There are more subtle ways of gaming ruining your life, as well: slowly losing the drive to do anything more than what's necessary to pay the cable bill, rent, and the gaming subscription. Slowly the only friends you have are people you know from your guild. When the only source & output of creativity and energy are all wrapped up in playing a video game.
I've also seen people similarly consumed by pornography, alcohol, gambling, day trading, and I'm sure other things I can't think of now. Pot. I think any of those things can have their place, but please maintain connection to people who can and will say something if you start going overboard.
For instance, I'm in a pretty good place right now and still gave parental control to a friend for the D3 release, just in case. Six hours a week is arguably still too much, but seems reasonable to me, and they won't budge because A) I asked them not to; B) they care. That I've hit that limit is a good sign that I may not be as well off as I thought I was ;)
That's a good point. The health-risks of overwork seem to match well those of having too much 'fun'.
My guess is that the hidden psychological motivation is the same: to avoid addressing personal problems.
Exercise can help but even there, it depends. If you keep moving your body around forcefully for extended periods you risk heart disease and stroke, e.g. dancing plague of 1518.
Or how about work in general? If doing something 6 hours a week is borderline what is doing something 40-60 hours a week? Assuming most people work for money, isn't this just an extreme cultural addition to money?
My work, as in day job, usually consists of 3-4 hours working with 3-4 hours having lunch, chatting with colleagues, staring at the window, reading reddit/HN/LJ, doing some 'transparent' research on my startup. And that's when I'm working hard.
Working on my startup could easily drag me into a 8-10 hours race with only a few tea breaks.
I don't think it's fair to say it's an addiction to money. That may apply to some professions but a lot of people working 40 hours a week are just making enough money to get by.
How does this compare with what can be considered a 'gym' addiction. Is it ok when it is exercise? What is too much? What about work, startups? I rock climb at least 6 hours a week, it's not bizarre to hear someone dying from rock climbing though.
Someone recently tried to convince me, a frequent climber, that the health effects of getting exercise from climbing were outweighed by the risks involved. I did a bunch of research on the subject, and it is very clear that the benefits of exercise massively outweigh the risks of even a dangerous activity like climbing.
It's hard to find statistics for indoor climbing, but for outdoor climbing there is a death for every 320,000 outings. If you go on two outings a week, your chance of dying is around 0.03% per year [1].
Getting the proper amount of exercise (compared to being sedentary), though, can decrease the total risk of year-over-year mortality by a factor of up to 4.5 times [2]. The overall risk of death for e.g. a middle-aged man is something like 0.2% [3], so any significant reduction to this factor compares very favorably with the risk of death from climbing.
So, basically, if your options are either a) be sedentary or b) get adequate exercise by rock climbing, it is better for your health to choose b. This comparison looks even better if you're doing only gym climbing (which is much safer than outdoor climbing).
It's worth noting that those deaths aren't simply evenly distributed either. Of the friends I've known that have had potentially life threatening climbing injuries (fortunately nobody's died yet), they were either doing "expedition" level stuff or were simply stupid (free soloing). There are of course exceptions. Pay attention to what you're doing and don't be an idiot and 95% of climbing injuries will pass you by.
You shouldn't compare the benefits of getting exercise from rock climbing to the chances of dying from it. The choice isn't rock climb or be totally sedentary. You can get exercise in ways where you can't fall and die. What you should compare is the marginal benefit of the additional exercise you end up doing because you enjoy rock climbing more than the next best activity. And, then compare that to the death rate.
So, if you look at the numbers, the risk of death from climbing is very, very low. Really, it's extremely low. You'd have to go on two outings a week for 3,200 years for the probability of your death to have an expected value of 1.0. Or, if you stick to top ropes, a lot longer than that.
Compared to how much you can benefit from the exercise, the risk of falling and dying is really insignificant, to the point that I don't think it's worth debating between climbing and any other common form of exercise.
[EDIT]: Fix an incorrectly worded statement about expected value.
