Do Games Like Factorio Or EVE Online Sap The Intellectual Potential Of Humanity? | Hacker News Reader

Do Games Like Factorio Or EVE Online Sap The Intellectual Potential Of Humanity?

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16 pointsoptimalsolver16 comments

This idea that OP has that someone's intellectual ability has to somehow be geared towards furthering humanity is, to me, dangerous and ultimately unproductive.

Yes, we are creatures who value productivity and creativity, but it's harmful to us to be "on" all the time. We can't always be productive, we can't always be creative, we can't always be doing something that has this big, lasting consequences. That just weighs down on our mental health and ability to seek enjoyment out of those actions.

I enjoy being productive at work, that doesn't mean I'd enjoy it if I did it for 16 hours a day. I enjoy art and being creative and sketching in Procreate, but I know I wouldn't enjoy doing it all day long too.

Putting that creative/productive energy into something that is low-risk helps us to continue to stretch those muscles, think things through, and analyze situations, without the subconscious understanding that failure can result in us losing our income, our home, our family, or the life we built. With games we know we can just reload an old save or quit the game.

Entertainment can be a time suck, but that's why constant entertainment can bore us too. The trick is to balance the three, they're all necessary for our success.

Intellectual output is not lost, it's just maintenance for people with brains wired a certain way. Without these games the intellectual potential would surely burn/bore out the people actually wanting to play those games, as real life may not give access so easily to so many interesting problems.

>Intellectual output is not lost, it's just maintenance for people with brains wired a certain way.

I have this theory about engineering minded people; that we are addicts no different than any other, just that our substance is problem solving. We are problem solving addicts. Nothing fulfills our brain even remotely close to that feedback loop of "unknown unknowns -> beginning to understand -> total mastery". Without that fix, we get irritable, depressed, and anxious just like normal withdrawal symptoms. Surely any one of us can point to a time of intense focus on a problem that led to our physical/social lives deteriorating in some way, not unlike an addict losing themselves on a bender. And games like Factorio et. al. provide a low stakes, on-demand source of this to people like us when real life can't provide it.

> We are problem solving addicts. > Without that fix, we get [...] anxious [with] just like normal withdrawal symptoms.

Absolutely.

Solve problem -> Less uncertainty -> Less anxiety

It seems to me that's exactly the positive feedback loop we are hooked on. And the more your are capable, the more you can be subject to it. Which is fine until you realize you will also suffer more from its inevitable reversal (stalled problem -> more uncertainty -> more anxiety). So you find a different but even harder problem to solve to get the high... Deep inside you're still insecure and hurt, but on the way you may build a digital payment processor, sell a lot of electric cars and start a space rocket company (but your mileage may vary).

Joke aside, there are elements of mental health that must not be overlooked when playing these games and working hard all days long ; but if it's what that make you cope with life, have fun and make a net impact on society, it's still a win.

Yup, I consider it a use-it-or-lose-it kind of muscle.

Productivity isn't life's purpose. Life gets a lot better when one realizes that.

Yes. Entertainment is obviously a time sink and idleness and boredom often spur creativity, which doesn’t happen if you’re being entertained. What entertains is subjective to an individual, and while some might be satisfied with binge-watching a show, others require something else to stay engaged. The games you mentioned target that specific strata. But the end goal is to entertain, thus provide a captivating time sink that drains away the time and mental energy that would otherwise possibly flow into more productive pursuits.

Counterpoint: intellectual potential is wasted on most people and most professions. Even most intellectually demanding jobs don't actually require a ton of intelligence.

An alternative view on things:

EVE online taught me more about commodity trading than anything else, because I didn't have the cash to sink into trading and I was able to understand concepts that were only weird and theoretical in the past.

Factorio is a great fun game that also involves the fun parts of programming. Would I be programming if I wasn't playing factorio? No. I'd be watching a mindless show. Meanwhile it does teach debugging and monitoring to young engineers, and has gotten quite a few into programming.

And as /u/VincentEvans correctly mentions, how much of our smartest is wasted just making trading engines that do NOTHING other than help the wealthy gain more cash, and hyperoptimizing ads!

Former EVE Online player here: Absolutely not. I know people who happily hold down day jobs and play - and when they play, they are applying skill and knowledge to hold down what is in effect a company, working within a political system. Is it "real" - in some sense yes, and one day it will end and people will move on - but until then it's actually a rich subculture not bound by geophysical location (except for maybe once a year in Iceland)

Very silly, even generals from hundreds of years ago spent their time and efforts on war games in order to hone their skills. Maybe it speaks to how many can learn much more easily if it is in service of an overall bigger picture or goal?

Current Factorio player. I have a friend who refuses to play because they say it’s like work.

I think it does not affect my potential. I would not be coding if I wasn’t playing Factorio. It does not consume my time in so far as to say I don’t avoid going to work to play.

Looking forward to some heavy factory work though when 2.0 lands, hopefully in mid-October.

If the metric is productivity, I'd say these games contribute far more than many other activities, as they exercise and hone problem solving, creativity etc, which can then be applied to 'real' problems.

But then, 'productivity' is a dismal way to measure the value of living.

Ive learned programming by writing botting scripts for Tibia - either custom langs or lua

After all those years Im really amazed how skilled developers who created those advanced cheats needed to be

They needed good reverse engineering skills and basic compiler dev. skills on top of good programming skills

With this logic, going into a gym is reducing amount of manual labor which humanity can do. Why would you pointlessly lift dumbbells, when you can lift bricks on your nearest construction site?

Writing a book that touches on this. Why do we play games like this? What compels us? And what is the relationship between this world and that?

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