I've noticed that there is a considerable amount of overlap with various web sites, and you can usually tell which ones they are by how much/how little they have in common story wise.
Is there a sizeable overlap in readership of HardOCP and Slashdot? Probably enough to make sure all the interesting stories there end up here. I see a lot of things that are picked up by Plastic and Metafilter after appearing here, and often the other way around.
So it's not an uncommon occurence at all... you could probably use story/topic overlap as a guide to how much of a readership overlap there is.
You do realize, its not what you like. Its what she likes.
But make sure you know what she likes, and don't just assume, of course. And if she's interested in those sorts of things, if you made her aware what is involved in the diamond market, she might not be so interested anymore.
This girl sure hasn't been interested in diamonds in a long time.
And if it's important to you to not support the horrible activites DeBeers is responsible for, and she insists on a diamond anyways - perhaps you need to evaluate the relationship.
So if I, say, started manufacturing memory chips in the middle of a ancient 2000 year-old temple deep in the rain forest, and forced 6 year old natives to run in groups of five through booby traps, and them climb down a 1000-foot pit, cross streams of lava, and dodge fire, collect one of the memory chips, and return, where 3 of the 5 kids in the group are guaranteed to die painful deaths, are the memory chips suddenly more valuable to you?
I cannot imagine someone thinking that a diamond is MORE valuable because an innocent person was enslaved and killed to mine it to make some rich idiot living a cushy life in another country even richer. It's like thinking that cotton made on plantations during slavery was worth more because people suffered for it.
You're right. I realized that after I posted. I was intending to add something to what you said, though I managed to do nothing but say pretty much the same thing.
If you can't imagine things to do to keep yourself interested for 200 years, then well, you don't have much of an imagination. Learn languages. Become good at painting, sculpting, writing, and various musical instruments. Heck, learn a lot about music and start creating new instruments. Go back to college and go into an entirely new career. Move to a new country regularly, and learn about their culture. Spend time teaching others, spreading your knowledge. Come up with a idea that qualifies as "science fiction", develop a plan of what it would take to get there, and work toward it. Spend a while living off the land. Domesticate a species of animal.
That's off the top of my head. If I had years to think about it, who knows what I could come up with.
If watching The Simpsons for 200 years is the best you can consider... well, enjoy those endless reruns for the decades you certainly have left.
One cell splits to three? Well, I guess if it splits into two regular cells and one TROLL cell.:)
Let's see, you start off as one cell, the egg. Splits once into 2, a second time into 4, a third into 8, fourth into 16, fifth into 32, sixth into 64, and seventh into 128.
So you mean that I'm only made of 64 cells or less? Wow, impressive.
The technology to extend (perhaps indefinitely) life expectancy is going to be avaliable at first only to the rich and powerful (if only because it would be expensive because new). The rich and powerful will become richer and more powerful, and will quickly put mechanisms in place to prevent the rest of the population from partaking.
There would quickly be two classes of humans; the immensely rich and powerful few, and the increasingly expendable and poor masses.
I wouldn't agree with that assessment.
If something as huge as being able to live indefinitely were possible, and the rich were keeping control over the technology, they'd have to do it secretly, and disappear from the public eye after a normal lifespan.
As soon as people are aware of it, there would be a HUGE backlash. In a Democracy, like the US, any poltician being against people getting access to the procedures would be voted out of office. In a non-Democratic society, I would imagine civil war over something like that.
There may be plenty of people against life-extension should it become available, but they'll eventually die off and it'll no longer be an issue for the rest.:)
Extrapolating from some numbers, they estimated that within a few decades life-expectancy would be increasing faster than real time, making everybody effectively immortal.
You don't have to live until they discover immortality. You just have to live until they're able to extend your lifespan quicker than you are aging. That's the point where you can become effectively immortal - or more accurately, with an unbounded lifespan.
You can never really claim "immortality", as that would suggest that you can never, ever die. It would take a lot to get to the point you can safely claim that. Just as long as life expectancy grows faster than your age, you don't have to worry.
what would be the point of living if there was nothing left to learn?
Well, we'll deal with that one when we get there. As it is, I don't think there's any end in sight of what is possible to learn.
Though if it ever did occur, where you knew everything, then yes, it seems like there wouldn't be any value left in life, though if you could immerse yourself in constant blissful pleasure, might you care??:)
Looking at the posts that come before my own, it seems that there is a basic assumption that there would be a 'forever young' situation: no aging and always in your 20s or 30s. Is this necessarily the case?
