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Does Chess sap the intellectual potential of humanity? Does novel writing sap the intellectual potential of humanity? Does algebraic geometry sap the intellectu

• 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.
  • thesuitonym 6y ago
    How many Steven Pruitts are out there who, instead of contributing in some way to human knowledge are just wasting away on Reddit? And regardless of your personal opinion on the reliability of Wikipedia, I think we can all agree that the ability to quickly find a brief overview of any subject is insanely valuable to society. On the other hand, I know if I weren't wasting time on HN right now, I wouldn't be doing anything productive.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • StavrosK 6y ago
    > Imagine if all those people was doing something useful, or myself instead of writing this. In my personal experience, reddit/HN has never been the reason I didn't do something useful. The reason was that I just didn't want to do it, and if HN didn't exist I'd just stare at the ceiling. Do ceilings sap the intellectual potential of humanity?
  • 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
    Imagining is more fun than almost anything else.
  • thevardanian 6y ago
    Absolutely no. At least those that already have a drive to know use reddit to sharpen their knowledge. As a research tool itself reddit is pretty invaluable.
    • sudosysgen 6y ago
      Also, Reddit was absolutely great for me to sharpen my English debate skills. I was able to go from English being a poor third language to people refusing to believe it's not my first :)
      • thevardanian 6y ago
        Yup! It's fantastic place to write, organize ideas, and get responses from other people. And then respond to those responses. The chain structure of reddit conversations is very interesting, imo, and an invaluable tool.
  • unixhero 6y ago
    To be fair, special interest subreddits have given me a lot and are not a waste of time. Much like Hacker News! :-)
  • Balgair 6y ago
    I tend to use HN as a way to hone my writing skill. I'll play with length, wording, style, etc. The karma count gives me a bit of feedback on how well I've done, and comments back to me will further hone my writing. So, for me at least, HN provides a fertile place to be productive, but mostly as a place to play around and sharpen my skill.
• 0-_-0 6y ago
  I think it's more likely that all the above (and Factorio, Eve, etc.) in fact generate intellectual potential.
  • trutannus 6y ago
    Definitely. A sillier example, I find Minecraft can be useful to get me back in the zone if I'm feeling unfocused. Building systems and overcoming design limitations does require thought. Having to concentrate on something that's easy to concentrate on helps get you in the right "mode" so to speak. Reddit, however, I find draining. There's always a risk of getting sea lioned by a particularly toxic user. Conversation tends to be very one-sided also.
  • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    I'm sure there's some people whose analytical brain is being awakened by Factorio and who are looking into turning that into a career. I mean I played around in ZZT and ended up a software engineer.
  • schnevets 6y ago
    +1. It is absurd to simplify intellectual energy to a measurable quantity as if our brains are batteries hooked up to one giant electric motor. Brilliance is a mysterious thing, but we know it comes from unexpected places. An intellectual jungle of games, arts, and culture seems more fertile than the homogenous, sterile ivory tower.
  • miga 6y ago
    "Factorio Is The Best Technical Interview We Have" https://erikmcclure.com/blog/factorio-is-best-interview-we-have/ https://erikmcclure.com/blog/factorio-is-best-interview-we-h...
• essentialoils 6y ago
  > Does Chess sap the intellectual potential of humanity? arguably, yes. it's a closed universe which at best provides entertainment for outsiders, unlike writing fiction which can inspire even revolutions, to say nothing of enriching minds and widening the emotional and intellectual horizons of individual readers. not sure if you were being serious about higher mathematics.
  • leetcrew 6y ago
    the question reduces to something like "is society entitled to the brain cycles of particularly smart people?". if so, then one can criticize just about anything smart people spend time thinking about that doesn't create material returns for their communities.
    • VLM 6y ago
      > that doesn't create material returns for their communities. More realistically, for the elite in charge of their communities. Its a practical problem for employment. No company complains about smart people not making their coworkers lives better; its all about "stealing from the company" by doing projects at home on their own time using their own materials, that may or may not be the feudal property of their owner/employers depending on their state of residence's attitude toward modern slavery.
    • repsilat 6y ago
      > the question reduces to something like "is society entitled to the brain cycles of particularly smart people?". No, it doesn't. A conclusion that something is a drag on society is not necessarily (and frequently not) an argument for banning it. The implication only exists in a pure form if one assumes a "government knows best" sort of politics. Label it what you like, I'm not going to pick fights. I am a bit worried about this line of reasoning, though -- basically saying it isn't a line of thought that can lead to good policy, so it probably shouldn't be investigated or argued.
      • leetcrew 6y ago
• watwut 6y ago
  In what way is gaming nerdy ... seriously.
