I don’t know about virtuous but the clear difference is fishing and fixing cars produces useful byproducts: food & working transportation. Playing with the PC may do that but usually video games do not unless you are making them yourself.
The hunting and fishing byproduct was only the pretense, it was to spend an afternoon in the woods or on the lake. And the cars weren't exactly practical, they were impractical muscle cars that broke down often and were a mess of upkeep. If we're looking at useful byproducts that tells me factory working is the best past time one can have.
Most people whom I know - do fishing as a hobby in local lake or something similar - actually return the fish to the Pond/Lake after catching it. There is no food to be had from these activities.I am not saying that is what parent's grandad did but just a data point.
Saying that fixing cars or fishing as a hobby "produce useful byproducts" is like saying playing video games and PC tinkering produces useful byproducts of programmers and content creators.
I don't think this is a compelling argument. It's an extremely inefficient way of producing those "useful byproducts". A person fixing and tuning the same old car for years?
the useful byproduct of my interest in computers is that i understand what my kids are doing with the technology and what the technology is doing to them.