That's still wrong. If you have x chance of surviving each day of rock climbing then you have an x^n chance of surviving n days of rock climbing, not a 0 chance of surviving.
> So, basically, if your options are either a) be sedentary or b) get adequate exercise by rock climbing, it is better for your health to choose b.
humbledrone, I doubt that's the choice most climbers are making. I'm also a frequent climber (mostly outdoors). If I could not climb, I would not be sedentary - I'd do something(s) else (I already do other activities, too). If I couldn't do anything other than take a stroll every day, I would do that, because I feel better when I move around. Most of the climbers I know are clearly this way - people who can't stand not to be active.
I am pretty convinced, myself, that I'd be better off walking for an hour on safe sidewalks every day instead of rock climbing. I think rock climbing, and other activities in which I partake, put me at higher risk for serious injury or death than a nice healthy walk. How much higher, I'm not sure.
But it's a free society (I live in the USA) and we can do what we want, so I climb, because I'm kind of addicted.
Given the direction that health insurance is taking, I do wonder if people who admit to participating in higher-risk sports will some day be penalized by higher premiums, as smokers are.
When I look at my more active friends, dying is the least of problems really. I had four friends who had their legs broken in terrible ways from skating or horse riding, while I haven't even had to go to the hospital since childhood.
Things like that could easily make you more sedentary for the rest of your life.
I'm not sure about climbing, I just don't think the math is as easy as that :)
The quality of life improvement from the added flexibility and strength must be taken into account also. To be a bit vulgar, would you rather engage in overnight activities with rock climber or with a couch surfer? Which one is able to run for the bus? Play with their kids?
(a related issue that really annoys me is when they compare the dangers of ectasy and heroin using the death rate, when the quality of life destruction caused by ectasy is 1% compared to the horror that happens to a junkie)
The thing with rock climbing is that it is not just "excercise". It's a hobby, it's fun for those of us that do it. (And if it isn't fun, why are you doing it?). I don't climb to stay fit, I climb because I enjoy it, because it is a challenge. I have a fear of heights, so I get a huge adrenaline rush when climbing. There is nothing like abusing your fears to produce thrill ;)
When people die from rock climbing, it's because they were careless or because they were pushing the envelope in some way. Rock climbing gyms are very safe - you're unlikely to die there.
Anyway, 6 hours a week at the climbing wall is hardly an addiction. That's more like a hobby.
Just out of curiosity, what about 6 hours playing video games? 10 hours? 20? (20 can easily be 2 a night during the week (chill out after work) and then 5 at night on weekends -- time that could just as easily be spent doing other sedentary things on weekends)
Video games are a leisure activity. They might not be quite as mentally engaging as commenting on HN or programming, but they provide the same functionality.
Making a distinction between time spent playing video games and time spent doing other leisure activities is fairly pointless. Managed properly, there's no real physical difference between playing a video game for 20 hours a week and reading a novel, watching TV, commenting on HN, programming or any other fairly motionless activity. I know that I (as a relatively fit 21 year old) spend quite a lot of time sat in front of a computer. Physically the activity is fairly irrelevant.
Perhaps the only thing that video games have that the other activities I mentioned don't is that they have a fairly high potential to be addictive. I'd imagine most people who've played video games at any point know what it's like to play for 10 hours straight for an entire weekend. You don't have to do that, but people do.
Regardless, a sedentary lifestyle with no regular exercise will lead to health problems which increase the likelihood of death. That's something we've known for decades. Don't count "time spent playing video games", count "time spent sitting down".
Psychological addiction is never healthy for the mind, no matter what the stimulus is.
That being said, spending an exorbitant amount of time devoted to exercise is generally better than spending an exorbitant amount of time devoted to passivity.
That's a very life stylist point of view. Who's to say that exercising, producing useful things to society, or social interaction is in ANY way "better" than spending your days playing video games?
