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| Thread: I Gave Up Video Games |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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JoonasTo
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What if Elvin was female?
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posted January 14, 2013 10:10 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 22:50, 14 Jan 2013.
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Quote:
people don't spend time on things they don't value. Give me an example to the contrary.
There's this thing called the army...
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Fauch
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posted January 14, 2013 10:27 PM |
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and school, and work 
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Corribus
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posted January 14, 2013 10:51 PM |
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@JoonasTo
In the US of course joining the army is voluntary and many people value that form of employment. In countries where there is a law requiring a term of service, it would be illegal to not join the army. Therefore in such circumstances, people who choose to join the army do so because they value complying with the law (or, they value not being sent to prison or paying whatever penalty would otherwise be required). People who place higher value on NOT joining the army than complying with the law either choose to pay that penalty or they go to another country. Or they don't think they'll be caught - probability perceptions are of course incorporated into any decision. Risk-benefit analysis and so forth.
Again, a value judgment is always made. And people ALWAYS choose the option that they value most, weighted by the perceived probability of realizing that value. Again, I challenge anyone to give me an example to the contrary. (In a way, it's a trick question, because the very concept of "value" is intrinsically built into the definition of making a decision).
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JoonasTo
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What if Elvin was female?
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posted January 14, 2013 11:45 PM |
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That depends on whether spending time can be related through spending time on something you don't value in itself but what has concequences that matter.
If not there is no option of value in place. You lose your freedom either way. It doesn't really matter if you sit it out in jail or sit it out in the army. You're going to end up losing something you value ie. your freedom and gaining free upkeep in return either way.
For most people going to jail is actually doing something they value, standing their ground on a political/philosophical case. This is not the case with most going through the armed service.
Fleeing the country might be an option, you lose your citizenship rights and all kinds of other nasty stuff that most people value so I quess in that regard it is true. Though we can arque how well one can survive in modern world without an ID and if it comes down to survival, it's not a value issue anymore.
Spending time in jail is also something most don't value. In this they often don't get to make the choice.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 15, 2013 08:59 AM |
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Corribus, you forget the things learned and done ... unthinkingly. (You also forget, that you are a relativist and absolute statements, except those purely based on logic, are not really your cup of coffee, are they?)
For example, if you spend a lot of time in church - voluntarily, after you're 18 or 21 and left home - unthinkingly, because you were raised that way from since you were born, you don't do it, because you value it, you do it because you were raised to do it. (You may have been raised to value it, but that may not stick at all.) This may change, once you start to really think about it, up to the point where you really see value in it - or not. But even if you don't, you may still spend a lot of time with it, for any number of reasons, and not all of them do necessarily come with a value.
In short, people do a lot of things ... because you just do them.
People also do or don't do a lot of things because they are lazy or, to phrase it differently, because they lack the energy. It's, however, fairly difficult to associate value with negative things:
If a person watches TV in it's spare time, although said person is bored to death by it, but just can't find the energy to do something else or even THINK of something else, can you really say that person does waste their time because they value themeselves doing nothing and just waste away their time, because everything else would be too much effort? Addicted to laziness?
In short, you may do a lot of things, simply because you don't want to do something else.
What's with those who do not value themselves and their lives at all? The self-destructive type. Are you really going to say they value devaluing?
So here we are in the domain of negativity, and in my opinion (as always) things get difficult, logically and rationally, when you start to go there.
Then there are the so-called GUT decisions, the things you do "on a whim". Where do they come from? Is it really that you suddenly "randomly value" something you'd otherwise give a wide berth?
Human beings are not THAT rational and reducing them to it isn't good. True, especially with addiction I agree that you always have a choice - but it's always a difficult choice because there is a reason you got addicted in the first place, and you can become addicted to something only when it has enormous value for you.
Then again, things may get enormous value for you only, because there's an enormous deficit somewhere else.
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Salamandre
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posted January 15, 2013 09:56 AM |
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Quote:
Again, I challenge anyone to give me an example to the contrary.
