Video Games, the "Skills" You Gain are an Illusion.

the the skill you're talking about with
sitting and clicking like this is not even the same as the skill of aiming and shooting a ball through the hoop right it's also not the same as holding a gun and pulling the trigger and you're utterly refusing to engage in an opportunity cost analysis and what you have to recognize is even when you have these measurable outcomes for video games supposedly giving you skills and the ability to focus on problem solving what is the type of skill you're developing what is the type of problem you're learning to focus on you're only learning to focus on video games that's the tragedy of it and as they say that's even true of this program I have on this phone where this this is not helping me to actually go and face-to-face in real time verbally communicate with a Chinese person it's also not helping me to sit with a abrupt pen a paintbrush and write out Chinese they're all kind things that's not training before it's only training me to sit down and write that one exam right there is a vast gap between this this world of simulated diversions the so called skills the so called problem-solving you're learning to engage in there and any possible meaningful application of problem-solving in your real life if you don't believe me if you're really skeptical if you really believe that no you're building up amazing hand-eye coordination through video games have you ever [ __ ] heard about an Olympic champion who becomes the world's greatest state archery saying yeah you know what really helped me playing video games that's what helped me build up my skills an archer have you ever heard a basketball player say anything like that have you ever heard any person who accomplished anything in any form of skill that requires hand-eye coordination thinking video games for helping them have you ever heard about a boyfriend or girlfriend who worked through their problems who had problem solving in the relationship face-to-face emotionally intense difficult problem-solving say you know it sure is a good thing I spent 10 years of my life playing video games for three hours a day seven days a week because that really helped me to be able to sit down with my girlfriend face-to-face and work this out and solve this problem do you ever hear anyone in business management say yeah the problems I deal with as a business manager it sure is a good thing I spent 10 years of my life playing video games to 3 hours a day cuz now I'm so skilled and focusing my mind hearing people's problems gathering the data engaging in an analysis getting out there and solving problems no you never hear that because the anecdotal evidence reflects the banality of the scientific claim that's being made here playing video games trains you in absolutely no skill other than wasting your time playing video games we live in a world where more and more of what we can possibly know more and more of what we can prove with a footnote to a peer-reviewed reference derives from the world of rather silly short-term self-serving social science research social science research projects that are set up largely to generate more master's degrees and PhD theses and to have kind of reliable predictable outcomes that more or less confirm something we knew through common sense knowledge or intuition anyway there was a study I can't give you the footnote there was a study trust me on this there was a study examining whether or not people could learn to accurately shoot a basketball hoop you know throw a basketball through the hoop whether they could learn to shoot hoops as we say without without actually using a basketball in a hoop like whether or not you could give people lectures and show them a diagram on the chalkboard and talk them through like the theory and the physics and that they could improve their ability to use a basketball compared to people learning empirically hands-on now there were various conclusions in that study it's not completely worthless the slightly silly world of research projects that are set up because it's like well we need something where we can do all the research within about three months we can get government funding we can give a bunch of people master's degrees for there are certain institutional constraints that keep generating these types of findings these types of investigations and you know this is added to the corpus of evidence that you know you can't learn how to shoot hoops you can't learn how to do well in basketball without actually handing the panelling a basketball no they actually did also prove that you learn more rapidly if you have the book learning also like empirical experience alone without a coach talking you through the theory and showing you on a chalkboard how it works it's less efficient than having both but they tested all this at separate groups people who just had empirical experience people who had both theory and hands-on experience and people with the hands-on experience in the theory so you can imagine there's an ever-growing corpus of evidence that the problem with IQ tests the problem with written exams is not that they don't test your ability but that they only test your ability to write that kind of exam so likewise the type of skills you build up in playing a video game those are skills that are really only useful for playing video games or even for playing that one genre of video games and on some level we intuitively know this we taught that it's hard to switch from one video game to another and we know that playing a video game about surviving in the woods doesn't prepare you to actually survive in the woods we know that playing a video game that simulates basketball does not improve your ability to play basketball