It is a necessity for any practical life extension technology. Maybe not staying 'forever young', but what about seriously slowing down the aging process, or perhaps allowing you to regenerate your body back to 25, letting it age to, say, 70 again, and going back.
In some ways, I guess this is implied because the way the body ages, it will eventually "fall apart" at some point and put a limit on life extension without increased "youth" time.
Though this comes across as a joke, it's a very important issue to consider.
After all, if we don't bother to stop aging, then someone living for hundreds of years isn't going to enjoy that much of it. What good is living when your body is fragile and weak?
Adding on to one's life expectancy isn't worthwhile unless it comes with a significant decrease in the rate of aging, or at least the ability to temporarily reverse it. (ie taking a 70 year old body, and making it as good as at 25 again, for it to age back to 70, and repeat)
In general, when people talk about long life spans, usually slowing/stopping/reversing aging is implied.
They even had a food counter with ice cream and hamburgers. (the first Dave & Busters?)
Most Putt-Putt Golf & Games had food counters with hot dogs, ice cream, perhaps burgers and fries. Nothing special there...
what was the name of that side-scroller shooter? you flew a ship in a "cave" scrolling right to left and shot and dodged various enemies. You shot by pushing buttons that were aranged in a diamond pattern (shoot four directions) The music was the theme to the 1980's movie "Flash Gordon"
If suddenly, say, hundreds or even thousands of people with good jobs and money started moving into the "inner city slums", how long do you think they'd really stay inner city slums? After people start remodeling buildings, and putting pressure on the city to repair infrastructure, and more police start coming around, and people open restaurants and shops to cater to all the people nearby with money, things are going to change... They usually call it gentrification.
But you make it sound like the ever expanding sprawling suburbs are the only other option to inner city slums.
If all the streetlights and "security" lights were replaced with LED lights of equal brightness that matched the spectrum of sunlight, it wouldn't help light pollution and it's negative effects on wildlife at all! In fact, it would make it worse, since one of the points is that animals that perceive lights as sunlight act differently. Make the lights even more sunlight like and it will only make the problem worse.
The point is that there's definitely too much light - making the same amount of light, just cheaper, while a goodthing because it saves money and uses less electricity, doesn't help the animals, it doesn't help light pollution, it doesn't help the horrible problems with glare caused by the countless badly-designed and placed lights. And it doesn't help with security - bright lights at night make dark shadows to hide in, dimming the lights reduces the contrast against shadows.
Being against new development is not the same as being against there being any development.
The population of the US is now growing fast enough that we need to be turning large tracts of wilderness into subdivisions just to be able to house everyone. There is plenty of space inside many cities, especially if housing was made a bit denser - building up, not out. It also is easier on the city infrastructure, and cheaper tax wise.
The people sabotaging development into woodlands aren't saying that all buildings should be torn down and humanity should go back to being nomadic.
Not quite... Yes, the XBox was a complete non-starter in Japan. But the Gamecube is not nearly that bad off here in the US - the XBox is selling in Japan like the Atari Jaguar did here in the US back when it came out- just barely.
There may be more people with XBoxes here in the US, but then again, I can't help but wonder if the fact that Microsoft is helping to give them away for various things might have something to do with that.
If cities create their own weather, than perhaps the road construction altering albedo and redirecting heat-causing traffic might be to blame for the fact that the Chicago area has had storms severe enough to drop hail on us like 6 times since July 1st?
I've seen more hail in about the past month than the previos 28 1/2 years of my life.
Well, it's hard to define, but most people have a good sense of what I mean when I say that: things like a 'spirit' -- a "ghost in the machine", so to speak, which is the "real you"; God, angels, and demons if you're Judeo-Christian, perhaps other things if you're into some other beliefs which contain spiritual aspects (new age, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc).
I'm sure a lot of people have a good sense of what you mean, including myself. However, without pinning down any definitions, trying to discuss it in any clear manner other than repeating anecdotes and personal opinions is useless, because as soon as you try and pin something down, it can be shifted with a few words, since there really isn't any substance there.
The spiritual world is something separate. It can affect the physical world (otherwise it would be completely irrelevant), and be affected by it; but it does not obey the same laws as the physical world, and so cannot be repeatably measured and held under a microscope.
