So what’s the issue about that again?
Controversial take: advancing science is better than spending weeks optimising how to play video games for children.
Science has already done as much beetle documentation as one can do without a bunch of resources, though. You wouldn’t be advancing it, just redoing it for fun. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s also nothing wrong with playing video games for fun.
Controversal take: humans don’t have maximize productivity in every moment of their lives. It’s perfectly acceptable for someone to spend their spare time making in depth videos if that is something they enjoy doing.
Every moment of every day does not need to be spent maximizing productivity, otherwise what are doing on Lemmy instead of cataloging beetles?
There’s so much black and white thinking here, and maybe my previous comment is partly to blame too…
“Documenting beetles” can be exactly what you do in your spare time because you enjoy it, without productivity being your goal. You can do it just so. It’s nothing unusual.
The point of the OP is that some people have a lot of focus and curiosity that makes them fixate on solving stuff even if it seems mind-numbing to outsiders, and that a lot of that mind-numbing stuff-solving can actually be incredibly valuable for others, expanding our understanding of the world, etc. It does feel wasteful that such energy ends up spent on something that has way smaller or entirely nonexistent benefit for others.
I should have said this in my comments sooner, while the thread was still active, but here it goes anyway: we still absolutely need this sort of meticulous, “mind-numbing” work. Wikipedia is probably the best and most prominent example of such an effort that is run basically just on people’s free time and curiosity and willpower.
This also isn’t meant to say that playing video games should be avoided completely. I joked about my “utilitarianism calculator” in an another comment, but hopefully it’s obvious it’s an exaggeration. OP specifically talks of people who spend exorbitant amounts of time and effort optimising how to play a game, they’re not just enjoying it and relaxing with it as is otherwise normal for games and sports and similar activities. So it’s basically just the same sort of work as documenting beetles, but without the eventual benefits…
Most of the comments seem rather defensive. Is the post calling someone out?
I dont think so. I think theyre just trying to be accurate about whats its like to be the sort of person that gets very into their interests.
It seems overly nitpicky, like the larger point is being ignored because of technicalities
The same guy would have very likely have died before he was even 10. And if he wasn’t dead very likely to work in a meaningless job to even survive unable to spend time on things on bugs.
It takes resources to do “useless” things.
Personally, I find the insinuation that I can’t make a 26 part YouTube series about how collect all the rings in every sonic game, AND document every kind of beetle in my local province, belittling and insulting.
As somebody who has published cybersecurity research AND a good number of youtube videos about niche video games, I can promise you making a YouTube series on an obscure video game does not get in the way of doing scientific research. With the magic of unrestrained autism, both are possible.
