I lean toward “efficient entertainment”, but I do sometimes wonder what that chunk of my free time would look like otherwise.
There is currently a 20yo in Germany, working tirelessly to document every beetle in their province.
The world is large and diverse. Its fine.
I would imagine every generation had their vices (lack of better word) that previous generations harped on. Why back in my day it was MTV (ok, occasionally they were right). But I’m sure when newspapers came out it was similar to tablets and phones. When tv came out, the radio-heads bitched about the “idiot box”. So on and so forth. Any history buffs out there care to elaborate?
You can find newspaper articles from the late 1800s IIRC, that decry the slothful youth wasting all their time reading novels instead of playing outside like the glorious generation before them
Longer than that. 2500 years ago ancient greek philosophers complained about the youth in the same ways.
One of the oldest written works that we have, and can translate, was written centuries before the Roman empire and it is complaining about “kids these days”.
This crap has been going on for millennia.
And then there’s the voynich manuscript, an old hoax/fantasy book documenting plants and animals that don’t exist, in a made-up language.
That some people have dedicated their lives to “noble” pursuits and others to “wasting time” is entirely a function of who is telling you the story and how much money they stand to make off that other person’s work. You get one life, do what you want with it as best you can.
Generations of monks did nothing but pray, work, and copy books for their entire lives. Is that a waste because they weren’t writing novels instead? Because every one of them wasn’t Mendel, obcessed with growing peas?
Play some video games, work on stuff if you want, or don’t. Most people in history worked very hard and have been completely forgotten, all their works erased. With how easy it is to share your work online, you could even be famous for being good at video games (speed running, lore analysis, gimmick runs, etc) which may not change the world but objectively has more impact on more living people than writing small business websites or small farming rice in South Asia.
It is not clear that the Voynich Manuscript is a hoax/fantasy book. The plant illustrations, whilst ambiguous, do look like plausible real plants (though some have features of multiple species), and while nobody has decoded the text, the letter and word frequencies are consistent with it being natural language rather than gibberish.
Perhaps you’re thinking of the Codex Seraphinianus?
Hey I just wanted to say, thank you for sending me down the rabbit hole of both of these texts. Fascinating!
Regarding the Voynich Manuscript, and to be fair to the person you’re responding to, with no current decipherment, there is a good possibility it’s a hoax.
Churchill acknowledges the possibility that the manuscript is either a synthetic forgotten language (as advanced by Friedman), or else a forgery, as the preeminent theory. However, he concludes that, if the manuscript is a genuine creation, mental illness or delusion seems to have affected the author.
Also the Codex Seraphinianus is much newer and self-admittedly describes an imaginary world in an imaginary language.
Anyway, thanks again for the Wikipedia adventure. :D
But I dont want to cure cancer, I want to make dinosaurs!
This answer scares me from a user named Mechaguana. You aren’t planning anything the rest of us should be aware of are you?
Literally listening to the author’s podcast as I came across this (Elliott Kalan, and he has a few podcasts, but the OG and my favorite is The Flop House).
The time sink that video games demand
Video games don’t demand your time more than any other hobby… do you avoid woodworking because you’re scared you’ll make an elaborate wardrobe instead of a little box? Do you avoid swimming because you don’t want to go across the English Channel?
You can play small games and you can play for an hour a week, there’s no need to burn every hour of every day on it like a teenager.
I want a TV show about wood working addicts. Please Jeff, you must stop crafting intricate cabinets. No more driftwood tables either. I’m sick of cleaning up resin goddamnit.
I want a TV show about wood working addicts.
If you look around, probably on YouTube, I bet you can find episodes.
I can see some indie games as being easy to pick up and put down without a huge time commitment.* However, we shouldn’t discount the fact that a lot of games today, especially some of the “AAA” types, are purposedly designed to be addictive.
*Despite being a small indie game, Cracktorio Factorio will ruin your life. The factory must grow.
Bigger games can also be quick. A match of rocket league is like 10 minutes. There’s no story so you can pick it up and put it down whenever you want.
It’s way too easy for people to be exploited through video games, just as with gambling, for it to be “just another hobby”. They can also become addicted.
Yes, it can be a very nice hobby; with some games you can even show something for the time spent (As in skills, not “achievements”).
But it can also become a symptom of dangerous reality abandonment. The worst for this is in my opinion still better than substance abuse, but a danger nonetheless.
Anything can be addicting. I knew a woman who was literally addicted to maraschino cherries. There are people who are addicted to work.
Anything done to excess is an addiction. So choose yours’ carefully.
Yes, it can be a very nice hobby; with some games you can even show something for the time spent (As in skills
Nah, miss me with this mindset. Not every minute of your life needs to be productive, you should have at least one hobby that you can’t show something for the time spent.
It’s possible, but it can really change the type of games available to you too. I used to love Skyrim and similar, but eventually found I needed a minimum session of 2-3 hrs, otherwise I hadn’t even done any real playing, just inventory management, or getting crafting supplies. These days, with kids and work, I like rally simulator games, it can be satisfying to just do one or two stages, which can take as little as 5-20 mins. But it’s a whole different thing, no story, character development, surprises…a bit like going from watching Kurosawa films to watching the sports highlights.