I for one am an avid gamer and I would rather game than quite a large number of other activities that people find rewarding or fulfilling, but I don't go write on some blog saying that they're wasting their life away jogging down the street or writing Dragonlance novels.
Everyone should keep their negative opinions about gaming to themselves, much less people die playing video games than pretty much every other activity on the planet.
As a gamer myself, please understand that I don't have anything against gaming in general. However, I can think of an objective way in which producing "useful things to society" is better than gaming, which is that if everyone chose to spend all their time gaming, we would die from lack of basic necessities such as food, water, sanitation, etc. This would, of course, cut short the amount of gaming we could all do.
So, obviously, we have no choice but for some people contribute to society. Is there a fair way to decide who has to contribute, and who is allowed to opt out and play video games all day?
On an entirely different note, gaming probably causes a very significant number of deaths, due to its sedentary nature. Being sedentary is perhaps more dangerous than smoking: http://www.naturalnews.com/001547.html .
So, obviously, we have no choice but for some people contribute to society. Is there a fair way to decide who has to contribute, and who is allowed to opt out and play video games all day?
Not really, but we have a way anyway, and it's called money. It's the same way we use to determine who is allowed to opt out and read all day, who is allowed to opt out and go on lots of vacations, and who is allowed to opt out and study something abstruse in college for four years.
> who is allowed to opt out and study something abstruse in college for four years.
College is one of the last bastions of learning for the sake of learning. As programmers who often exalt creation for the sake of curation -- and discovery for the sake of discovery -- I think its better we commend that, rather than condemn it.
I am empathetically not condemning it. I'm pointing out that if we're measuring things by "how useful are they to society at large", it's not obvious that the time spent by a lot of people in college is ahead of four years spent becoming a World of Warcraft expert. But I don't think that's a measuring stick to which we should hold up everyone's lives, which is why I have a problem with neither college graduates nor MMO players.
mquander's response took the words out of my mouth. Video games, or anything else mentioned as an alternative to video games in this article, are things you do after you take care of the other necessities of life.
It was clear from the article that spawned this discussion that he was employed and simply took some time off like I did to play D3.
Firstly, I should have been more specific. I meant better physically -- physical activity, even overactivity, is better under the vast majority of circumstances to video gaming.
Secondly, I don't have negative opinions about gaming -- I play a lot of video games myself, in addition to other hobbies. I have negative opinions about obsessions, whether its an obsession with gaming or an obsession with work. (By negative opinion, I don't mean that I judge those with such obsessions poorly; merely that I consider them unhealthy.)
A 'gym' addiction is less likely to destroy your life. It's rare for people to go on 36 hour gym binges.
I'm sure a few people die rock climbing, but it's mostly going to be people who get confident, and put themselves in positions where a mistake (or even bad luck) is fatal.
Over-exercising addiction actually has serious consequences on people's health, as it causes stress fractures that are often exacerbated by them trying to "power through it". That being said, few people actually have this sort of problem, and one shouldn't avoid the gym simply out of fear of becoming addicted.
> When the only source & output of creativity and energy are all wrapped up in playing a video game.
One day I imagine we'll be able to map real world problems to video games, in a way that doesn't require knowledge of the solution to create the mapping.
Programming itself is very similar to a game. If someone could make it into a virtual world, where I "write" code simply by putting together various machines in 3D space...well, that would be fun :)
Not to feed the addiction, but that's pretty much exactly what SpaceChem does. You're programming, without programming. And you have some very clearly defined limits, letting you be remarkably creative with your solutions.
Now then, that doesn't apply well to a real world problem, but there are definitely parallels.
I love SpaceChem! Fantastic game...though when I'm playing it, I think "I should just be programming instead." If only SpaceChem had more freedom and could actually create code.
Spacechem is essentially dataflow programming. Unfortunately the canvas size is to small to do general purpose computing. If you could have a lot lot more reactors, then you could encode useful data in the molecules and use the pipelines as queues to simulate memory buffers and, well, obviously queues.
