[snarfy]

My addiction to video games led me to software development.

Addiction is a peculiar thing. Anything that makes you feel good is inherently addictive. People get addicted to biting their fingernails.

Is it bad to be addicted to reading? Or working out? If gaming is making your synapses fire faster, if for nothing more than to increase your IQ score (which is based on speed), is it a bad addiction?

Addiction is a compulsion to do something you would not chose to do. It really depends on that something whether it's good or bad for you. Addiction is something everyone will have to deal with at some point in life. Learning it from gaming is probably not a bad thing.

[mrtksn]

Not every addict makes something out of their addiction but every addict gives a lot of their potential away, often their health too.

A lot of people become software developers without being addicted to games. Great software developers bring things on the table that they learned doing stuff that is not software development, gaming is one of those but people are capable to do so many great things.

Nerding over something is cool but when it becomes an addiction, it's dangerous.

[slothtrop]

Right. I would begin to see addiction to gaming as a potential problem at the threshold where it interferes with other aspects of one's life. For as much as I loved gaming as a kid, it never posed a problem. I still played sports and finished schoolwork. Probably it overtook some potential social time, but I also lived in a pretty isolated area, so w/e.

It's funny, because people put a premium on creativity and inspiration for their children, but that level of engagement is indistinguishable from that of addiction to gaming. Even without gaming in the picture, it's not uncommon for parents to get leery at the prospect of their kids spending all their time on books or a musical instrument.

They want to see a balance according to their preferred level of allocation to every activity, but still see savant-like engagement. It's absurd. Geniuses are geniuses because they go into the deep end. You can make the case that it might be possible to manipulate the environment to the extent that obsessive engagement will likely follow one path over another, but ultimately it's not up to you, and I don't see one as objectively more important than another.

[hypertele-Xii]

> IQ score (which is based on speed)

IQ tests are not based on speed?