn out" - or exhaust my passion for the subject. Rather than "sapping my intellectual potential", I think relaxing with games such as Factorio from time to time allows me to replenish my passion which fuels my intellectual potential. Everything should be enjoyed in moderation of course, but I certainly don't think the existence of games like those is a net negative for humanity.

supergirl 6y ago

I think people that would do something for humanity are not blocked by these games. that kind of people will not get satisfaction from building something virtual so they won’t play that much

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Do games like Factorio or Eve Online sap the intellectual potential of humanity? It uses some. It develops some. The net effect is unclear, but even if there was more available to use without it, the people indulging in it probably wouldn’t be using it in ways the author approves of more even if it wasn’t available, just as is the case with the author’s use of intellectual potential on this question instead of something less futile and more useful to humanity.

balls187 6y ago

No, no more than any other "reward based system" triggers that response. This question assumes people who play a lot of hours of Factorio are somehow more likely to drive innovation than a person who plays hours and hours of Call of Duty.

WindyLakeReturn 6y ago

I think it does, but I also think it sharpens it. I have been helping one kid with a programming class and one thing I've noticed is that they often lack a certain approach to problem solving that I personally developed by playing video games. They also played video games but far fewer and definitely less of the harder problem solving ones. It is entirely possible I liked the games because I already had the talent and the games didn't build the talent, but until we get a definite study on the correlation and causation my bet is going to be on them sharpening the skill. After a certain point it does begin to sap. This is the nature of all entertainment. A few good books can enlighten a mind but too many books can result in someone who reads but never does anything with the knowledge. Even one doing math for fun can end up spending all their time solving math puzzles that are created just to be math puzzles and which don't tie into any greater discoveries. I think this is fine. First, the system is far too hard to control so I don't see any way to improve it that wouldn't wreck the system. Maybe minor suggestions to diversify entertainment a bit and to be sure to share your experiences with a like minded community, but these are small tweaks and not massive overhauls. I also don't think we can predict when something will produce the best results. Even if 9 of every 10 kids who get heavily drawn into math problem solving end up just wasting time solving math problems that exist just for the sake of math problems, that last 1 might get into applying the problem solving to novel fields of math that expand the total knowledge of humanity. If one is too heavy handed in optimizing that they'll risk destroying the ability for that 1 who goes further. I doubt we can be sure that trade off is worth while.

pedrosorio 6y ago
> I've noticed is that they often lack a certain approach to problem solving that I personally developed by playing video games What does that consist of?
- WindyLakeReturn 6y ago
  Ability to divide a problem in smaller problems recursively until you have problems that are more manageable while avoiding being overwhelmed by the overall problem. Anyone who has played a new 4x game blind likely has experienced a sort of information overload that can deter someone from learning the game at all. With experience, I learned to break down the new information and UI into parts that closely match existing experience, with verifying that the match does hold, and then slowly expand my knowledge of each area until I've figured out how to play the game. Often this involves playing against the easy AIs until I have the basics and then working my way up the chain until the level of optimization and understanding ceases to be fun. The same applies to handling a programming problem. Larger problems can involve many smaller problems that are mostly unrelated, but students new to programming can be overwhelmed and mentally shut down because they can't solve the entire problem at once. Once a student learns to break it down into much smaller problems, they can find the ones they know or can easily solve and separate it from the parts of the problem that requires googling around. If a teacher tells them to use a certain library, knowing how to break down the problem into smaller ones helps arrive at the problems that need the library and the ones that don't. Maybe you need to visualize the data, so knowing if it is possible generate and store the data while ignoring the entire visualization until you are ready, knowing how to handle visualizing sample data you create on the spot while ignoring how it should be created, and knowing how to merge these two partial solutions into a larger one can make a daunting problem much more manageable. This is a skill you can learn many ways. Just doing sudoku puzzles can teach a methodology approach to problem solving of solving the bits you know and seeing how that opens up more options. Board games are another great tool that can teach similar approaches. Even a game like Final Fantasy 12 where you can build basic programs your allies follow when fighting can help reinforce concepts like handling edge cases and the computer doing exactly what you specified. Do you keep wiping because you set heals to only happen <20% hp when the boss does 25% hp damage an attack?

k__ 6y ago

I was always a big gamer. All genres, multiple hours a day. But lately I try to avoid games that require too mich thinking and invest my time in work instead. Coding feels like playing a game anyway, so why not getting paid for it.

DoctorNick 6y ago

no, capitalism leads people to live unfulfilling, unchallenging lives and it comes out in weird ways.

karlicoss 6y ago

I feel like 'sap' is maybe a bit strong of a word here which might trigger many people. I think that we shouldn't judge others' hobbies on some intellectual basis and that people need some downtime and rest. It's fine to play chess, or improvise on a musical instrument or go clubbing without thinking whether it benefits the humanity. Also I don't think it has to be restricted to 'obsessive tinkerer' games. You can make something cool in the 'real world' or learn more without being an engineer. Arguably tinkerer games or even chess are not any better in this respect than, say, call of duty, or some casual platformer. If I was asking the same question, I'd ask "how can we make 'real word' activities as entertaining and rewarding as games". To elaborate: I program a lot in my free time, I love building stuff, it's very rewarding when you reach milestones and do progress. On the other hand very often it's kinda meh. You know what you need to do, but then you spend massive amounts of time actually achieving it. You can easily spend hours and days debugging some crap, which results in a one-liner fix. This is not fun at all, it completely sucks! Compare this to a dopamine train while playing Minecraft or SimCity or Civilisation where you're doing steady progress all the time. I can completely understand people who prefer video games to building things. But at least I know that I'm doing something that has never been done before, it will be useful for me later and other people so it wasn't all for nothing. In comparison, after playing video games all I feel is regret is that I'll never get this time back. I'd imagine it's similar with many other 'real world' things. It's hard to push the boundaries of what you know or capable of, so brains resist it.. in comparison playing a video game is usually fun and easy since you know the drill.

tekromancr 6y ago

Wow, imagine thinking you are REQUIRED to put your intellectual energy into labor in order to make wealthy people wealthier... truly wild.

danaliv 6y ago

More productivity for the productivity god! Produce, produce, produce!