I spend about 6 hours a week playing chess. I am not sure whether it is a good idea, but has at least one benefit: it gives me a "barometer" for how well my brain is working (in the form of my FICS rating, which is automatically calculated).
Well, if you're a successful day trader I'd say rather that the normal rules for not letting work consume you, rather than play. If you are unsuccessful, then it probably does fall more in line with a gambling problem.
Six hours a week? I used to play four to six hours a _day_ of CounterStrike back in college. And let me tell you, that's one of the biggest regrets of my life.
Most of my friends consisted of people whom I gamed with -- I barely made any friends in college. And of course, most of those gaming friendships never developed into any sort of deeper connection. Having made friends "IRL" with whom I have deeper connections than playing video games, I can't tell you how much more enriching that is.
Also, I now have all sorts of interests that require lots of something that I once had but now don't: time. In college, I now understand, I had so much time with which to learn and create. Instead I squandered it all away. I did graduate cum laude, so it's not like I was a total slacker, but I could have spent my time in ways that would have been far more interesting and rewarding than clicking, clicking...
Furthermore, I now have problems with my left hand as a result of holding down WASD so much. That's not something that can necessarily ever be fixed, which is frustrating to me as someone who once played musical instruments. I gave up being able to play guitar and violin for what? For video games?
Yes, I have Diablo 3 and I see that many of my friends are on Hell difficulty now and level 55 or whatever. They did that in 2 or 3 days while I still haven't beaten normal mode. And even though I'm having a bit of fun playing Diablo 3, it can never compare to the enjoyment that I once had playing instruments. And what's sad is that _I knew this_ at the time, but it was so much _easier_ to play games than to do any of these other more rewarding but more challenging activities.
Was I addicted to video games? I don't think I've suffered from any of the more classical addictions like alcoholism, so I can't fully compare. But in retrospect, I think that I was. I was always interested in games as a kid (playing NES), but I think that I really turned to games after a particularly traumatic event in my life. From that point on, gaming became an outlet for psychological stress and personal insecurities. And as time went on with me using gaming as a bad coping mechanism, additional negative effects accrued: for instance, I lost that drive in life which boredguy8 mentioned.
Well, I'm rambling a bit now... but what I wanted to convey was that if you find that what I said about my relationship with gaming resonates with you, please take some time to reflect upon yourself and the way in which you are using the gift that is your unrepeatable life. Examine yourself and see if there are perhaps deeper problems with which you need to get help, problems which are being masked by gaming. And if you can't figure this out through self-examination, please find someone who can help you. There's more to life than playing games.
This discussion raised an interesting thought in my mind: what if CounterStrike was seen as a worthwhile sport by society? If the annual CounterStrike champion was seen as on a par with top sportspeople? If people like muraiki could say "yeah, I trained pretty hard for CounterStrike in my college days. Almost went pro but decided I wanted to focus on other things. Got fond memories of it though".
That is, is the difference between "good" and "bad" obsessions purely subjective and cultural? (Example of a good obsession: recently I read the book "Mastery", where the author describes his years of practicing Aikido almost nightly. Aikido is probably close to useless in real life but the author was greatly enriched by his training. And the enrichment wasn't despite the fact his training was often repetitive, it was because it was so repetitive and "dull").
Or is there an objective criteria for distinguishing between good an bad obsessions? Here's my criteria, good obsessions are good for at least one of:
- your health
- your wealth
- your social circle
- etc
And bad obsessions are bad for at least one of those. So if you're an avid gamer, but you don't let it go so far as to effect your health, and you actively go to LAN parties or gaming expos and make real friends through that, then that's a healthy obsession.
Or if you're an online poker player or day trader that loses significant money, that's an unhealthy obsession (because it would be rational to stop). If you make money, then it's a healthy obsession. If you only lose insignificant amounts of money, then it's just a hobby and isn't really good or bad.