The fact that the so-called spiritual world doesn't obey the same laws as the physical world does not logically imply that the spiritual world cannot be repeatably measured. Saying it doesn't follow the laws of physics does not by itself imply that it does not follow any laws. Surely if the spiritual world and physical world can affect each other, then some sort of laws or rules about how they affect each other could be deduced. Unless the spiritual world has no laws at all - if it doesn't, is there any value to it? After all, if you can not associate actions/thoughts with corresponding results, then there is no need to try and influence it. As an analogy - imagine playing baseball, except that the scores for an inning are determined by the roll of a pair of dice up in a booth. However many runs you score is irrelevant. You may still put effort in to playing because you enjoy it, but as your actions cannot really affect your team's score, then that should never be a motivating factor.
Here's an idea - if a person says they experience the spiritual world, but they are the only ones that can ever experience that particular version/area of the spiritual world, is there really a difference between a true experience, and a "hallucination" or "daydream" that they had that experience? If a person claims that Jesus/Mohammed/Zeus/Ganesh came to them in a dream and told them to do X, Y, and Z, is it knowable if that is what actually occured, or that they unconsciously created that dream? Is the question even relevant?
The short answer is that creation is here to house beings capable of percieving the magnificence of the Creator.
Why? Why is it so necessary for something to observe the creator's magnificence that it must create beings to do so? And what is the purpose of the creator?
All that positing the existence of such a creator does is adjust the questions that are asked. Nothing additional is explained.
You either have to posit the creation of something from nothing, or the fact that something has existed in some form another for all eternity and will continue to do so. Either way is in violation to the principles we understand to describe the universe.
Thus I would have to say that our understanding at the present time is incapable of comprehending things from the proper perspective, perhaps due to the wiring of our brains.
But from another perspective - if there is nothing to observe the existence of something, did it ever truly exist? If a universe forms, were to collapse on itself without ever containing something capable of observing that universe's existence, did it ever truly exist?
The failure of the current models of physics is that they do not take into consideration the other out-of-phase dimensions that exist in our same 3-space (five others, making six including ours).
Did someone go and one-up Nature's 4-Day Simultaneous TimeCube without my knowledge?
Can you define what you mean by "spiritual world"? It's hard to try and discuss whether science has/can attempt to do anything with it without knowing what you mean by using the term.
I was aiming at the number of issues the federal government takes on.
I doubt that's going to happen without serious fundamental changes. It seems that the congress seems to feel that they need to spend a lot of time working on laws and such, and thus find things to fill up all that time.
Sure, I'd like to see them focus on fewer issues too, and use the time that they save by not proposing and discussing and passing resolutions on every court decision they have issues with, and not spending time trying to pass constitutional amendments on incredibly silly and wasteful things like "flag burning" and "defining marriage". But it's not going to happen while voters continue to put people into office who want to spend all that time on frivolous things.
I'd also love to see people get elected on the platform of reducing the number of laws in this country by repealing large numbers of them, and cleaning up and consolidating the rest. But apparently that's not really as important as passing more of them.
Actually, your first question does not logically lead to the second statement.
If a congressperson can't properly represent X number of people on the issues, won't reducing the government mean that each congressperson has to represent X+Y people? You'd want to INCREASE the number of people doing the representation, so they have smaller amounts of people to represent. You don't cut the size of the school when it doesn't properly meet the needs of the students.
Animal Crossing grabs people for similar reasons to The Sims/SimCity. They are games without explicit goals. Thus they're not games that you really lose. You play them, create your own goals - if you want any goals at all - and just have fun doing it. They're about having a lot of freedom and leeway in the activities you choose.
These kinds of games attract the those with less of a goal-oriented gamer personality. Serious gamers either have, or learn to have, a goal-oriented attitude. To beat the other people, get a new high score, do something in the shortest time, or just accomplish all the goals. Some people don't find this as fun - especially when they're not good at games.
I think the biggest way to attract more people to gaming is to create more of these games that are aimed more at creating environments to do things in, without concrete goals - or at least make any goals that exist to be optional things. Like in Animal Crossing - if you want, you can try and collect all the fish/bugs/paintings/fossils, but you don't have to. You can try and get your Sims to the top of their jobs and have all the items and have them friends with everyone, but the game doesn't end if you do, and doesn't keep pushing you to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
I've noticed that there is a considerable amount of overlap with various web sites, and you can usually tell which ones they are by how much/how little they have in common story wise.