in any way you don't gain the the manual skills or understanding or depth perception or timing to actually shoot hoops by sitting on a couch holding a controller so the type of email I get defending video games what it ends up defending instead is the very narrow use of testing and testing that just barely resembles a video game so this this is what you could call a video game that's on my cell phone you could call this a game in reality what this is a simulated exam so you could eat this is a game there's there's a multiple-choice test it tells you a word in Chinese and you have to select the correct characters for it now this game or this test on my phone is meant to directly mimic a system of examinations created and defined by the government of China it's called the HSK exam system so each each game you're playing there trains you to be able to sit down and write an exam and the actual exam is done sitting at a computer terminal it's not on paper to my knowledge they do it now completely digitally so you pay you pay like three hundred dollars it's quite expensive you sit down at a computer terminal and it presents you with basically exactly the same interface here's the question multiple choice answer so on and so forth the problem this relates directly to the inadequacy of the IQ test and measuring intelligence and the inadequacy of video games in preparing you for real-world challenges so on and so forth the problem is I could spend the time mastering that game mastering that video game I could spend the time mastering how to do well on that exam and my ability to understand that word when I actually hear it spoken to me in Chinese is zero now admittedly Chinese is an extraordinarily difficult language I wouldn't even say that about Italian probably if you learn Italian this way it's pretty easy to take take the information you're looking up like the real life but Chinese the gap between knowledge of Chinese on paper doing well with Chinese on exam and being able to actually write an essay in Chinese write an article in Chinese or have listening comprehension or in a split second to hear what somebody says understand it and respond in verbal Chinese it's a huge gap and likewise there is a huge gap between understanding how to score points in basketball from what's written on a chalkboard and actually have the tactile experience in real life with all the distractions and all the people around you ok so I received sort of two passionate sets of hate mail or fan mail from people trying to defend video games one defense that I think we can deal with pretty briefly and in principle I have the same response to both of them but this background that this background is important to the problem the background being that if you want to test someone's ability in something you need the test to mimic the actual action the actual responsibility the actual job as closely as possible all right this has been found through academic research and a lot of it is through the trial and error of government's decisions like there was a time when people thought you could use the IQ test you can use general tests of intelligence to figure out who would be good at being a firefighter like you can hire people for the fire department on the basis of giving them an exam that it may actually be the IQ test or something similar they invented right like here's basically a kind of watered-down IQ test plus some questions about what's the correct way to assemble a hose get the hose and pump water through it maybe there are some questions written and you know what that's a terrible test it works really badly it completely fails to select people who'd be good for the job if you want to know who's gonna be a good firefighter you have to set up a test that actually very directly mimics the conditions of putting out a fire as closely as possible the same way I mean you could imagine if you if you set up a test for who would be a good basketball player you basically want to have a series of a set up an obstacle course that very closely resembles the actual actions the actual job that you're testing their ability to do so this has been seen you know kind of across the board this has been seen in many many fields including fields that involve paper and pencil but were nevertheless standardized testing may utterly fail to show may not really fail to reflect capture who is really good at doing this job that involves paper or pencil so this is a this is a kind of time bomb for the Western education system because in many cases we have systems of examination setup that in no way resembled and being result in people training themselves like this application of my phone you show you training themselves to have a skill set that only very obliquely relates to the kind of capability or ability you're supposedly trained for so one person wrote in to me saying that the playing of video games can be justified or should be justified because it can inspire people to take more of an interest in history okay so let's let's concede this point somebody can play a video game for three hours a day seven days a week and because they play that video game they develop an interest in ancient Rome ancient Greece World War two maybe medieval China all these things maybe medieval Japan samurai fighting in Japan these are all historical settings that exist in video games right okay and again I'm not using an extreme case of video game addiction in the 21st century most people seem to think that playing a video game for three hours a day they think that's not an addiction they think that's not you know like it's not the same as someone playing for twelve hours a day you know I bet okay so I concede the point you can be inspired you can develop an interest in history