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Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

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Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#361

Post by dragonwriter »

ansible wrote: post #356
dragonwriter wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see that as the proximate cause of most conflicts throughout history. No one said it was the proximate cause of most conflicts throughout history. Nor have conflicts in general stopped since sports became popular, nor were conflicts in general part of the discussion. What was asserted upthread was that sports was an outlet that prevented "small-scale skirmishes". I simply pointed out that, in fact, professi…

Ah, are you talking about modern-day football hooligans? When I say "small-scale skirmishes", I'm talking about relatively small border conflicts and the like that last less than a year and kill tens to hundreds of people. As opposed to regional or national conflicts where the casualties get into the thousands or much higher.

> When I say "small-scale skirmishes", I'm talking about relatively small border conflicts and the like that last less than a year and kill tens to hundreds of people.

Football skirmishes that kill people on that order aren't unheard of, and I know of no evidence even suggesting that the popularity of professional sports even correlates with (much less causes) a reduction the kind of small-scale skirmishes you discuss (even before considering whether the degree of such effect is offset by violence directly associated with sport.)

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#362

Post by omegaham »

quanticle wrote: post #171
toolz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depth can have a real defined meaning, though. If you're in the context of discovering a process that will make electricity cheaper and cleaner, that is useful to everyone around the world in some way and then to have someone overshadow that achievement or ignore it entirely because 'the game' is on, is ridiculous. I live in the south east where when a college football coach has a problem with the university presiden…

>NFL players go bankrupt shortly after their career of being paid far more than will reflect their contribution to the future of mankind. Isn't that supposed to be because of the mental illness brought on by the repeated concussions that players suffer, which causes physical injury to the brain? I'm not sure how you can blame the players for that.

I think a far more likely reason is that they grow up in poverty and have no good role models for how to manage their finances. They're very similar to lottery winners in that regard. As a result, they piss it away.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#363

Post by jqm »

Why in the world would I try to take an interest in a topic I have no interest in in order to fit in with people on a level I have no interest in fitting in?

Life is very simply to short to be excited about these kind of things. As it is, I don't even have time to find out everything I really do want to find out.

If I did have to get interested in something I have absolutely zero interest in, it might as well be fashion shows. I'm thinking the romance potential might be higher than with sports.

If people are interested in professional sports fine... I don't feel elitist or look down on them. I do scratch my head and wonder to myself that they don't have something more interesting to do with their time, but whatever. I don't claim to know what everyone else should like. I sure don't have to be interested though.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#364

Post by analog31 »

skybrian wrote: post #96
solson wrote: post #20

When you show overt contempt for sports you are showing contempt for most everybody and that is problem with your social skills. It's called being a snob. The disdain for working class culture among academics was part of the reason I choose not to pursue a formal higher education. I suspect this overt snootiness keeps many gifted working class kids from participating in higher education. I grew up working class and w…

I think this is getting cause and effect backwards. Many (not all) kids who became intellectuals were the last picked for the team in sports and generally suffered due to it. I went through school dreading gym class. Deciding that sports was not important to me and spending time on things I was better at was in part emotional self-defense. Of course, dividing up into different tribes is not healthy. We should ideally…

I suspect that most kids who become intellectuals have parents who are intellectuals.

Admittedly, my parents openly disdained pro and school sports, and rock music, when I was a kid. They are scientists, and into classical music. Today, I'm a scientist, I love classical and jazz, and am a performing jazz musician. Whatever "signaling" I might have received, I can't escape the fact that I love those art forms today.

But I wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in hell of getting onto the hockey or football team. Today, I'm probably in better physical health than most of my classmates who actually played on those teams.

Oddly enough, when my musical interests become a topic of conversation, nobody ever feels any qualms about stating how much they hate jazz and classical.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#365

Post by jqm »

Why stop with professional sports? How about auto racing? Square dancing? Championship wrestling? Rooster fighting? Would it be elitist to have a disinterest in those things?

