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Comment by huehehue | Hacker News Reader

How can anyone here endorse something like this in any way? I get that video game addiction is a real problem, but constant surveillance is not a healthy alternative. Some people are cool with this because "kids need to be studying or playing outside, not playing video games!". But this is just an instance where your interests happen to shallowly align with the government's.

By the time we get to an issue you take offense with, there's already going to be a precedent of censorship and restricted activity and you'll be screwed. To be clear, I can't stand microtransaction-packed cash grabs and I don't game at all, but I also don't believe it's the government's place to say how we should be spending out free time.

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How can people endorse? Pretty easy - cognitive dissonance, projection, vicarious tithing, etc. People are really complacent about other people suffering things they themselves would hate. We're asshole in that way.

Or, you know, people don't consider it "suffering", but "doing what's better". How about that?

If a parent demands that a kid eats his veggies instead of the "burgers and ice cream" the kind wants, it's not necessarily suffering.

Or if you still consider it suffering, it's not like all suffering is valid and should be respected.

It's very easy to make everyone happy, giving them whatever they want all the time, doesn't mean its best for them. Not even if they're adults. Not only what someone wants might be bad for them, but what someone wants might also be bad for others (like someone "wanting" to blast his favorite tunes at full volume at 2am). In those cases it's best that they "suffer" not getting what they want.

Also would recommend this video to understand the mechanics that makes Fornite so damn addictive: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tqG74aI9t3Q

Searched "vicarious tithing" to try understand what you were referring to, top result is this HN thread..

I can’t help not being offended, and “this slope is so slippery only being offended by trifles can save us” isn’t the compelling position you seem to think it is. The fact is that the slope is rarely slippery, there are often May chances to reinforce or overturn such trends in a relatively free society (which of course China isn’t). No amount of pearl-clutching is going to change that, sorry.

I find that the opposite is the case, the slopes are so slippery that I don't think slippery slope is a real fallacy anymore. Three examples:

* In the UK and other CW countries the police now come to talk to you about your tweets or even arrest you: https://reason.com/archives/2018/09/15/britain-turns-offensi...

* After gun control in the UK knife crime soared. Now they literally have knife control:

http://thefederalist.com/2018/04/13/britains-knife-control-b...

* Twitter now bans and deletes for "learn to code".

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code?full=1

> this slope is so slippery only being offended by trifles can save us

Nice strawman. Chinese government censorship is not a "trifle".

> a relatively free society (which of course China isn’t)

You said it yourself.

I think you may have ignored both the post I was replying to, and the 95% of my post you didn’t chop into sentence fragments and choose to respond to.

Enlighten me as to which part of your comment I mischaracterized.

Where's the surveillance here? This is built into the game, not an external monitoring system.

Isn't this argument far too strong? What distinguishes your slippery slope from the normal process of law? Can't you call every law "a precedent of restricted activity"?

It seems to me like the problem in China isn't that they have laws, it's that they're unilaterally applied by a dictatorship. But this idea seems fine. There's no censorship or restricted activity. Nobody's preventing anyone from playing Fortnite, they're just toning back some of its more addictive qualities after a set time period. It's not a fundamental human right to earn XP in Fortnite.

The problem is not really the inventive way of implementing the game penalization (instead of cutting off access hobble the game experience). It is quite a clever and soft way to wane off the game.

The problem is that it is imposed on players without them having a recourse or the possibility to adapt the mechanism to their own benefit (like parents trying to curtail children's playing time, or if you want to limit your own playing time tonight because tomorrow you have to get up early).

I wish i could setup a time limit like this for my kids‘ games.

You probably could. Windows 10 and XBOX have a family thing where you can set times and block applications. There is an app for android called screentime that does a similar thing. You can also set time limits on PS4 accounts (they have to be PSN account though, I think)

It's not the same thing. Instead of cutting off access, display an alert and then hobble the experience (rate of game item gain drops by 50%, disable challenges). It's a lot more softer way to get out of playing instead of just turning off Internet or even the whole computer.

I agree with you competely. The chinese government should not be forcing this.

The reason parents jump on such meassures is that parenting is very hard. Everytime you make or enforce a rule you put some distance between you and your child. And while that's necessary it can be very unpleasant. Personally, we are not permissive at all but we are always glad for when some external circumstances forces what we think is best.

So there is a real danger that parents are tempted to delegate their parenting to the government because it's much easier and also because it absolves them of responsibility. Of course, that is a spectacularly bad idea.

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