The point you are missing is that WoW becomes more enjoyable if its repetitive, mindless parts are automated. There would be no point to automating News.YC dis

The point you are missing is that WoW becomes more enjoyable if its repetitive, mindless parts are automated. There would be no point to automating News.YC discussion or going out to dinner, but driving to work surely would be a candidate for automation for most people. The Skinner Box analogy is directly applicable to mindless, repetitive behavior like clicking to kill monsters over and over again, while thoughtful discussion does not fit into that category. Similarly, you could create a robot to watch movies for you or go on dates for you, but there'd be no point, as you'd be missing out on the enjoyment. The statement about whether something can be automated refers not to mere physical possibility, but to whether it improves your subjective human experience. Thus you can't really automate watching movies or going out on dates because you can't have someone else live life for you. The benefit you gain is all in the experience of it, not the accomplishment of it. The mindless activities these MMOGs subject you to are all of the accomplishment variety. Those shouldn't even exist, but if they do, they deserve to be automated. Then people enjoy the experience of being able to engage in the non-mindless activities. The amount of scripting WoW allows is trivial compared to what you can actually do.