I actually only admitted to myself this year that I'm actually obsessed with startups. I realised that most close friends I made over the last few years had ever a strong interest or active involvement in entrepreneurship and instead of trying to fight it (eg, like thinking it was kind of lame that I've been to more tech conferences than music concerts), I should just double down on that and build a social circle out of my startup obsession.
You make good points. "Is there an objective criteria for distinguishing between good and bad obsessions?" I think that the nuance we are trying to capture is the difference between being passionate about something and being obsessed. And I think that where we can draw the line is at the psychological health of each person, although it might not be the most objective measure. Let me explain.
My wife was a national champion in college soccer. She ended up switching schools, but for the time that she was playing college soccer she got nearly full tuition. She certainly was in top physical shape. These all seem like good accomplishments, but she always tells people that she wishes she hadn't done soccer. There are small reasons like the wear and tear on her body, and her feeling that she would have more greatly enjoyed piano (which she's since taken up again).
But ultimately, the thing that she says bothered her the most was the kind of person that competitive soccer turned her into. The effect upon her personality and the way she treated other people was very negative. I won't relate the adjectives that she uses to describe herself at the time, but what's important is that the dividing line for her as to whether all her effort in soccer was worth it or not was _the kind of person it made her become_.
I'm not a psychologist so I can't really go much further with this. It probably isn't the most objective criteria, as it depends on one's value system. Certainly there are exceptions, like an alcoholic who thinks that he is really enjoying life. But if we were to talk about what seems to be more subtle obsessions, as opposed to chemical addictions, the one thing I can see that is common to both my wife and I -- her having done something that most people would have valued and I having done something that didn't result in much positive benefit -- is that neither of us liked the type of person that our activities turned us into.
What's critical is that neither of us were able to understand this until we were able to step back from our passion/obsession and look at it from the outside, as if we were a third party. We had to be able to step apart from our activity, look at ourselves dispassionately, and ask, "Is this who I want to be?"
Now, the situation you describe is a little different. To succeed as an entrepreneur requires constant education, which necessarily includes making many connections with other entrepreneurs for learning and support. Certainly someone who spends all their time consuming music might not be making the most out of their lives, but someone who spends all their time away from their family at tech conferences will also be missing out on very important things. I don't know your personal situation, but I think it does come down to your psychological well-being.
Your wealth, your social circle, even your health and your life can vanish in an instant. Whether a recession destroys your 401k, your friends leave you for other interests, you are diagnosed with a disease, or you die in an accident, there is no guarantee that any of these things will continue to persist. That's not to say that they aren't worth laboring for, but recognizing the ephemerality of these things can help give us a new perspective. What I try and ask myself is, "If I died in the next moment, would I feel that I have lived?"* That question can help me choose between another hour of Diablo 3 and spending some time with my wife, for instance. :)
Edit: For the sake of being perfectly honest, my question is a little bit different as it is based on my value system, which I'm not certain the HN community appreciates. I tried to put forth a question that most people could interpret and apply to themselves. But for me, the question is, "Do I love my God, and do I love my neighbor as Christ demonstrates His love for us, even unto death?" There are all sorts of ways -- even in soccer and video games! -- that can help me answer this question with a yes. And that's why I think the question of passion vs obsession is a difficult line to draw. To not disclose this would make me feel dishonest, but I admit that I'm reluctant to fully explain this because of the way the tech/scientist community generally feels about religion.
I've also seen people similarly consumed by pornography, alcohol, gambling, day trading, and I'm sure other things I can't think of now. Pot. I think any of those things can have their place, but please maintain connection to people who can and will say something if you start going overboard.
For instance, I'm in a pretty good place right now and still gave parental control to a friend for the D3 release, just in case. Six hours a week is arguably still too much, but seems reasonable to me, and they won't budge because A) I asked them not to; B) they care. That I've hit that limit is a good sign that I may not be as well off as I thought I was ;)
Take care of each other, and yourself.