Borrible 6y ago

If humanity wants it badly enough, she can buy it. Considering the general waste of human ressources worldwide, I don't think she herself thinks she is in dire need of a higher intellectual potential. That may change at the moment of 'peak human'. With shrinking population, the then existing unused intellectual potential and others may be higher valued. Of course, just in case artificial intelligence and creativity are not more cost effective and profitable than the human one.

stereolambda 6y ago

At times, I've used to be a productivity nerd with elaborate systems (now I mostly rely on experience and common sense) and also I've spent many months cumulatively on gaming and "unproductive" endeavors. Today maybe I'm not doing anything sure-fire revolutionary, but I'm okay with my work, and I don't have to view my day job as the most meaningful part. The real life is often structured in such a way that there's little reward for (more) work. And your official position and environment matters so, so much. It's quite hard to get into many academic/industrial places where something actually happens, especially if you didn't spend your whole life checking the specific boxes expected by hiring committees for that particular domain. I would say this is the biggest block, when we raise that OP question. I'd also say it may be good, if you can, to spend some time detaching your mind from your local environment. Then you may be in a better mental state to make larger decisions about where to direct your time and effort. In my experience (and also my friends') there is a big threshold when you finally exit academia and your decisions suddenly start to matter, you aren't dependent on one bureaucracy etc. Although I'd advise to milk your studies for the credentials you can get. Maybe I've learned some resource management (it's brutal in NetHack) and such from games, but in truth I don't know.

RhodoGSA 6y ago

There's two things here that seem to be competing with eachother. A life well lived and the economic fecundity of a life. Two very separate things and only sometimes do they cross. Playing a single video game obsessively is bad for both. If you dabbled in many different creative and technical pursuits, you'd probably be happier than spending 10 hours reoptimizing your factorio line if you learned to speak spanish, play the sax and knew how to code in python. Learning in real life, without the immediate feedback of a game is harder for sure, but more rewarding in the end. However, you should never look at your time spent in the lens of economic fecundity for 'Others'. that never ends well.

RicoElectrico 6y ago

My friend is an IC layout engineer. He really enjoys Factorio. I'd say he excels at both.

arrosenberg 6y ago

Nahhh, I reject the hypothesis. Escapism has always popped up as an intellectual distraction during stressful or stagnant times. It's nothing about Factorio or Eve specifically, other than they are well designed to scratch certain itches. Present someone with a real world challenge to scratch that itch and they'll take it.

decasteve 6y ago

Gandhi's take on the "bread-labour" idea via Tolstoy/Bondarev puts a better perspective on issues of intellect. Bread-labour being the physical labours involved in the direct sustainment of human life. Based on their insights, I think that if we're privileged enough to live without worry of the basics needs of human life, and make our livelihoods on intellect alone, then that comes at the expense of humanity's potential for equality. If this is what is happening, then engaging some of our time in bread-labour becomes a concrete way to combat inequality.

sktrdie 6y ago

I understand the point of the post but what is “intellectual potential” really? Even if we’re discussing helping humanity as a whole, what does “helping” mean? Maybe we want to make society better, say by helping everyone involved to live the best lives they could possibly live, but this is also a quite vague and subjective concept. What I’m trying to say is that a fulfilling life is something that changes per individual. Perhaps a less-scientific and more art-driven society is preferable and would result in a much more enjoyable life for specific individuals. Others might prefer the complete opposite. For instance I want to go to the stars and conquer different worlds because I feel that a life worth living means exploring the unknown. But I also understand that using our resources to reach for the stars might also exploit some other parts of society in a negative way. So who’s to say that playing a video game that fulfils your needs is less valuable than doing anything else? Life is beautiful because it’s diverse. Let the billions of variables coalesce and generate an existence that fulfils the needs of the people that live it. Sure you can push the needle in a specific direction (like scientific research) but the variables are so many and the individuals so diverse that it’s hard to contemplate a formula that would work at scale for everyone. Instead of concentrating on the intellectual potential I would argue that “diversity” is a much more important variable. Life thrives in diverse conditions - we see this in how important biodiversity is for ecosystems (like plants). I think the same concept also applies for intellect.

bullen 6y ago

3D MMO action game engines are the final medium. The game of building games is the last revolution. All other potential has been discovered and most of it has been or will be discarded because of thermodynamics.

RobLach 6y ago

Foolishly presumptuous that the emergent culture from these interactive spaces isn’t an amazing realization of intellectual potential instead of a dismissive “waste of time”. I suppose it’s difficult to step back and analyze things beyond their purely productive economic utility and appropriately judge its value in the grand scheme.

dang 6y ago

It looks like this started as an HN comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26706821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26706821) and then made it to Reddit and back to HN in this format. Can you please not do that? We're trying to avoid repetitive/recycled/copy-pasted discussions here. I wouldn't normally post something like this, but it seems to be a bit of a pattern: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26686767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26686767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26411589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26411589

dw-im-here 5y ago