  • mywittyname 6y ago
    This particular game is very nerdy.
  • gnulinux 6y ago
    All hobbies are "dorky" in a way (maybe except sports-related hobbies like hiking), they're considered especially so if one is obsessive about this hobby. Non-art hobbies, in my experience, are more likely to be classified "nerdy" as opposed to "dorky". I should note that, at least in the US for people in mid 20s, in the last few years (maybe thanks to Covid) "dorky" or "nerdy" sort of stopped being pejorative. Even in dating apps, it's normal for people to write stuff like "the dorkies things about me is... thinking about programming/gaming/drawing all the time" etc. I would guess "dorky", "nerdy" are more mildly self-deprecating than pejorative nowadays. But this could change wildly from one area to another.
    • watwut 6y ago
      Gaming is the most common hobby there is for males. And that includes men who do a lot of sport. They regularly happen to be gaming a lot. School drop outs game a lot. Non nerds and non dorks have hobbies, always had. Having hobbies is quite normal and used to be normal. And frankly, playing computer games was popular among popular young boys for whole generations now. "Dorky", "nerdy" never really described average gamer. It described small groups of people who had social issues regardless what they did - including sport.
    • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      Sports are / can be massively nerdy tbh, some of them crunch more numbers and statistics than the average Eve Online spreadsheet warrior. And the bigger fans cosplay to the sports conventions. Also, there's Football Manager, which takes the 'playing football' game out of the game.
• jrm4 6y ago
  Honestly, conclusory and flip answers like this strongly make me suspect that there is some truth to it. It's worth discussing beyond "Let people do whatever they want." There is very little harm in considering this question open-mindedly, and yet the defensiveness is so reflexively strong -- even as a bunch of the people who play them will very frequently themselves step back and joke about how much time some of these suck out of their lives. So yes, we actually SHOULD encourage people to reexamine their patterns and consider if some (not all, some) of these hours could be put to a different or better use.
  • epivosism 6y ago
    You're so right. It's extremely strange how most replies here and on reddit take the "100% it's not a problem" stance. The real answer would require actually doing surveys of 1) the value, learning, and art generated by games 2) the cost, judged according to each individual player's own value system. And then weighing the strength of each effect. Note that I am judging according to the individual's values, not my own. Example: the rate at which people say "I wish I could stop playing game X" or the rate they suffer regret after a play session, or a year after quitting playing. I personally am really glad I found factorio, but not very happy about my time playing diablo 2. Surely there are hypothetical examples of games which could be created, or addictions conscious beings could be vulnerable to, which would force defenders of freedom to admit that it's at least conceivable that there are situations where "bad" things exist, which we'd be better off without. Not saying we are in that state now, or what we should do if it happened. Just pointing out that acting as if there are no costs at all isn't addressing the opponent's position, even though we know there are lots of people who claim otherwise.
    • sneak 6y ago
      It could be a huge problem and the correct response is still and always an immediate "let people do what they want". If you want to educate people on alternatives, or offer treatment systems, or whatever, that's fine. But ultimately and finally you need to let people do what they want. Anything else is a consent violation.
• jcelerier 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? what if it does ?
• supergirl 6y ago
  there could be an argument here though. it’s not so obvious. Chess might be because all the chess players only contribute to advancing chess. novel writing is obviously different, it means sharing knowledge so it contributes to whole humanity.
  • karlicoss 6y ago
    I know very little about chess, but to me it feels that any such activity is kind of relative to how exactly you're engaging with the activity, and what skills you already possess. Arguably, if it benefits you via learning new things/skills, it also benefits the humanity because later you'll apply these skills at something else. So for example we can 'classify' the returns from engaging with chess depending on your current skills: - playing a (single) game of chess - high if you never played chess or games like that before. A lot of it is a very transferable skill that applies to other games, and more importantly, real world reasoning - medium if you don't know chess but familiar with similar games (e.g. checkers/go) -- you might advance your skill - low if you're a good chess player -- you just maintain your chess skill? also of course it could still be beneficial if playing it makes you relaxed and happy, nothing wrong with this -- just in that sense it's not objectively better than idk, watching a tv show - writing a brute force algorithm to play chess - high if you're new to algorithms - low if you're an experienced with algorithms (basically just yet another interview problem) - writing an AI to play chess - high for most programmers - not so useful if you're a member of AlphaZero team? Now replace chess with Minecraft or Starcraft or anything else, and all these statements probably still stand. Most humans would benefit from writing a novel.. but if you're already a good writer, it would probably have low benefit. Not sure what would be the algebraic geometry equivalent though :)
• pjc50 6y ago
  A more interesting and controversial question might be: "Does American football in college, an extremely expensive sport which causes incremental permanent brain damage, sap the intellectual potential of humanity?"
  • jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    Probably not. Most football players aren't that smart to begin with[0] and most important intellectual advances are made by a small minority of people. What's the most significant intellectual contribution of any athlete? I can't think of one without really stretching. It's not like tennis players are making great intellectual contributions and football players are the only athletes who are absent. If you're talking about the opportunity cost of watching college football instead of doing something more productive, then maybe, but most (virtually all) of the extremely smart people I know do not spend much time watching sports. [0]: I'm not saying they're dumb, they're just not geniuses
  • taurath 6y ago
    The “intellectual potential of humanity” is such a misnomer. Does it mean not allowing people to do what they would want to do in order to achieve some societal goal? I could say a lot about people who work in advertising for example.
• brianwawok 6y ago
  How many people do you know that play 40+ hours of chess a week? How many people do you know that don't work a job, are 25 and able bodied, and live at home with their parents to play chess? How many people do you know that work a dead-end factory job, and come home and put all of their effort into chess over advancing their career? I know of 0 for any of those for chess, but I can think of at least 100 people that this applies for video games. Video games are great! I get it. But when it starts to be the purpose of life, it seems a very sad life.
  • Splendor 6y ago
    I'm glad to see you're doing something more productive with your time.
    • brianwawok 6y ago
      Hey hobbies are great. Everyone needs hobbies. I don't live with my parents so I can post on hacker news.
      • Splendor 6y ago
        Of course. How convenient that you're the exception.
  • slightwinder 6y ago
    How many of those people do have intellectual potential that they waste in Factorio or Eve Online? How many of those people ended there because they played games? And how many started gaming because they were fed up with their lack of potential? Maybe majority of gamers would been the type who would waste themself in a pub or on some other meaningless thing otherwise? I don't think it's so easy to answer those aspects without hard numbers.
    • brianwawok 6y ago
      Hard to know! Are gamers just a holding pattern for society, because we have passed peak employment - and just need to keep a chunk of society busy doing "nothing" ?
• mc32 6y ago
  Doesn’t this depend on scope? If you have 50,000 kids spending 5hrs on chess a day it’s one thing, if you had 5,000,000 it’s another thing.
• slightwinder 6y ago
  Is there any grind-catch in chess, like in addictive videogames? And why novel writting, but not reading? Both are seen as intellectual, but reading I'd say has far higher chance to end in brainless consuming, wasting intellectual potential.
• Der_Einzige 6y ago
  Well, by being bad at chess I was motivated to code up a chess engine for the first time. Does that mean being bad at chess is good for my intellectual potential? I learned a lot about chess programming...
• moralestapia 6y ago
  Factorio, Eve Online, Chess, (or whatever you enjoy doing) *IS* the intellectual potential of humanity.
• vbezhenar 6y ago
  Some people are obsessed with computer games and will spend enormous amount of time which could be better spent otherwhere if not for that addiction. I'm talking from my own experience. I can't experiment by living in another world without computer games, may be I would destroy that time in the other fashion or may be I would write some useful code, who knows. But just blindly dismissing that kind of reasoning is not wise in my opinion. Casinos eat money from victims and they are regulated. Computer games eat time from some victims and time is quite important asset as well. Of course just like some people can reasonably spend some little money to get some enjoyment in casino, other people can reasonably spend some free time in computer games without compromising on more important activities. But not everyone have iron will and iron grip over himself.
  • scotty79 6y ago
    > which could be better spent otherwhere But realistically would it be better spent? I banned myself from games to write my master thesis. There was some mild improvement in pace of work, but I'm not sure if I should attribute it to not gaming or simply to approaching deadline. On the other hand I watched all 10 seasons of "Friends" during that time. And I didn't even like "Friends" to begin with.
  • sneak 6y ago
    Better spent according to whom? There is no authority higher for the appropriate use of one's time than oneself.
• Justsignedup 6y ago
  I think A LOT of people i play with end up having jobs that don't engage their creativity at all. The end up playing games and building gorgeous bases and interesting complex setups. Does D&D do the same? The amount of time spent on thinking about games, writing the story, etc is non-trivial. The thing that all games share is that "losing" isn't gonna hurt your life. I'm not gonna lose my house because I blew up my factorio factory. I don't have to finish it. I don't have to play it every day. Personally I hate games that make me build and design, I already overload on that at work, so for me a lot of my game time is more action-based games. Things I don't get to do during my work time. Does that mean I want to go learn how to shoot an arrow off a running horse? No. Does it mean I want to learn how to fly a helicopter? Nooooot that much. But I sure as hell enjoy flying a helicopter without the fear of death in a game.