Is there a sizeable overlap in readership of HardOCP and Slashdot? Probably enough to make sure all the interesting stories there end up here. I see a lot of things that are picked up by Plastic and Metafilter after appearing here, and often the other way around.
So it's not an uncommon occurence at all... you could probably use story/topic overlap as a guide to how much of a readership overlap there is.
You do realize, its not what you like. Its what she likes.
But make sure you know what she likes, and don't just assume, of course. And if she's interested in those sorts of things, if you made her aware what is involved in the diamond market, she might not be so interested anymore.
This girl sure hasn't been interested in diamonds in a long time.
And if it's important to you to not support the horrible activites DeBeers is responsible for, and she insists on a diamond anyways - perhaps you need to evaluate the relationship.
So if I, say, started manufacturing memory chips in the middle of a ancient 2000 year-old temple deep in the rain forest, and forced 6 year old natives to run in groups of five through booby traps, and them climb down a 1000-foot pit, cross streams of lava, and dodge fire, collect one of the memory chips, and return, where 3 of the 5 kids in the group are guaranteed to die painful deaths, are the memory chips suddenly more valuable to you?
I cannot imagine someone thinking that a diamond is MORE valuable because an innocent person was enslaved and killed to mine it to make some rich idiot living a cushy life in another country even richer. It's like thinking that cotton made on plantations during slavery was worth more because people suffered for it.
You're right. I realized that after I posted. I was intending to add something to what you said, though I managed to do nothing but say pretty much the same thing.
My thoughts?
If you can't imagine things to do to keep yourself interested for 200 years, then well, you don't have much of an imagination. Learn languages. Become good at painting, sculpting, writing, and various musical instruments. Heck, learn a lot about music and start creating new instruments. Go back to college and go into an entirely new career. Move to a new country regularly, and learn about their culture. Spend time teaching others, spreading your knowledge. Come up with a idea that qualifies as "science fiction", develop a plan of what it would take to get there, and work toward it. Spend a while living off the land. Domesticate a species of animal.
That's off the top of my head. If I had years to think about it, who knows what I could come up with.
If watching The Simpsons for 200 years is the best you can consider... well, enjoy those endless reruns for the decades you certainly have left.
One cell splits to three? Well, I guess if it splits into two regular cells and one TROLL cell. :)
Let's see, you start off as one cell, the egg. Splits once into 2, a second time into 4, a third into 8, fourth into 16, fifth into 32, sixth into 64, and seventh into 128.
So you mean that I'm only made of 64 cells or less? Wow, impressive.
The technology to extend (perhaps indefinitely) life expectancy is going to be avaliable at first only to the rich and powerful (if only because it would be expensive because new). The rich and powerful will become richer and more powerful, and will quickly put mechanisms in place to prevent the rest of the population from partaking.
:)
There would quickly be two classes of humans; the immensely rich and powerful few, and the increasingly expendable and poor masses.
I wouldn't agree with that assessment.
If something as huge as being able to live indefinitely were possible, and the rich were keeping control over the technology, they'd have to do it secretly, and disappear from the public eye after a normal lifespan.
As soon as people are aware of it, there would be a HUGE backlash. In a Democracy, like the US, any poltician being against people getting access to the procedures would be voted out of office. In a non-Democratic society, I would imagine civil war over something like that.
There may be plenty of people against life-extension should it become available, but they'll eventually die off and it'll no longer be an issue for the rest.
Extrapolating from some numbers, they estimated that within a few decades life-expectancy would be increasing faster than real time, making everybody effectively immortal.
You don't have to live until they discover immortality. You just have to live until they're able to extend your lifespan quicker than you are aging. That's the point where you can become effectively immortal - or more accurately, with an unbounded lifespan.
You can never really claim "immortality", as that would suggest that you can never, ever die. It would take a lot to get to the point you can safely claim that. Just as long as life expectancy grows faster than your age, you don't have to worry.
what would be the point of living if there was nothing left to learn?
:)
Well, we'll deal with that one when we get there. As it is, I don't think there's any end in sight of what is possible to learn.
Though if it ever did occur, where you knew everything, then yes, it seems like there wouldn't be any value left in life, though if you could immerse yourself in constant blissful pleasure, might you care??