I don't know, writing on this forum for example? How can people value spending days to argue here, while they clearly know threads die, there is no left track after a while, to sum: is lost time. And here I agree with JJ, they/we do it because have nothing better to do, not because is valuable.
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friendofgunnar
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posted January 15, 2013 10:04 AM |
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Quote:
Human beings are not THAT rational and reducing them to it isn't good
I don't think Cor ever implied that these value decisions are rational. Pretty much everybody on this board is familiar enough with evolution to know that nearly everything that a human does is due to biochemical reactions in the brain which themselves stem from evolutionary pressures in the past. There's nothing rational about that. All humans have a craving for human interaction to some degree because it was important for group survival millions of years previous. This is the root of RSF's problem - he's feeding one set of metabolic pathways to the detriment of another set. I already mentioned one solution to that problem in a previous post.
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For example, if you spend a lot of time in church - voluntarily, after you're 18 or 21 and left home - unthinkingly, because you were raised that way from since you were born, you don't do it, because you value it, you do it because you were raised to do i
There's tons of value decisions going on here:
1. Paying your religious fealty because you're convinced it might help you avoid eternal damnation.
and if not
2. Cute chicks in church stimulate your gonads
and if not
3. You don't want to disappoint your religious parents because you know it would hurt them severely and because you have an intrinsic empathy for their feelings.
and if not
4. You draw comfort from a sense of weekly routine because you're the type of person that draws comfort from routine.
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friendofgunnar
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posted January 15, 2013 10:09 AM |
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Quote:
I don't know, writing on this forum for example? How can people value spending days to argue here, while they clearly know threads die, there is no left track after a while, to sum: is lost time. And here I agree with JJ, they/we do it because have nothing better to do, not because is valuable.
1. Because they like mulling over philisophical, religious, and economic topics and then testing those ideas against other rational minds.
2. Because they like organizing their own thoughts on a topic.
3. Because humans have a natural desire to try to rectify bad behaviour observed in other people.
4. Because intellectual combat is stimulating and energizing.
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Salamandre
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posted January 15, 2013 10:18 AM |
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But there is nothing rational in an intellectual forum combat. People stick to their ideas and are convinced the others are wrong, whatever the arguments are. It is a one way dialog.
If you really need to organize and test your ideas against the ones able to understand them, write a book and try to reach the standards required to publish it. It will pay off much more, both for you and others.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 15, 2013 11:03 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
Human beings are not THAT rational and reducing them to it isn't good
I don't think Cor ever implied that these value decisions are rational. Pretty much everybody on this board is familiar enough with evolution to know that nearly everything that a human does is due to biochemical reactions in the brain which themselves stem from evolutionary pressures in the past. There's nothing rational about that. All humans have a craving for human interaction to some degree because it was important for group survival millions of years previous. This is the root of RSF's problem - he's feeding one set of metabolic pathways to the detriment of another set. I already mentioned one solution to that problem in a previous post.
Quote:
For example, if you spend a lot of time in church - voluntarily, after you're 18 or 21 and left home - unthinkingly, because you were raised that way from since you were born, you don't do it, because you value it, you do it because you were raised to do i
There's tons of value decisions going on here:
It's not, because it's actually no decision: you were educated to JUST DO IT (no questions asked, like why), so it just comes off like a reflex. It's the NATURAL thing to do.
Another example: you are raised to eat soup with a spoon and the rest with knife and fork. There will come the time when you don't think about it anymore - you just do it, and not because you actually value knife and fork more than spoon or fingers (which may change, though, once you get to think about it).
There is a level of FUNCTIONING (and even NOT-functioning) going on that hasn't got to do anything with values (or if it has, then it's in such a general sense, that it loses all meaning).
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JollyJoker
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posted January 15, 2013 11:27 AM |
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Which brings me to avoiding things
What is with things you do for the only reason of avoiding something else. And I don't mean things like taking medicine in order to avoid dying.