from playing a viewing but the error you're making here twofold one what I've already mentioned that the type of ability you're developing remains still clicking on a controller to try to get that response get that outcome whatever it is in the particular game it may be a puzzle game it may be an action game and be a strategy may be a fighting game okay look you don't learn how to survive in a real world fistfight by playing a video game that simulates people punching each other in the face you just don't you don't build up those skills at all now conversely you can look at flight simulators that are actually used in the industry to train people to fly up airplane and then you get into these issues where they are trying to mimic the real-world activity of flying an airplane and guess what it's not fun it's not a game anymore it's not entertaining it's just a flight simulator and I believe there are actually four training people with accuracy with a gun they're also shooting simulators I heard about that in the news many many years ago that the military and police in some places they use a sort of very boring very accurate video game to help people train using using or using a revolver or using a rifle accurately where they're sure to get something right so the point is again not that that's impossible but that is not what people are doing three hours a day they are not developing useful skills and then secondly you're engaging in a kind of subtle form of fallacious reasoning because you're not considering the opportunity cost right a video game you claim the person who wrote in to me claimed can cultivate your interest in world history how effective a use of your time as that three hours a day seven days a week compared to just watching history documentaries TV documentaries made-for-tv documentary films about the same period of history for three hours a day seven days a week I honestly think I can rest my case and appeal to the common sense of the audience the the quantity of learning you would gain if you seriously set him you would have to watch every single documentary that has ever been made about ancient Rome in ancient Greece but just sitting and watching TV on nonfiction TV educational TV on that one topic three hours day seven days a week you would with time gained a massive if very shallow knowledge of that history probably very repetitious also we did encounter some of the same facts again okay so the educational value you're claiming for playing a video game this way if we're not even comparing this to hitting the books and studying in an assiduous way we're not comparing this to getting a master's degree which may indeed most people getting MAS and PhDs I don't think they even study for three hours a day seven days a week I really don't have known a lot of those people it's very rare for them to hit the books that much but okay we're not comparing this to getting a master's degree we're not comparing this to even studying and your own essay on the topic but just compared to the passive entertainment of watching documentary films I think the other side the art has to throw in the towel and say yes even if we're arguing that video games have more than zero educational content these video games we're talking about it's so close to zero it can't even be compared to watching a documentary again when I say these video games we're talking about you know I mean blockbuster Triple A titles I mean Nintendo switch PlayStation Xbox I don't mean a police simulator a flight simulator or shooting simulator I don't mean the type of incredibly boring game I just showed you on my phone here no which is really just an examination transferred into a game of fide format okay so had another guy write in to me and he's engaged in the same form of fallacious reasoning where he tries to claim that playing video games all right I think they're both three claims here one that it improves your hand-eye coordination and he has a link and it's not to real science it's not to peer-reviewed studies it's to some [ __ ] news website saying no some people say you can improve your hand-eye coordination okay so the claim that it improves your hand-eye coordination the claim that it improves your ability to focus on like problem problem solving or focus on a task on a difficult task these sorts of claims that there's a redeeming quality to sitting and playing video games for three hours you are not preparing yourself to actually score points in basketball right that is a different set of hand-eye coordination reflexes right look if you're going to make the claim that you improve your dexterity your manual skills right the the skill you're talking about with sitting and clicking like this is not even the same as the skill of aiming and shooting a ball through the hoop right it's also not the same as holding a gun and pulling the trigger and you're utterly refusing to engage in an opportunity cost analysis sort to me this guy writing in that's why you sound like an idiot it's you can't discuss playing video games as if the alternative is just to not exist for those three hours if you spent the three hours instead practicing knife-throwing I'm from Canada there are still guys who really practice knife-throwing in Canada you know you take a hunting knife clip to throw it there were guys in Canada who will boast that they defended themselves against a bear attacking them through their knife throwing skills okay if you practice knife throwing I mean if you go hunting fishing boating kayaking I mean almost any activity you can imagine will develop hand-eye coordination but beyond this what if you intentionally designed a program of activity because your goal was to increase your hand-eye coordination you wouldn't you wouldn't want to be increasing this wouldn't be this form of hand-eye coordination sitting and pressing a button no if you were actually trying to train yourself with the same amount of time and then you compare the efficacy of that to video games you would have an unbelievably dramatic contrast it would be a far more extreme contrast and outcomes than comparing the casual watching of documentaries about the history of ancient Rome to playing a video game that happens to be set in ancient Rome right so the value of playing a video game for your alleged development of your attention span your hand-eye coordination we can't compare that to nothing it's a oh look it is more than zero impact on their ability to so problems need hand-eye coordination how about baking how about knitting how about sewing okay do you have experience stitching do you experience weaving fabric alright if you do that for three hours a day that kind of that kind of work you don't think you develop your acumen you don't like you develop hand-eye coordination you know and again it's a it's a different set of skills your ability to actually sew something okay if it mean if you compare video games to almost any activity that would improve you know your your ability to focus on a problem solve a problem and your ability of hand-eye coordination it is going to pale in comparison this is a refusal to do that you're evaluating the video game is having more than zero value with no kind of real-world reference to some other viable possible outcome and above all else you are to compare it to someone who has an ambition to actually accomplish something in the given area whether its history or hand-eye coordination like do you want to be a champion at throwing darts do you want to be a champion at bowling you know do you want to be a champion of throwing a javelin these are all different forms of hand-eye coordination do you actually want to be decent at aiming and firing a bow and arrow or something what is it you want to train and someone who's then seriously and assiduously training for that ability there is no comparison here to the hand-eye coordination you are so-called scientific study establishes of someone sitting and staring at a street screen and doing this timing their ability to move their thumbs back and forth to make up make something blow up on screen well what evidence do you want to appeal to here the outcomes ultimately are going to be non comparable because the skill you're developing again as I said earlier about the nature of intelligence tests it will only be applicable to a scenario that's closely comparable to it so if you want to train yourself to be able to throw basketball hoops if you want to train yourself to be a firefighter or to be a soldier you need to work through simulated scenarios that closely resemble that if you want to train yourself to be a scholar and an author who writes books about history you've got to do activities that closely resemble that work you've got to build yourself up to writing your first book about history by researching and writing shorter essays on specific topics you can imagine the way in which you build up the acumen to do that and what you have to recognize is even when you have these measurable outcomes for video games supposedly giving you skills and the ability to focus on problem solving what is the type of skill you're developing what is the type of problem you're learning to focus on you're only learning to focus on video games that's the tragedy of it and as they say that's even true of this program I have on this phone with this this is not helping me to actually go and face-to-face in real time verbally communicate with the Chinese person it's also not helping me to sit with a brush a pen a paintbrush and write out Chinese they're all kind things not training before it's only training me to sit down and write that one exam right there is a vast gap between this this world of simulated diversions the so-called skills the so-called problem-solving you're learning to engage in there and any possible meaningful application of problem-solving in your real life if you don't believe me if you're really skeptical if you really believe that no you're building up amazing hand-eye coordination through video games have you ever [ __ ] heard about an Olympic champion who becomes the world's greatest state archery saying yeah you know what really helped me playing video games that's what helped me build up my skills an archer have you ever heard a basketball player say anything like that have you ever heard any person who accomplished anything in any form of skill that requires hand-eye coordination thinking video games or helping them have you ever heard about a boyfriend or girlfriend who worked through their problems who had problem solving in the relationship face-to-face emotionally intense difficult problem-solving say you know it sure is a good thing I spent 10 years of my life playing video games for three hours a day seven days a week because that really helped me to be able to sit down with my girlfriend face-to-face and work this out and solve this problem do you ever hear anyone in Business Management say yeah the problems I deal with as a business manager it sure is a good thing I spent 10 years of my life playing video games two three hours a day cuz now I'm so skilled and focusing my mind here in people's problems gathering the data engaging in an analysis getting out there and solving problems no you never hear that because the anecdotal evidence reflects the banality of the scientific claim that's being made here playing video games trains you in absolutely no skill other than wasting your time playing video games people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know you