No, you should not play and your reasoning makes sense. Games like WoW are designed to be superstimuli. They are the mental equivalent of an addictive drug. Some people will get highly addicted, while others will be able to do just a bit every now and then. But the risk level of addiction is high enough that avoiding them makes sense.
I don’t want to save humanity and don’t like it, but I approve of it. I want to play games and like it, but I don’t approve of it. I can’t really think of any activity that meets all criteria, +wanting/+liking/+approving. What should I do?
Well, I believe the field of psychology has tended to distinguish addiction by noting that it pertains to behavior that you persist in despite negative consequences in other areas of your life. If you’re skeptical about that definition, then think of it as something you want to stop, because you’ve determined that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits, but can’t.
How do you distinguish an addiction from something that’s just really, really good?
In general, addiction is hard to define and is some extent an issue of cultural convention. We can’t label all superstimuli as addictions.
Strong verbal declarations by the individual who have the relevant behavior that they wished they could stop is one good indicator that something should be considered an addiction.
If it is something that is not normally part of the human set of behaviors and creates strong physical or mental dependency effects in those who engage in that behavior then it is likely to be useful to think of it as an addiction. Thus for example, social interaction is a normal part of human behavior so we don’t call it an addiction. But I have seen people who are away from their WoW for too long become cranky and irritable in a way that looks pretty similar to how a smoker acts when they can’t smoke for an extended period of time.
I should probably be more careful with the term addiction than I am since it is a term that does have a history of abuse.
But, whether or not we use the term addiction in this context, it seems that WoW does become a massive timesink for no substantial positive gains.
This seems like a really bad rule of thumb. People have died playing soccer and football with full pads. People have died running. On some rare occasions there have even been deaths due to chess games. All activities have risk.
Seriously, you must clarify and improve your argument, because right now you seem to me to have written your bottom line (“chess good, World of Warcraft bad”), and just taking whatever zig-zaggy way you can find to reach it.
The same argument can be made for people who have died playing WoW. Some of them are people who likely have psychologies particularly vulnerable to addiction. Similarly, there have been cases where parents have let their kids die while they were immersed in video games. I suspect that those people would in similar circumstances with other potential issues be likely to find other ways of fatally neglecting their children.
The upshot is that “people die from it” is not sufficient. This is especially true as the human population gets larger. With nearly seven billion people, the number of people who are going to die in freak results from essentially harmless activity is going to be high. One needs therefore to pay attention to things like the proportion or look if the activity has any positive or negative effects on the vast majority of people who engage in it and don’t die.
I’m mildly curious (but not quite enough to go spend 20 minutes doing web research) how much of cocaine’s harmfulness is intrinsic and how much is due to the fact that the underground nature of its production means it is often cut with rat poison and the like.
Many people on LW seem to think highly of caffeine and nicotine, both of which are also addictive stimulants, but which differ from cocaine in being legal and therefore normally produced in a “safe” form.
Anecdote! -- George H. Smith (author of
Atheism: The Case Against God)
talks about his experiences with cocaine (generally
positive) and heroin (generally negative) in several posts
here
and several email messages (quoted by another user)
here.
He used it “on a regular basis for nearly 15 years”.
A few quotes:
[...] my years of cocaine use were the most productive,
intellectually and financially, of my life.
With cocaine, this problem [of knowing when to stop] is
exacerbated by its illegality, which means you have to use
a product that has been cut many times—sometimes with a
benign substance like baby laxative but more often with
something to give it a punch, especially “crank” (i.e.,
speed).
To this day I remain convinced that if I had been living
in a civilized country and been able to go into a drug
store and purchase valium (or something similar) over the
counter, I would never have touched heroin.
If it’s the addictiveness that’s your true objection to the game, then talking about (the ridiculously small amount of) deaths that have occurred in relation to the game is a complete distraction.
Sorry, I guess this is illusion of transparency. I thought I was being obvious.
Tobacco, alcohol, fast cars, hamburgers etc. all have direct medical damages. The addiction is a contributing factor, not the cause. WoW is addictive enough in and of itself that it has the potential to make you keep pressing the lever until you die. That is not true, to my knowledge, of chess.
But chess, precisely because the abstract challenges on the board can be so absorbing, can also derail a kid. Listen to Shawn, who’s ranked third on the Murrow team and constantly skips school to play blitz games in the park. In an interview with the New York Times before the high-school championships, the foundering student lashed out at his mentors. “I became addicted to chess. They think they did something for me, but they didn’t. Chess didn’t save my life. They want to make it like I’m a kid from the ghetto and I can play chess and that’s special. Why does it have to be like that? It’s embarrassing.”
The current question in the title of his post is “Should I play World of Warcraft?”—your “Yes”, however seems to mean that he should avoid playing it. Has Phil changed the title after you answered?
