I’m curious how many of these concerns could be applied to fiction in general.
I do think that video gaming is likely to be a far more detrimental hobby than people realize, especially if they choose the wrong sort of game to play. My favorite style of games use a lot of the same parts of my mind as my research- and so I find that in order to be maximally productive during the week, I need to limit them to the weekends or not at all, and play games that use different parts of my mind during the week if I’m gaming during the week.
I think that there are similar troubles with reading fiction, especially if you’re like me where you find it difficult to stop reading engaging narratives, even if you dislike them. I made the mistake of getting the first four Game of Thrones books at once from Amazon, which meant I lost about 40 hours that week to reading them (almost) nonstop, even though I quickly realized the books were making me miserable and thus were quite possibly things I should not read. The more generally applicable argument is about generalizing from fictional evidence. Once you have a well-developed sense of empathy, I think you’re much better off reading non-fiction book about interacting with people than reading more fiction, for example, and there are Waste of Hope reasons to dislike escapist fiction.
I’m curious how many of these concerns could be applied to fiction in general.
I do think that video gaming is likely to be a far more detrimental hobby than people realize, especially if they choose the wrong sort of game to play. My favorite style of games use a lot of the same parts of my mind as my research- and so I find that in order to be maximally productive during the week, I need to limit them to the weekends or not at all, and play games that use different parts of my mind during the week if I’m gaming during the week.
I think that there are similar troubles with reading fiction, especially if you’re like me where you find it difficult to stop reading engaging narratives, even if you dislike them. I made the mistake of getting the first four Game of Thrones books at once from Amazon, which meant I lost about 40 hours that week to reading them (almost) nonstop, even though I quickly realized the books were making me miserable and thus were quite possibly things I should not read. The more generally applicable argument is about generalizing from fictional evidence. Once you have a well-developed sense of empathy, I think you’re much better off reading non-fiction book about interacting with people than reading more fiction, for example, and there are Waste of Hope reasons to dislike escapist fiction.