Computer games can expand and at the same time shrink your mind.
A computer game, or at least a good one, is a very well-designed program that you need to understand how to work in order to take a series of actions to achieve a goal. If the game is a racing game, you need to learn how to control the car and cross the finish line before the others. If the game is a strategy game you need to build an empire and conquer the enemy, whether in war or in business.
Computer games have improved a lot recently, but they still lack one thing: range of decisions. You see, with a computer game you have a very limited number of decisions to make. If you are using a computer game to learn how to repair a car, you are doomed to fail because a real car has many more things that might go wrong, rather than just a few things that are wrong in a computer game car. The same is true for business and education. If you use a business simulator to learn how business works, you are learning just a very tiny part of business. In the real world, business is much more complicated than that; you have to deal with the human factor, something that computer games cannot emulate no matter how good they are. This means that by learning things with computer games you are actually learning just a little bit of the real thing, you are making your mind grow much less than it would grow with a real life experience.
Do yourself a favor; right now you are going to stop reading and using training and simulators and engage in real life experiences. One single experience might be able to teach you much more than a training or a machine. Doctors that train CPR with people might not be aware that in real life, many more things can go wrong with people, things they would already know if they had more real experience.
What is a computer simulator good for then? A computer simulator is the best thing to make calculations for something that does not require many decisions such as building. If you use a simulator to know what’s wrong with a sick person, you might have a better chance by pointing a gun to her head and pulling the trigger.