Looking at the posts that come before my own, it seems that there is a basic assumption that there would be a 'forever young' situation: no aging and always in your 20s or 30s. Is this necessarily the case?
It is a necessity for any practical life extension technology. Maybe not staying 'forever young', but what about seriously slowing down the aging process, or perhaps allowing you to regenerate your body back to 25, letting it age to, say, 70 again, and going back.
In some ways, I guess this is implied because the way the body ages, it will eventually "fall apart" at some point and put a limit on life extension without increased "youth" time.
Though this comes across as a joke, it's a very important issue to consider.
After all, if we don't bother to stop aging, then someone living for hundreds of years isn't going to enjoy that much of it. What good is living when your body is fragile and weak?
Adding on to one's life expectancy isn't worthwhile unless it comes with a significant decrease in the rate of aging, or at least the ability to temporarily reverse it. (ie taking a 70 year old body, and making it as good as at 25 again, for it to age back to 70, and repeat)
In general, when people talk about long life spans, usually slowing/stopping/reversing aging is implied.
They even had a food counter with ice cream and hamburgers. (the first Dave & Busters?)
Most Putt-Putt Golf & Games had food counters with hot dogs, ice cream, perhaps burgers and fries. Nothing special there...
what was the name of that side-scroller shooter? you flew a ship in a "cave" scrolling right to left and shot and dodged various enemies. You shot by pushing buttons that were aranged in a diamond pattern (shoot four directions) The music was the theme to the 1980's movie "Flash Gordon"
Vanguard.
Question -
If suddenly, say, hundreds or even thousands of people with good jobs and money started moving into the "inner city slums", how long do you think they'd really stay inner city slums? After people start remodeling buildings, and putting pressure on the city to repair infrastructure, and more police start coming around, and people open restaurants and shops to cater to all the people nearby with money, things are going to change... They usually call it gentrification.
But you make it sound like the ever expanding sprawling suburbs are the only other option to inner city slums.
Did you read the article?
If all the streetlights and "security" lights were replaced with LED lights of equal brightness that matched the spectrum of sunlight, it wouldn't help light pollution and it's negative effects on wildlife at all! In fact, it would make it worse, since one of the points is that animals that perceive lights as sunlight act differently. Make the lights even more sunlight like and it will only make the problem worse.
The point is that there's definitely too much light - making the same amount of light, just cheaper, while a goodthing because it saves money and uses less electricity, doesn't help the animals, it doesn't help light pollution, it doesn't help the horrible problems with glare caused by the countless badly-designed and placed lights. And it doesn't help with security - bright lights at night make dark shadows to hide in, dimming the lights reduces the contrast against shadows.
Being against new development is not the same as being against there being any development.
The population of the US is now growing fast enough that we need to be turning large tracts of wilderness into subdivisions just to be able to house everyone. There is plenty of space inside many cities, especially if housing was made a bit denser - building up, not out. It also is easier on the city infrastructure, and cheaper tax wise.
The people sabotaging development into woodlands aren't saying that all buildings should be torn down and humanity should go back to being nomadic.
Portraying it as an either-or issue is deceptive.
Not quite... Yes, the XBox was a complete non-starter in Japan. But the Gamecube is not nearly that bad off here in the US - the XBox is selling in Japan like the Atari Jaguar did here in the US back when it came out- just barely.
There may be more people with XBoxes here in the US, but then again, I can't help but wonder if the fact that Microsoft is helping to give them away for various things might have something to do with that.
If cities create their own weather, than perhaps the road construction altering albedo and redirecting heat-causing traffic might be to blame for the fact that the Chicago area has had storms severe enough to drop hail on us like 6 times since July 1st?
I've seen more hail in about the past month than the previos 28 1/2 years of my life.
Well, it's hard to define, but most people have a good sense of what I mean when I say that: things like a 'spirit' -- a "ghost in the machine", so to speak, which is the "real you"; God, angels, and demons if you're Judeo-Christian, perhaps other things if you're into some other beliefs which contain spiritual aspects (new age, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc).
I'm sure a lot of people have a good sense of what you mean, including myself. However, without pinning down any definitions, trying to discuss it in any clear manner other than repeating anecdotes and personal opinions is useless, because as soon as you try and pin something down, it can be shifted with a few words, since there really isn't any substance there.
The spiritual world is something separate. It can affect the physical world (otherwise it would be completely irrelevant), and be affected by it; but it does not obey the same laws as the physical world, and so cannot be repeatably measured and held under a microscope.