At some point you have to say... this is not something that interests me and I don't really care for the environment surrounding it.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#366

Post by m_d »

mundizzle wrote: post #129

i always found Chomsky's take on sports to be quite interesting... "Take, say, sports -- that's another crucial example of the indoctrination system, in my view. For one thing because it -- you know, it offers people something to pay attention to that's of no importance. [audience laughs] That keeps them from worrying about -- [applause] keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might…

Here is another quote from Chomsky. It makes a lot of the same points, but it is much less hostile towards sports fans:

"Well, let me give an example. When I'm driving, I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief.

In part, this reaction may be due to my own areas of interest, but I think it's quite accurate, basically. And I think that this concentration on such topics as sports makes a certain degree of sense. The way the system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway, without a degree of organization that's far beyond anything that exists now, to influence the real world. They might as well live in a fantasy world, and that's in fact what they do. I'm sure they are using their common sense and intellectual skills, but in an area which has no meaning and probably thrives because it has no meaning, as a displacement from the serious problems which one cannot influence and affect because the power happens to lie elsewhere."

Basically, sports fans aren't stupid, they just don't think they can have any effect on anything more important (ex: politics).

http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-know-so-m...

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#367

Post by BashiBazouk »

dbtc wrote: post #346
BurgerEarmuffs wrote: post #48

Thank zeus for this article. Sports is a 4 letter word in a lot of social circles (academia, tech to a decent extent) and it usually just reeks of pretentiousness. I find myself having to be unusually careful not to bring up sports when talking to anyone in tech I don't know well, whereas I rarely have that issue outside of it. Congratulations, you dismissed the entirety of American football as "roid rage violence".…

Can we agree that internet memes, video games, and watching sports are all not inherently harmful but are still pretty much a waste of time?

The same could be said for recreational sex. Long live time wasting!

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#368

Post by RogerL »

wcummings wrote: post #255
bglazer wrote: post #84

I'm not sure how I feel about this article. On the one hand, it had a weird highbrow tone. It reads a bit like an ivory tower academic discovering what "the poors" are up to. Some choice quotes: "Albert suggested that sports reflect the go-to topic for small talk and building rapport across class and context" "Sports are popular because people, in general, find them fun to watch". No shit! Lots of people like sports.…

An impressive robot is just so much more novel and interesting than a feat of human strength. Not to say sports aren't impressive, or that professional athletes aren't incredibly dedicated and talented, but someone hitting a baseball isn't very interesting .

Do you realize how much time and study catchers put into the abilities of every pitcher, and every opponent that their pitchers face? It's very data based, combined with prodigious amounts of athletics on the part of both the pitcher and hitter. The pitcher is trying to capitalize on the batter's weaknesses without just giving away his plan (you can hit much better if you know a slow curveball to the indise is coming). The batter is trying to watch the pitcher and detect things like late delivery, changes in release points, putting spin on the ball, and so on. Then they are tracking mid time scale things - is the pitcher getting tired, is he losing control, are his pitches drifting to the outside. Or this batter has struck out 3 times now - was that a random walk, is he having trouble with a specific pitch, is he perhaps injured? Then there is the long range stuff - how does this batter fair against left handed pitchers.

As of late baseball has been a pitching game. It's often not high score, but it is a fascinating thing to watch, if you have this context. Now, whether you want to keep all that in your brain is another question, and I mostly choose not to, so in practice it is less interesting to me. But there are endless depths there to plumb.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#369

Post by stephenboyd »

lg wrote: post #295
anextio wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nor are we driven by some need to display this disinterest as some kind of marker of class rank or intellectual superiority. Not to disagree with you, but I was under the impression that most research on social signaling has shown that it is not a conscious phenomenon. You don't do X because you think it will signal Y. You just do X, whether because of unconscious social signals you have received or because the inf…

I think you'd need some reason to believe people are unconsciously signaling it. The author seems to be quite conscious of his own signaling. Personally I was never into watching sports, even as a little kid when I don't think I was doing much intellectual posturing. Probably it's because my parents didn't make a big deal about it whereas it was a big part of family bonding for other kids.

The reason can be as simple as identifying with others who aren't into sports. People take on the interests and values of the people they identify with, whether they realize it or not.
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