What I mean is this: we currently look at things we actively pick to do. What about the things we more or less randomly do in order to avoid doing something else?
Say ... cutting school. What do people do who do cut school for the sole reason of NOT going to school (not because they had something they would like better)? They KILL TIME, for the sole reason of avoiding something they hate. Which means, a certain activity has so high NEGATIVE value, that it doesn't matter anymore what is done instead, provided it is something else. In fact, some may go out of their way to avoid it.
So the only value this has is the fact that it is SOMETHING ELSE.
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OhforfSake
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posted January 15, 2013 02:16 PM |
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Quote:
You're right, I should have said "normal adults". My apologies and thanks for the catch. And you're wrong, people don't spend time on things they don't value. Give me an example to the contrary.
You're welcome, thank you. By the way, I wrote my reply before you'd posted your clarification above it, which lead to missing your clarification before posting.
In any case, I thought you meant intrinsic values, i.e. do something because for the enjoyment of it, and not for the possible positive reward, i.e. extrinsic values. Which should be noted is not the same thing as the difference of choosing between short term vs. long term benefits.
By applying the term 'normal adults' and referring to extrinsic values, it's logical that any action can objectively be stated to have some level of value. Because in the extreme situation, every action is labelled with the person being alive/dead, which both can be regarded as positive by generating the proper situation, and in every other case, said person is simply not 'normal'.
However since RSF said he thinks it's a waste of time, it's not objective, but subjective.
Further more, if 'normal adults' refers to people with no medical illness, it's straight forward to theoretically generate an example of a person with no medical illness, who is in a situation where no action provides subjective extrinsic value. Simply a person in a situation where the set of all possible actions doesn't seem to, for that person, to have any extrinsic value.
A common example of this is having the freedom to do whatever, yet is bored. Since we have to do something, as even doing nothing is doing something, said person will pr. default spend time on something he doesn't value.
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(Real research has shown, for example, that when confronted, say, with a choice of getting one cookie now or ten cookies later on, children will almost always opt for the one cookie now and adults will tend to opt for the ten cookies later on.)
It has been questioned if this really depicts the lack of ability to consider long time consequences. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027712001849
Not to mention many children will likely prefer 1 cookie rather than 10, without waiting time being a factor in the evaluation. E.g. who wants to sit with 8 cookies you can't eat and can't dispose of? Who even likes these sort of cookies?
Also, it's very simplified to say it's the difference between being an adult and a child.
JJ has raised an interesting point, regarding avoiding things. Take for example a young person who has not had many experiences in the world. He finds enjoyment in video game, and now for the next many years, every day, around the same time, he uses a fixed amount of time on video games. He does not believe he's addicted, because whenever his mom tells him to do something for her in that time period, he can manage to do so, despite maybe being a little grumpy about it, but that's all.
Then a couple of years later he either decides to stop. Maybe the feelings aren't strong enough anymore, maybe he doesn't value feelings as high anymore, maybe something else. He thinks he can manage to stop, as he doesn't believe he's ever been addicted, though realized it'll still be a bit difficult to say goodbye to something he's been enjoying for so long. He imagine it'll be like when his mom did the same, except now without the grumpiness, because it's his own decision.
However, it turns out he find it very uncomfortable. He's no idea what to do in that time period, meanwhile he strongly feels like playing video games, because his brain has been wired to seeking this activity, at this time period. After not being able to deal with the alternatives of two things which he both regards as wasting time, he falsely convinces himself he was always addicted, and therefore after several more defeats begins behaving as an addict.
I think here a part of the problem is that he has not decided on something else to do, or if he has, has not worked it slowly into his daily life. Where his mother always had an assignment in store for him, which to begin with sucked, he'd eventually get devoted to it, and therefore stop even considering the video games, or at least always knowing that the video games were there for him in the future. Now it's an entirely different situation however, where he finds himself in an awkward position of not having any action of value.
