Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.
In the end, we just followed the guide, and it worked exactly as promised. In literally a day we 10x'd our RuneScape gold to well over a million and had basically unlimited funds from running the coal trading arbitrage the guide described for as long as we played the game.
It's hard for me to put this lesson into words exactly - but it's something like if something seems like it should work explore it and find out if it does. But also something like "Don't discount something for being too obvious." This has helped me in my career where it seemed like there were obvious opportunities for something that were in front of me so I just did the obvious thing and wound up getting richly rewarded for it. This kind of idea was on my mind in most of major life decisions too.
“After all,” he thinks to himself, “if that had really been a $100 bill, someone else would have picked it up already!”
How does this translate to the efficient market hypothesis in general? Not sure, but if I were to dig down into how rational actors handle such situations, I'd expect to discover the math works out over continuous domain, and the joke is a paradox because we tend to think of money in discrete terms.
Do you want to rely on the prior actor framework, or the react to what you see framework? That decision is not rational.
The difference I see between what I wrote above and what you described as not rational choice of a framework is that, per my personal experience, it is possible to reconcile two conflicting seemingly rational frameworks. It just takes time to extend them past their edges until they meet. That is, extend each past the approximation cut-off point.
The efficient market hypothesis always confused me since it seems empirically false. Who is making the trades that make the market efficient in the first place? Plus people (even large groups of them) are often wrong. Startups and the massive value they can create are an example of that.
Markets are a prediction of predictions to some extent and people are far from agents that act only on hard numbers (and they’re often not wrong to do so). Markets are probably the best tool we’ve got for this, but they’re far from perfectly efficient.
In the EMH people do still trade, it's just that only those with new information trade profitably.
In the joke scenario, as a parallel, you just need the economist to model that there's a chance they are the first person to see the bill.
Then you have a game theory game, where your chance of being the first person to see the bill depends on what everyone else thinks their chance was to be the first person, and hence did or didn't pick up the bill.
Then there is some optimal mixed strategy where people try pick up the bill with a certain probability, and it all works out.
On the one hand, we do[0].
On the other, what you're describing is why I don't feel bad about the fact that, 15 years after I had the idea, I've still not learned to use MHD modelling software to experiment with an idea I've had that might make fusors a little more interesting.
[0] ok so they were 12 not 8: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2020/10/middle-sch...
None of this is obtained from genius, but from a father who's experienced in such and most likely an engineer. And I think this is why these sort of tales never have the implied follow through. The unstated implication is '12 year old builds nuclear reactor in toy room' is 'imagine what he'll be doing in 5 years!' And, the answer? Shit posting on Twitter, getting political, and trying to make a AR/VR startup.
Not exactly the Atlas upon which the world can comfortably thrust all of their hopes and expectations upon. And nobody is. Ramanujan [1] was a once in a millennia level of genuine abnormal genius, and he dedicated his entire life to a single pursuit. Yet even that mammoth of a man could but scratch the surface of that which is out there.
If they really are asking the unstated question, they don't have good memories of their peers back at age 17.
{I think I was in the middle of my occult/goth/Wicca phase at that age, and now look at me: I use arcane knowledge, get called a wizard, I fly abroad to consort with dragons and werewolves (and other furries) and my familiar's names are Siri and Alexa… ;)}
One other reason we thought this wouldn't work is that it seemed to us buying in large quantity should get a discount - bulk discount, right? But that wasn't the case. It was cheaper, per unit, to buy hundreds of coal than tens of thousands.
If my childhood had more books and boredom I might have the patience to spend longer in the planning stage and less enthusiasm for the drinking coffee and pounding out a solution stage.
I rarely regret just getting things done. Excessive planning is a much larger issue. I find it's usually better to just do something twice rather than spend too much time thinking about it.
One absolutely fantastic upside for just getting it done is that even if you have to redo it from scratch, you have so much better real-world understanding of the problem space.
I'm inclined to think that this applies to majority of the things we do, but is often brought up regarding building products in the idea that one should build the first prototype quickly, just to be scrapped so the final solution can be built from clean slate, benefiting from all the knowledge the prototype helped us gather.
Most often, in my experience at least, the knowledge one gains from actually doing the thing (even badly) surpasses anything that could have been gained with excessive planning. To actually work, genuine effort including some planning is definitely needed, but I don't think that's too high a bar. At least not when compared to the skills and knowledge one would have needed to achieve the same success with "just" excessive planning up front.
What the books taught me was how to write clearly, if with a somewhat unorthodox style. Turns out that's extremely important for a software engineer.
On the other hand how to inspire people and the importance of operational doctrine has been massively important.
Also spreadsheets..
Also the value of realtime market information.
I love reading about eve, but I can't imagine ever having enough free time for it
The best skill in life
I credit RuneScape with teaching me to write Java code to write bots to do the work involved with the delayed gratification.
Then eventually created a GP selling business online.
Also led a PvP clan and ran a PHP forum for it.
The RuneScape metagame was where I acquired real-world software development skills.
Gotta credit a good chunk of career success to RuneScape as well.
But, in my life, I credit sports for everything you said.
With the added benefit of a healthy neurology and biology in general. Something video games - and the digital world, as a whole - have been demonstrated to be detrimental. I mean, by serious studies.
You get individual studies of the impact in terms of say specific reflexes or some aspect of depression for some subset of games, but you would need a comprehensive set of studies for every single context to build a holistic picture which we simply don’t have.
Occasionally it’s enough to find major downsides such as with smoking’s really negative health impacts and say it’s not worth it. But for most things, including video games, there isn’t a single overwhelming downside just some negatives and other positives.
People want a black and white world where they can say “_ is good/bad,” but in the real world meat, carbs, video games etc isn’t that simple they are good and bad at the same time. Many people would be better off by reducing meat and carb consumption but that doesn’t mean a worldwide ban on consuming them is a good idea.
Why not? What's the purpose of saying it's good for cognitive performance if cognitive performance isn't tested seriously?
Try at least two or three dimensions of it. Outside the video gaming context of course.
Otherwise just say: video gaming is good for getting better at video gaming.
That would be an honest conclusion.
Because there are simply far to many variables involved. On one dimension you have type of game, but that variety impacts everything else.
Mario Party and Call of Duty for example may impact peoples emotions differently.
Tetris and StarCraft are both test actions per minute in a different way which may mean different things for reflexes etc.
Hours per week are another dimension, someone spending a few minutes per day playing Wordle is obviously different than someone who only works a part time job to have more time for their MMO addiction.
Finances is another dimension with actual free games being well free but some people spending their life savings on loot boxes in “Free to Play” games.
Degree of socialization is again varies wildly with a surprising number of marriages starting from MMO’s but single player games obvious don’t have that.
Exercise is another with some people getting a real workout playing beat saber and others getting embolisms from sitting to long with their addiction.
Etc etc.
It's sad that an injury from a physical exercise can cause a lot of trauma indeed, but I don't think practicing it is inherently bad because of that.
An accident can happen related to anything in life. People die from coconuts or tree branches falling upon their heads. We won't say trees or coconuts are inherently bad because of that.
If you are interested in economics, you can learn a lot from it.
In an intersection with behavioral economics, you can even learn a lot of business from observing sports.
- AoE for laying the groundwork of my love of history and archeology.
- Skyrim for making me finally learn how to create 3D art, which I still do as profession today.
- All those weird Japanese games that tell you that you don't have to conform to the predefine notion of what should and shouldn't be videogames.
Of course it doesn't replace real learning. It's hilarious when some gaming-addicted argue that 'videogames made me smart! see that research!'
Hell no Bob, smart people out there spend most of their time learning and play videogames just occasionally.
Lots of other great games helped me build my English skills, most of all The Legacy of Kain series.
I remember Final Fantasy 1 on gameboy had a surprisingly open world and I could walk all over the map, and it had random monster encounters. I'd be fighting a lengthy turn based battle about every 20 steps, and it could be way above my level, and I was completely and utterly lost!
I spent so much time on that game. But I never progressed far into the quest. Playing it as an adult I realized one random NPC says there's a hidden cave to the east, and if you never read it's pretty much impossible to find.
Similarly in Pokemon, bumbling through caves in the dark until I go out the other side through sheer luck and grit. Turns out the move Flash just lights up the cave.
Later in life I also realized how 'real life' is a lot subtler than it appear. Using a weapon, being far out in the woods, crafting tools .. which are all things I did in video games but had no relation to the real life versions.
Makes me curious to try runescape though
watching eSports showed me how big difference mentality and attitude makes
H3 taught real social skills and teamwork.
The things I will say it has going for it is that it has an extremely steep learning curve and you have to grind. Though many other games also have these attributes at a sufficiently high level.
The reality is that most people who are very good at video games wouldn't be able to maintain the long-term discipline or focus to run a company, nor be able to handle the responsibility of leading a team.
Roguelikes produces explorers and risk-takers.