I think you dismiss fear #1, “Addiction”, too quickly. When I was fifteen, I realized that games were hijacking the productive impulse to better my life. Some part of my brain had conflated being good at CS:GO with status/achievement in the real world, and as a result, I sank hundreds of hours of otherwise useful time into the game. I made a concerted effort to quit, and I don’t regret it in the slightest.
Similar to other media, some works are designed better and some worse. For example games like Outer Wilds and The Witness doesn’t try to make you addicted, a lotus-eater.
Instead of having the policy to shut the whole medium out (I’m not saying that you are just because you quit CS:GO), I’m instead trying to make a conscious effort to find the better alternatives that don’t addict me. I’m not saying that games on average do this well, but I think there is potential for really good experiences from using the dynamic interactive medium for many things, e.g. learning and entertainment.
I think you dismiss fear #1, “Addiction”, too quickly. When I was fifteen, I realized that games were hijacking the productive impulse to better my life. Some part of my brain had conflated being good at CS:GO with status/achievement in the real world, and as a result, I sank hundreds of hours of otherwise useful time into the game. I made a concerted effort to quit, and I don’t regret it in the slightest.
Similar to other media, some works are designed better and some worse. For example games like Outer Wilds and The Witness doesn’t try to make you addicted, a lotus-eater.
Instead of having the policy to shut the whole medium out (I’m not saying that you are just because you quit CS:GO), I’m instead trying to make a conscious effort to find the better alternatives that don’t addict me.
I’m not saying that games on average do this well, but I think there is potential for really good experiences from using the dynamic interactive medium for many things, e.g. learning and entertainment.
I’m not sure about the exact bounds for how little time one could spend on leisure instead of important work, but I think optimizing well-being in life is rational too, as Julia Galef argued against Straw Vulcan principle #5: Being rational means valuing only quantifiable things, like money, efficiency, or productivity.