This is something I thought of also using as an example of a situation where there's no value in any action, yet time has to be spend on something and everything is an action after all. However the problem here is that when brain chemistry is involved, one can easily both use the term 'normal adults' as well as claim there's a chemical reward in playing video games, because in this example the brain has been wired to give a reward for this action.
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Fauch
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posted January 15, 2013 05:55 PM |
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Quote:
I don't know, writing on this forum for example? How can people value spending days to argue here, while they clearly know threads die, there is no left track after a while, to sum: is lost time. And here I agree with JJ, they/we do it because have nothing better to do, not because is valuable.
it is true for all we do, it eventually vanishes with nothing left, even if it takes centuries sometimes.
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OhforfSake
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posted January 15, 2013 06:10 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
I don't know, writing on this forum for example? How can people value spending days to argue here, while they clearly know threads die, there is no left track after a while, to sum: is lost time. And here I agree with JJ, they/we do it because have nothing better to do, not because is valuable.
it is true for all we do, it eventually vanishes with nothing left, even if it takes centuries sometimes.
I don't see, why does it matter?
In any case, AFAIK, information is never lost, so nothing ever truly vanishes, which is kinda strange, as it implies any possible sum of past events always leads to a unique presents, from which it follows any part of said sum must have been unique as well, as they were their own present moment.
Edit: I do, btw., not agree with Sal on that matter. I find HC valuable.
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Corribus
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posted January 15, 2013 06:36 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 18:40, 15 Jan 2013.
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JJ, I don't really disagree with anything you wrote, and nor to I think it conflicts with anything I wrote. Obviously not every decision is the product of a logical deliberation - in fact probably only a minority of them are. Many decisions are made by gut, instinct, or emotional reaction. However these kinds of decisions don't violate the basic point I'm trying to get across - such decisions are still based fundamentally on what we value, or, at least, what we think we value. It's all about perception of risk and reward, and those perceptions may change based on how we enter into the decision process. A person may choose a different course of action if he has more or less time to make a decision, or the environmental conditions change. In fact this is a well-studied phenomenon.
For example. If I'm hiking in the woods and I come across a bear, my instinct is probably to turn around and run away, even though I know many people have told me that in fact the best way to handle the situation is to stand my ground. If I only have a split second to decide, I likely will opt for just running away because that's my gut reaction. However if I had a moment to sit and think about the situation, I might instead remember advice handed down to me by other people and make a better deliberative choice. In this instance the value (survival) that guides the choice hasn't really changed, but I'm weighing the likelihood of achieving the reward I expect - the decision is still motivated by what I value, even in the case where I just turn around and flee. Perceptions of risk and reward are built into our behaviors, even when the behaviors are subconscious. That's a part of conditioning - we're conditioned to expect certain rewards even if there might be better rewards we could achieve if we were able to deliberate before action. Fight or flight response is based on the instinctual expectation that certain actions maximize survival likelihood – and survival is something every organism is bred to value above almost all other things.
For another example. Suppose a person is offered a piece of cake. Said person may accept the cake if the piece of cake is already sitting on a plate and being physically offered to him, whereas the person may decline if the cake is in another room. Choices are influenced by what we experience. In the prior case the person can see the piece of cake, and a desire to eat that yummy cake overrides the desire to avoid the calories and the long-term consequences that go along with it (e.g., getting fat). Even if the person values being healthy and skinny, actually SEEING the cake causes the person to experience an emotional or hormonal response that overrides the deliberative process, causing him to place more value on the expected short term rewards of eating. This is biological conditioning. However if the cake is out of sight, a person is much more likely to go through a logical, deliberative process which goes something like, “Yes, I really value the taste and flavor of cake, but that’s 800 calories, and I’m on a diet. I value being healthy and fit in the long run more than the transient benefits of eating that cake now. I think I’ll pass.” (This is why some restaurants bring desert trays around, because they know people are more likely to order deserts they can see and smell than those that are just written on a menu.) In both cases the choice is the same; it’s the perceived importance of the endpoints that change and drive the ultimate decision that is made. These perceptions of value may change depending on other circumstances – time of day, how full a person is, their emotional state, etc. All these things drive decision making because they impact perceptions about benefits and risks. Still, in the end all decisions are based on maximizing perceived benefits and minimizing perceived risks, and this is all based on what a person thinks they value at the time the decision is being made. Regret can come later, of course, when the person evaluates the logic of their choice after the fact, at which time a fully deliberative process is more feasible. 
