And then 90% of the world population only plays computer games.

People who play a lot of computer games tend to eighter bore themself and move to different occupations or branch into game testing, game journalism, game translation and ultimately game development.

But yes, if all what 90% people want is playing computer games, that's what they should do. I just think you're off by an order of magnitude.

The only reason people enjoy things other than computer games is because computer games aren't yet good enough.

An environment created especially for the purpose of making us happy has an inherent advantage over reality. (Btw, don't forget the fact that our creative desires can also be realized in computer games.)

They would not become good enough until they allow you to influence the real world (that everyone is living in) in a noticeable way.

And once they do, the division between games and life disappears. They just become different interfaces to the real world.

Some do... do well enough at Poker or Magic Online, for example, and you get invited to real-world tournaments and real-world money.

They're extremely dangerous because they provide real-world possibilities.

Cut back the welfare state and let natural selection regain her course...

"Internal motivation" is a resultant of complex social forces, rather than some absolute immutable physical law.

Btw "progress in doing things that you really like" takes on a new dimension with people who are "internally motivated" to be rapists, murderers or pedophiles. I know the GP is probably only considering this in the context of "effective parenting", and I apologize for the ad-absurdum, but I don't feel screaming at villains should be made "illegal". Nor everybody's "internal motivation" and "following their passion" universally glorified, as I often hear suggested by neo-hippies.

How are rapists relevant to our discussion?

You mean, "how is a thought on the commendability of pursuing one's internal motivation relevant to a discussion of internal motivation"?

If you have a genuine argument, please articulate it. I'd be of course happy to answer.

My argument revolves around two points:

Of all robberies, murders and rapes only a tiny minority is committed by people feeling deep internal motivation to do so. Most are done by stupid people in a bad situation. Maniacs are pretty rare. Stupid people are a plenty. And they don't dream the life of violence. They have it all right already, some from the birth.

Talking about this tiny minority, I don't see how our yakyaking about following our dreams can affect them. Those people are deeply ill and should see a doctor. I don't see why we should take them into account when talking about how a sane majority of people should live.

I don't think anyone knows what they really like when they're young, and I believe even more firmly that parents are usually a better source of influence than peers. These are obviously generalizations, but I think Mike Rowe explains it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVdiHu1VCc

I might be not representative, but I always liked tinkering with computers. Since I got one, my aim was to spend as much time with computers as I could while avoding "education" whether possible. And it turned out well since now I tinker with computers for a living.

But I still have this large bill of all the hours ruined on "education" with nobody to compensate it to me. Will you?

I watched this video once before, and there was a segment in it that struck me as so strange and incomprehensible that I have taken the trouble to transcribe it. It starts at 11:20 and runs through 12:20.

"Follow your passion." We've been talking about it here for the last 36 hours. "Follow your passion" -- what could possibly be wrong with that? It's probably the worst advice I ever got. "Follow your dreams and go broke," right? I mean -- that's all I heard growing up. I didn't know what to do with my life, but I was told that if you follow your passion it's gonna work out. I can give you 30 examples right now. Bob Combs, the pig farmer in Las Vegas, who collects the uneaten scraps of food from the casinos and feeds them to his swine. Why? Because there's so much protein in the stuff we don't eat, his pigs grow at twice the normal speed, and he is one rich pig farmer, and he is good for the environment, and he spends his days doing this incredible service, and he smells like hell but God bless him. He's making a great living. You ask him: did you follow your passion here? He'd laugh at you. The guy's worth -- he just got offered like $60 million for his farm, and turned it down, outside of Vegas. He didn't follow his passion! He stepped back and he watched where everybody was going and he went the other way.

This makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. For starters, it's completely clear to me that Rowe is totally passionate about the work he has been doing for Dirty Jobs! (If that's not clear from this short segment, watch the whole video.) I don't know that in his youth he would have been able to identify this work as his passion, but it seems clear enough to me that he has, as an adult, found it -- if not "the" passion of his life, then certainly "a" passion.

His story about the pig farmer makes no sense to me either. How exactly can we conclude that the pig farmer isn't following his passion? I'd say that the fact that he doesn't want to sell his farm is evidence that it is, in fact, his passion, and the clever way he's found to feed his pigs, to me, supports that conclusion rather than contradicting it. Where is it written that no one could possibly be passionate about pig farming?

And tucked in the middle of all this is the line "'Follow your dreams and go broke,' right?" Again -- where is that written? I've never assumed that following my dreams would lead to penury; quite the contrary.

Rowe is thus an example of a curious phenomenon I've noticed -- people whose passion seems to be telling other people not to follow their passions. (Cal Newport is the other example that comes to mind.)

The only explanation I can come up with is that these people don't really get what a passion is or how to identify it. I suppose that to the extent that there are a lot of people out there who don't get that, telling them not to follow their passions is, for them, sound advice! But I find it rather unsatisfying.

I'd guess the point is that the guy didn't follow his passion to become a pig farmer, but became a pig farmer because it was expedient, and later learned to be passionate about it.

Not that i've actually watched the film or anything, you understand