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Comment by Tichy | Hacker News Reader

Isn't most of what humans do wasteful? What about "lieing on a beach sipping cocktails to death" or "commuting to death" or "painting to death" or "watching TV to death" or "reading to death"? If you condemn computer games, you condemn all other forms of art at the same time. So I suppose the only worthwhile conducts of human life are technological and scientific research, and building infrastructure? I don't think it is as simple as that. And if you have created the perfect infrastructure and won against cancer, then what? Why live? What did you optimize for? That we can enjoy stuff seems to make us want to live at the same time.

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> If you condemn computer games, you condemn all other forms of art at the same time.

Creating computer games can be an art. Playing computer games seldom is. There aren't that many games that you can play creatively, and really few where your creations can have any value outside of the universe of the game.

So art should never be consumed, only be created? If somebody listens to a song, he is wasting his time, but then what is the point of creating a song?

this game can be played created creatively - it's over 10 years old and has a following of at least thousands today in 2011

http://www.project1999.org/

the only worthwhile conducts of human life are technological and scientific research, and building infrastructure

Wow... the basis of my philosophy! IMHO: technological and scientific research - and art! - are basically the worthwhile "ends".

Building infrastructure (as well as mining, agriculture, most manufacturing, health care, SOME lawmaking, SOME politics, SOME entertainment, SOME advertising etc etc) ARE worthwhile, being the means to the abovementioned ends.

(and MOST politics, entertainment, lawmaking, advertising and so on are plain old not worthwhile, or even harmful).

Actually, I'm not condemning computer games at all, though my tone was generally dark (I hadn't had coffee yet). As provocative as my title was, "death" to me just meant that of the body, not the mind, I'm a singulatarian after all, as well as a video game nerd. I'm in favor of art, games, and the inevitable 'death' that comes after they've hit a not-so-distant inflection point.

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