Hey Zvi, I assume you probably won’t be checking these older posts, but on the off chance that you see this—
After reading this post, and from what seems to be your generally positive view of serious Magic play in The Pro Tour Was Magic, I was curious:
How does the mental toll of playing high level Magic—or a similar game in spirit—affect other areas of your life? Are you able to spend your commute playing Eternal at a relatively high level, then switch off and just focus fully on your job when you arrive? I agree there are valuable lessons to learn in competitive Magic—lessons about rationality, building accurate models, and adjusting hypotheses correctly in light of limited evidence.. These can certainly help in developing a sound understanding of the world, I'm not denying that. But am I really the only one who, if playing Magic seriously, finds it difficult to fully concentrate on, say, a Computer Science class later in the day because thoughts and ideas related to Magic keep flooding my mind? Am I unusual in experiencing this kind of mental interference from highly competitive intellectual games? Or is it more typical for people like yourself, who can seemingly play at a high level and then just shut down those thoughts to focus on something else, to be the outliers—able to balance high level play without negative effects on other areas of life?
I can see how, if you’re majoring in something like English Literature, competitive Magic might introduce you to new ways of thinking not covered in your formal education. But if you’re already studying a STEM field at a rigorous institution, doesn’t spending serious time on games like Magic or Poker risk impairing your ability to concentrate on more crucial pursuits? Those other areas might lack the carefully designed, satisfying feedback loops of these games, but they may be more important for long term goals..
Anyway, I just wanted to hear your honest opinion about this. From time to time, I’m still tempted to go drafting in MTGA, with the mental excuse that “it will make me smarter,” even though I’m pretty sure I’m just trying to justify what’s really just a low key addiction, and not the best use of my time at all.
It's a good question. You could certainly argue that I didn't care much about college once I was playing Pro Magic, but I think that's mostly wrong? I mean there were some boring classes where I thought about Magic instead, but it would have been something else anyway. Whereas the one math class I actually needed to focus and didn't, I blame the girl, 100% (in a good way).
I do think that it's pretty easy for me to mode shift - now I'm at a tournament, tomorrow I'm in class or at work, etc, especially if there isn't anything pending. But I've always been good at that.
As for whether it makes you smarter? Yeah, that depends on which elements you are lacking. I do think STEM substitutes for some of that, but other parts are distinct. And MTGA is good but has decreasing marginal value of time, and so on. For me, I'm not fooling myself that I'd be learning life lessons at this point!
" I do think that it's pretty easy for me to mode shift - now I'm at a tournament, tomorrow I'm in class or at work, etc, especially if there isn't anything pending. But I've always been good at that."
Hehe, yeah, I guess that's indeed the key skill to have in these situations. I’m afraid I’m too vulnerable to having the top idea in my mind suddenly shift to something unintended, as Paul Graham famously referred to in his essay "[The Top Idea in Your Mind](https://www.paulgraham.com/top.html)". I can say to myself, "Yeah, I'm in class now," but it will be a constant and explicit fight to keep the focus on what I intended if I'm not careful about what I was doing beforehand.
As graham says, "I suspect a lot of people aren’t sure what the top idea in their mind is at any given time. I'm often mistaken about it. I tend to think it's the idea I'd want to be the top one, rather than the one that actually is. But it’s easy to figure this out: just take a shower. What topic do your thoughts keep returning to? If it's not what you want to be thinking about, you may want to change something."
Basically, if I'm doing any kind of competitive gaming, from Magic to Starcraft, the top idea in my mind is ALWAYS the game. For those of you who aren’t like this, enjoy this – at least for me – amazing superpower, my brain is just too sticky in a bad way heh.
Thanks for the response, and keep up the amazing work.
Hey Zvi, I assume you probably won’t be checking these older posts, but on the off chance that you see this—
After reading this post, and from what seems to be your generally positive view of serious Magic play in The Pro Tour Was Magic, I was curious:
How does the mental toll of playing high level Magic—or a similar game in spirit—affect other areas of your life? Are you able to spend your commute playing Eternal at a relatively high level, then switch off and just focus fully on your job when you arrive? I agree there are valuable lessons to learn in competitive Magic—lessons about rationality, building accurate models, and adjusting hypotheses correctly in light of limited evidence.. These can certainly help in developing a sound understanding of the world, I'm not denying that. But am I really the only one who, if playing Magic seriously, finds it difficult to fully concentrate on, say, a Computer Science class later in the day because thoughts and ideas related to Magic keep flooding my mind? Am I unusual in experiencing this kind of mental interference from highly competitive intellectual games? Or is it more typical for people like yourself, who can seemingly play at a high level and then just shut down those thoughts to focus on something else, to be the outliers—able to balance high level play without negative effects on other areas of life?
I can see how, if you’re majoring in something like English Literature, competitive Magic might introduce you to new ways of thinking not covered in your formal education. But if you’re already studying a STEM field at a rigorous institution, doesn’t spending serious time on games like Magic or Poker risk impairing your ability to concentrate on more crucial pursuits? Those other areas might lack the carefully designed, satisfying feedback loops of these games, but they may be more important for long term goals..
Anyway, I just wanted to hear your honest opinion about this. From time to time, I’m still tempted to go drafting in MTGA, with the mental excuse that “it will make me smarter,” even though I’m pretty sure I’m just trying to justify what’s really just a low key addiction, and not the best use of my time at all.
It's a good question. You could certainly argue that I didn't care much about college once I was playing Pro Magic, but I think that's mostly wrong? I mean there were some boring classes where I thought about Magic instead, but it would have been something else anyway. Whereas the one math class I actually needed to focus and didn't, I blame the girl, 100% (in a good way).
I do think that it's pretty easy for me to mode shift - now I'm at a tournament, tomorrow I'm in class or at work, etc, especially if there isn't anything pending. But I've always been good at that.
As for whether it makes you smarter? Yeah, that depends on which elements you are lacking. I do think STEM substitutes for some of that, but other parts are distinct. And MTGA is good but has decreasing marginal value of time, and so on. For me, I'm not fooling myself that I'd be learning life lessons at this point!
" I do think that it's pretty easy for me to mode shift - now I'm at a tournament, tomorrow I'm in class or at work, etc, especially if there isn't anything pending. But I've always been good at that."
Hehe, yeah, I guess that's indeed the key skill to have in these situations. I’m afraid I’m too vulnerable to having the top idea in my mind suddenly shift to something unintended, as Paul Graham famously referred to in his essay "[The Top Idea in Your Mind](https://www.paulgraham.com/top.html)". I can say to myself, "Yeah, I'm in class now," but it will be a constant and explicit fight to keep the focus on what I intended if I'm not careful about what I was doing beforehand.
As graham says, "I suspect a lot of people aren’t sure what the top idea in their mind is at any given time. I'm often mistaken about it. I tend to think it's the idea I'd want to be the top one, rather than the one that actually is. But it’s easy to figure this out: just take a shower. What topic do your thoughts keep returning to? If it's not what you want to be thinking about, you may want to change something."
Basically, if I'm doing any kind of competitive gaming, from Magic to Starcraft, the top idea in my mind is ALWAYS the game. For those of you who aren’t like this, enjoy this – at least for me – amazing superpower, my brain is just too sticky in a bad way heh.
Thanks for the response, and keep up the amazing work.