Title remains the same. Earlier version ended with the sentence “Does that make sense?”. Since Phil has edited his post I will now edit mine to make it clear.
No, you should not play and your reasoning makes sense. Games like WoW are designed to be superstimuli. They are the mental equivalent of an addictive drug. Some people will get highly addicted, while others will be able to do just a bit every now and then. But the risk level of addiction is high enough that avoiding them makes sense.
How do you distinguish an addiction from something that’s just really, really good?
An addiction is something you want, but don’t like or approve of. The good stuff is what you like and approve of.
I don’t want to save humanity and don’t like it, but I approve of it. I want to play games and like it, but I don’t approve of it. I can’t really think of any activity that meets all criteria, +wanting/+liking/+approving. What should I do?
Really? That seems… odd. Are there no healthy enjoyable activities that you want to do? Not even sex?
When I would explain wanting vs liking vs approving Sex was my go to example for an activity that fits all three.
Eating?
Perhaps experimenting with ways to change your disposition about either wanting or liking about a particular activity you approve of?
Or, you know, approving.
Well, I believe the field of psychology has tended to distinguish addiction by noting that it pertains to behavior that you persist in despite negative consequences in other areas of your life. If you’re skeptical about that definition, then think of it as something you want to stop, because you’ve determined that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits, but can’t.
In general, addiction is hard to define and is some extent an issue of cultural convention. We can’t label all superstimuli as addictions.
Strong verbal declarations by the individual who have the relevant behavior that they wished they could stop is one good indicator that something should be considered an addiction.
If it is something that is not normally part of the human set of behaviors and creates strong physical or mental dependency effects in those who engage in that behavior then it is likely to be useful to think of it as an addiction. Thus for example, social interaction is a normal part of human behavior so we don’t call it an addiction. But I have seen people who are away from their WoW for too long become cranky and irritable in a way that looks pretty similar to how a smoker acts when they can’t smoke for an extended period of time.
I should probably be more careful with the term addiction than I am since it is a term that does have a history of abuse.
But, whether or not we use the term addiction in this context, it seems that WoW does become a massive timesink for no substantial positive gains.
If people die from playing the game, it’s probably not a good one to play...
This seems like a really bad rule of thumb. People have died playing soccer and football with full pads. People have died running. On some rare occasions there have even been deaths due to chess games. All activities have risk.
The chess game may have been the proximal cause, but I doubt it was the distal cause.
Seriously, you must clarify and improve your argument, because right now you seem to me to have written your bottom line (“chess good, World of Warcraft bad”), and just taking whatever zig-zaggy way you can find to reach it.
The same argument can be made for people who have died playing WoW. Some of them are people who likely have psychologies particularly vulnerable to addiction. Similarly, there have been cases where parents have let their kids die while they were immersed in video games. I suspect that those people would in similar circumstances with other potential issues be likely to find other ways of fatally neglecting their children.
The upshot is that “people die from it” is not sufficient. This is especially true as the human population gets larger. With nearly seven billion people, the number of people who are going to die in freak results from essentially harmless activity is going to be high. One needs therefore to pay attention to things like the proportion or look if the activity has any positive or negative effects on the vast majority of people who engage in it and don’t die.
So I should avoid tobacco, alcohol, fast cars, and hamburgers; and stay with safer things, like cocaine.
I’m mildly curious (but not quite enough to go spend 20 minutes doing web research) how much of cocaine’s harmfulness is intrinsic and how much is due to the fact that the underground nature of its production means it is often cut with rat poison and the like.
Many people on LW seem to think highly of caffeine and nicotine, both of which are also addictive stimulants, but which differ from cocaine in being legal and therefore normally produced in a “safe” form.
Anecdote! -- George H. Smith (author of Atheism: The Case Against God) talks about his experiences with cocaine (generally positive) and heroin (generally negative) in several posts here and several email messages (quoted by another user) here. He used it “on a regular basis for nearly 15 years”.
A few quotes:
My point was more that the video game is so addictive that it kills people...
If it’s the addictiveness that’s your true objection to the game, then talking about (the ridiculously small amount of) deaths that have occurred in relation to the game is a complete distraction.
Sorry, I guess this is illusion of transparency. I thought I was being obvious.
Tobacco, alcohol, fast cars, hamburgers etc. all have direct medical damages. The addiction is a contributing factor, not the cause. WoW is addictive enough in and of itself that it has the potential to make you keep pressing the lever until you die. That is not true, to my knowledge, of chess.
Not so fast...
The current question in the title of his post is “Should I play World of Warcraft?”—your “Yes”, however seems to mean that he should avoid playing it. Has Phil changed the title after you answered?
I have added text at the bottom. Originally, the last line was, “Does that make sense?” To which he answered, “Yes.”
Title remains the same. Earlier version ended with the sentence “Does that make sense?”. Since Phil has edited his post I will now edit mine to make it clear.