The case of church doesn't really change anything here. Habitual behavior entails expectations of certain rewards and offers certain evolutionary advantages. It also lessens the work of having to make a change of behavior. But then one day we wake up and make a deliberative analysis of the rewards we're actually getting from that habitual behavior, and realize that going to church isn't the best decision after all. Altering our behavioral choices in response to new information only means that our perceptions of risks/rewards have changed, or we realized that what we thought we valued isn't really what we valued after all. That doesn't negate the fact that the choices we've been making (and the choices we'll make in the future) are still fundamentally based on perceptions of our own values.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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Salamandre
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posted January 15, 2013 06:36 PM |
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@Ohfor
I find it also very valuable, but from a different angle. I always thought that unless you have the power and social position to be able to really change things, arguing is useless. Democracy is pointless, who has the power must take decisions, even if others do not agree and philosophical debates outside the command power chain are just speculations and source of frustration. That's the only way the society advances, if it was different, then Greece would have been the greatest nation on the earth, but didn't work.
Now HC is indeed valuable if you can create then share things. Material things, which do not require arguing and spend time to talk. But hey, is only my opinion, if people enjoy arguing, is fine by me. Just giving an example to Corribus question.
yet I argue here...
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Corribus
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posted January 15, 2013 06:41 PM |
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@ Sal -
Of course posting at HC has rewards. I've explained before one of the reasons I value posting here.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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Salamandre
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posted January 15, 2013 07:40 PM |
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I fully understand you, but maybe is a matter of priorities and how we value things indeed.
I come here to work on the game because in my mind this is HC specificity, I can't find that elsewhere. I find a few people here very rewarding to read, as you, Zeno, JJ <--sometimes, when he is not in "me against everyone" mood, others very funny as Blizz, others very positive and healthy to read, as Elvin. I argue a lot in RL, but when I can be sure there is no unexpected end or "between spam" to the discussion, to be sure all arguments have been put on table and all confusion eliminated, briefly: when I am sure we have time.
A forum arguing is impossible to handle due to external random factors.
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mvassilev
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posted January 15, 2013 07:41 PM |
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Sal:
I think your analysis of why people argue on HC is inaccurately negative. People learn things, change their minds, and have fun. All of that is valuable.
Corribus:
So when someone like Doomforge says that "giving in to other people's visions of a time well spent" is the cause of attitudes like RSF's, the charitable interpretation of that statement is something like, "You are acting in a way that is not consistent with your preferences unless you value social approval relatively highly. You should consider whether that is actually the case - I suspect that it isn't. And if it's not, then you should change your behavior accordingly." It's asking someone to check whether their perception of their preferences is correct.
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Salamandre
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posted January 15, 2013 08:01 PM |
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I only hope that everyone is clearly making the difference between abstract and real. I feel worried when I see people seeking on-line approval as Duke or Asheera, when seeing young ones as Xerox or NoobX spending hours here (at 14 years old you should not have 5 minutes free time, you are in a deadly competition or you will finish in the whiners social category-once mum is no more there). Not pun intended to those specified, I am worried by Internet and its mirages, the belief that is nourishing the social exchanges, while in reality you are constantly alone. Some young people I talk in RL are saying "lol" every 3 words, it is scarring. Others just lost any responsibility for claimed facts, just because they think anything can be edited or reloaded. This is not how really it works.
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