The production of genuine art is productive.

Also it’s very hard to argue that casinos should exist so that’s kind of a non-starter.

I'd argue poker is different than slots, though both are "gambling".

I don't know how I feel about things like blackjack or roulette. They can be good networking, good sources of intel, but I hate that casinos make me combine bad decisions (like inhaling smoke in order to be inefficient with my money).

And no, don't close down casinos, because people will still gamble, and then they'll be having their legs broken by the mafia rather than chased by debt agencies.

Isn't this kind of logic capable of hand-waving anything away? 100 terawatt hours is no joke, if you can make it seem trivial by dividing by 8B that says more about the method than the number.

8 billion people aren't using BTC, so your denominator doesn't have any sensible meaning. You divide BTC energy by 3 transactions per second.

You are counting people that have never used cryptocurrency.

Video games are fun, fun is a vital human need- video games are productive.

Why not art in general friend? Why are we so focused on video games?

I nearly did an MFA in Creative Nonfiction -- I used to sit in a coffee shop that was eventually gentrified away to become the site of one of the largest banks (out of towners, of course) and read stuff like Truman Capote's "In True Blood" or Vonnegut's "Cat Cradle" as I played with various wifi and bluetooth attacks on my cute little Eee PC that fit into my very unfashionable cargo jorts.

I had a privileged position that paid a whole twelve dollars an hour -- enough that unlike my friends, I didn't have to work two or three jobs, and was able to save up to attend my first hacker convention after paying for rent and food.

The CFAA has long since expired. And I did each attack once, to learn how, then avoided using them again absent a very good reason to abuse my access. Looking back a decade and a half later, I am not at all sorry for the things I did those mornings over a quad espresso or whatever.

Moving on:

Being nonproductive is cool and good, but I'm an Epicurean[1], not a hedonist[2] -- you need to balance chasing pleasure with less fun stuff, and the issue seems to be arguments over what I will term "the ratio". (sarcastic finger quotes) or you'll end up addicted to opiate, diabetic, or suffering from some other induced ill that makes you unable to enjoy the simple things in life rather than smoking weed, drinking espresso, and in continual wonder at the joy of knowing how stuff works.

//[1] Epicureanism argued that pleasure was the chief good in life.[8] Hence, Epicurus advocated living in such a way as to derive the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one's lifetime, yet doing so moderately in order to avoid the suffering incurred by overindulgence in such pleasure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism#Philosophy

//[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism