The problem WoW shares with TV is that for many (most) people, logging in to WoW is an easier route to a pleasurable experience than any safe affordable activity available to a person living 70 years ago or 700 years ago or 7000 years ago. One worry that neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and others have is that if you partake often in potent pleasures that do not require much effort to achieve, you lose motivation to work hard at pursuits that haven't been carefully crafted by "designers" to be maximally engaging and pleasurable or require more effort or sacrifice to access than WoW or TV require.
It is not obvious to me that WoW's being very interactive (or its putting you in communication with real people) protects it from having the adverse effect I just described. Maybe the interactivity merely gives the designers of WoW more levers to pull in their quest to make WoW as engaging and compelling as possible -- which is more engaging and compelling than is probably good for you for something as easy to access as WoW is.
Specifically, if you binge on WoW it can take over a month for your motivational system to return to normal, and while it its taking its time returning, you have less motivation to tackle real life. Also, since pleasure causes whatever you were doing right before the pleasure to be "reinforced", if you play WoW a lot, then stop, for years afterwards whenever you are tired or under stress while at the computer you will tend to type in the command to start up WoW without any conscious awareness of intending to do so.
Of course video games, online role-playing games and TV aren't the only activities with this problem. The paperback novel for example is an invention that provides customers (at least those good at turning printed words into mental imagery) easy access to a fairly potent pleasure. This is a problem that society has been grappling with for a few centuries.
That's very insightful. You said as much, but I think that goes for anything that provides any sort of satisfaction. The less effort required to achieve the satisfaction, the more likely you'll gravitate to it. I do, anyway.
I might even take the liberty to generalize it to a sort of long-term-thinking blindness. For me, anyway, there are things I get much more more satisfaction from, that I could be doing, but require effort to do. Yet here I am on HN. I know this. I know that, on a satisfaction:time ratio, I'll get more out of one day's effort and finishing a project than a week's worth of mindlessly reading HN. That's a more fulfilling life.
It seems most of the time life just passes me by as I watch other people put in actual effort (in areas I have skills in! I could be the one doing that!) and achieve cool things. It's a difficult cycle to break. I'll figure it out tomorrow.
It is not obvious to me that WoW's being very interactive (or its putting you in communication with real people) protects it from having the adverse effect I just described. Maybe the interactivity merely gives the designers of WoW more levers to pull in their quest to make WoW as engaging and compelling as possible -- which is more engaging and compelling than is probably good for you for something as easy to access as WoW is.
Specifically, if you binge on WoW it can take over a month for your motivational system to return to normal, and while it its taking its time returning, you have less motivation to tackle real life. Also, since pleasure causes whatever you were doing right before the pleasure to be "reinforced", if you play WoW a lot, then stop, for years afterwards whenever you are tired or under stress while at the computer you will tend to type in the command to start up WoW without any conscious awareness of intending to do so.
Of course video games, online role-playing games and TV aren't the only activities with this problem. The paperback novel for example is an invention that provides customers (at least those good at turning printed words into mental imagery) easy access to a fairly potent pleasure. This is a problem that society has been grappling with for a few centuries.