Otherwise we end up with adults spending ridiculous hours playing video games, chasing that beautiful feeling they gave them when they were kids, all the while avoiding real life.
What do you consider to be "ridiculous hours"?
There are definitely times when I end up playing online games for >20h/week. That's well above the median I'm sure... but how many hours per week did my parent's generation spend on average watching TV? My dad is retired now, and spends probably ~40h / week in his shop just... tinkering.
How is my playing War Thunder any less "real life" than him rebuilding his 124th Coleman lantern?
People need a way to recover from the stresses of everyday life. I don't understand why gaming in particular is so often discounted, while various other non-productive pursuits are readily accepted.
The video game doesn't expose you to as much thorium?
The pursuit of happiness IS real life…
But to each their own, I just get a gross feeling after I’ve spent too long engaged like that. But movies are arguably even more passive and empty, and I like those!
What you're describing is a coping mechanisms to a life they don't wish to face. It does not make them any more of an adult if they instead chose gambling, drinking, illegal drugs, shopping, or any another method of escape.
Maybe if we did not have a school system that completely kills any innate curiosity in people, they might do something real instead of virtual. Well, one can dream.
Once you've played enough games, you begin to recognize the pattern and can tell if it's going to be a new and engaging game or just another trope.
But they are a nice stimulus to get together in person, that part is right on.
To an extent, but board games can also highlight ambiguous interpretations of the rules. Just last night, I was playing Cosmic Encounter with some friends and a good proportion of the fun was banter and arguments about some of the specific rules. I think board games can get away with a lot more randomness and chaos than computer games as they have a big social aspect to them. If you go from a successful, winning strategy to losing in a computer game because of someone having a specific card, then you'd probably stop enjoying the game, but with a board game it tends to spur a round of laughter instead.
I'm not sure why you think there's any difference. RNG is RNG. At least that's how we treat it in our group.
Are you familiar with roguelikes? Nethack?
The games that I replay most often are the ones that are ridiculously difficult and callously unfair to the player - because they're also the ones that get my mind engaged the most, and where I get the most enjoyment from overcoming an unfair situation.
Same for TV but i don't think people stop watching those indistinguishable series.
So you can still play different games with similar mechanics because of the different setting.
I think we've been conditioned from childhood to get a job, work for the corporate world and chase material goods. All of those further the interests of those in power.
Update: Wild foraging, living with nature, moving to another country, or doing what hunter gatherers did. Running your own business. Camping out in the wild, while still making money from something. There are so many other options, you need to be creative about it...
Anyway @NoMoreNicks I've flagged your post and I'm closing this HN account down (by deleting the password)....
This is a hilariously millennial take on how life works. For the past million years or longer, humans learned (and quickly) that if you didn't want to starve you'd need to work to avoid that. The means to avoid starvation have changed. We're no longer hunter gatherers, and few of us are subsistence farmers--and I can have some sympathy for those who would prefer those occupations--but the truth of the matter is that nothing more than the details have changed in all that time.
People weren't "conditioning" you to get a job. They were gently introducing you to reality. It seems a little too gently, by the looks of it.
> All of those further the interests of those in power.
Huh? It furthers the interests of those who don't want to starve. But you've never even been hungry, not really, and so it's all still highly theoretical for you.
Do you own any fields? Do you own any factories? If you owned those, then you might be able to work in them and produce what you need to live, or at least something to trade for the things you need.
You seem to think there's a "we" here. There isn't. No one else is much in the mood to support you.
Of course there's a "we". We depend on supply chains and working societies to even be writing anything here now. No one is willing to support anyone but we're a social species with division of roles, that's the "we".
No, there isn't. You use the word, and deep in your lizard brain you hear yourself say "myself and all these other people who care about me and love me and are on my team".
There's no "we". No one wants to be part of that "we" with you, and those who lie and say they do want to be part of it with you are hoping they get more out of the deal than they give to be part of it. I'm probably the closest thing to being your friend that you have when I'm at least honest and tell you that's horseshit.
If people like yourself spent more time trying to solve the much smaller problem of "how do I make my way in this world" instead of "how do we make it so everyone gets what they want", then quite simply more of you would get what you want.
> but we're a social species with division of roles,
Your role's about to be eliminated. Might take 20 years, the timeline's hard to pin down. But the guys who get to keep their roles are perfecting autonomous war drones. Your odds don't look good.
Where's your "we" in that?
You can also say that we really are conditioned, by education, to slot ourselves into organizations, identify who the teacher/boss is, and do what they tell us to.
So while the past required effort, I can see how OP (1827163) could have a point.
Go hunt on their lands. See how they welcome you.
If we imagine that life is good for hunter-gatherers -- or at least that they have individual autonomy -- then we get a way to frame the issue: The Machine easily steamrolls these people, taking their land from them, but, people born inside The Machine are enslaved to The Machine.
Maybe you were responding to my word "permissionless": You cannot actually hunt on tribal lands without permission. Makes sense. What I had in mind in the "permissionless" sentence was something more like operating an informal business in a developing country -- which appears to be common. Perhaps there are networks of patronage there too, that you don't see? Protection, security, "turf"?
Anyway, I'm not sure what the point of all this is, except for mood: OP was arguing from a sort of utopian perspective, and you insist on a more competitive, resource-limited worldview.
I think my point, that there are societies not built around large organizations and formal employment, still does stand, however. Perhaps everything is bad, but it's presumably bad in different ways.
That is only true if you limit yourself to modern games or have very limited tastes.