The fact that the so-called spiritual world doesn't obey the same laws as the physical world does not logically imply that the spiritual world cannot be repeatably measured. Saying it doesn't follow the laws of physics does not by itself imply that it does not follow any laws. Surely if the spiritual world and physical world can affect each other, then some sort of laws or rules about how they affect each other could be deduced. Unless the spiritual world has no laws at all - if it doesn't, is there any value to it? After all, if you can not associate actions/thoughts with corresponding results, then there is no need to try and influence it. As an analogy - imagine playing baseball, except that the scores for an inning are determined by the roll of a pair of dice up in a booth. However many runs you score is irrelevant. You may still put effort in to playing because you enjoy it, but as your actions cannot really affect your team's score, then that should never be a motivating factor.
Here's an idea - if a person says they experience the spiritual world, but they are the only ones that can ever experience that particular version/area of the spiritual world, is there really a difference between a true experience, and a "hallucination" or "daydream" that they had that experience? If a person claims that Jesus/Mohammed/Zeus/Ganesh came to them in a dream and told them to do X, Y, and Z, is it knowable if that is what actually occured, or that they unconsciously created that dream? Is the question even relevant?
The short answer is that creation is here to house beings capable of percieving the magnificence of the Creator.
Why? Why is it so necessary for something to observe the creator's magnificence that it must create beings to do so? And what is the purpose of the creator?
All that positing the existence of such a creator does is adjust the questions that are asked. Nothing additional is explained.
You either have to posit the creation of something from nothing, or the fact that something has existed in some form another for all eternity and will continue to do so. Either way is in violation to the principles we understand to describe the universe.
Thus I would have to say that our understanding at the present time is incapable of comprehending things from the proper perspective, perhaps due to the wiring of our brains.
But from another perspective - if there is nothing to observe the existence of something, did it ever truly exist? If a universe forms, were to collapse on itself without ever containing something capable of observing that universe's existence, did it ever truly exist?
The failure of the current models of physics is that they do not take into consideration the other out-of-phase dimensions that exist in our same 3-space (five others, making six including ours).
Did someone go and one-up Nature's 4-Day Simultaneous TimeCube without my knowledge?
Can you define what you mean by "spiritual world"? It's hard to try and discuss whether science has/can attempt to do anything with it without knowing what you mean by using the term.
I was aiming at the number of issues the federal government takes on.
I doubt that's going to happen without serious fundamental changes. It seems that the congress seems to feel that they need to spend a lot of time working on laws and such, and thus find things to fill up all that time.
Sure, I'd like to see them focus on fewer issues too, and use the time that they save by not proposing and discussing and passing resolutions on every court decision they have issues with, and not spending time trying to pass constitutional amendments on incredibly silly and wasteful things like "flag burning" and "defining marriage". But it's not going to happen while voters continue to put people into office who want to spend all that time on frivolous things.
I'd also love to see people get elected on the platform of reducing the number of laws in this country by repealing large numbers of them, and cleaning up and consolidating the rest. But apparently that's not really as important as passing more of them.
Actually, your first question does not logically lead to the second statement.
If a congressperson can't properly represent X number of people on the issues, won't reducing the government mean that each congressperson has to represent X+Y people? You'd want to INCREASE the number of people doing the representation, so they have smaller amounts of people to represent. You don't cut the size of the school when it doesn't properly meet the needs of the students.
Animal Crossing grabs people for similar reasons to The Sims/SimCity. They are games without explicit goals. Thus they're not games that you really lose. You play them, create your own goals - if you want any goals at all - and just have fun doing it. They're about having a lot of freedom and leeway in the activities you choose.
These kinds of games attract the those with less of a goal-oriented gamer personality. Serious gamers either have, or learn to have, a goal-oriented attitude. To beat the other people, get a new high score, do something in the shortest time, or just accomplish all the goals. Some people don't find this as fun - especially when they're not good at games.
I think the biggest way to attract more people to gaming is to create more of these games that are aimed more at creating environments to do things in, without concrete goals - or at least make any goals that exist to be optional things. Like in Animal Crossing - if you want, you can try and collect all the fish/bugs/paintings/fossils, but you don't have to. You can try and get your Sims to the top of their jobs and have all the items and have them friends with everyone, but the game doesn't end if you do, and doesn't keep pushing you to do that.