Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports • Hacker News Board

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#401

Post by analog31 » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 2:50 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #338

XorNot wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not his point though. His point is that for every bit of handwringing of how ghastly some people's comments on sports are, there's the reality that the football coach is the highest (in the millions of dollars range) paid position at almost every university in the US, how the sporting department despite those figures manages to be a net budgetry drain on almost every school which has one, and the reality that…

>how the sporting department despite those figures manages to be a net budgetry drain on almost every school which has one And so are music departments. Which I think is part of the point here. I firmly believe that playing right tackle can teach you just as much as playing the oboe, yet intellectuals tend to look down on former and praise the latter. Organized sports are not only a hobby and social gathering, but th…

Like you say, a distinction has to be made between big and small schools. I did my undergrad at a college where the starting quarterback was a physics major. There were no athletic scholarships.

Where I went to grad school, that would have been unthinkable. There was a special major that most of the football and mens basketball players chose, one of the departments of "studies."

There's no university where the oboist in the orchestra has to be given a fake education. Indeed, most music majors these days wisely pick up a second major.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#402

Post by code_duck » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 2:59 AM UTC

skwirl wrote: post #394

code_duck wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a sign of maturity to be able to treat sports and people who are obsessed with sports seriously when you know better. The fact is, the truth is unfortunate. Professional sports are a bunch of grown men playing little kid games who receive an incredibly and disgustingly disproportionate amount of money and adult attention. I believe that children and adolescents playing sports is fantastic. If people w…

And what are you doing to keep people alive, fed, free, and healthy?

Saying this is about me personally is changing the subject. The alternatives in school and life to which I am referring are pursuits such as medicine, mathematics, programming, electronics, chemistry, politics, business management and so forth.

It's a cliché which I wouldn't think I would have to repeat, but I would love to see people get as excited about mathematics stars in schools as basketball players. I would love to see more people who get as excited about their city council as football drafts. I would love to see the money spent on stadiums and television sports networks spent on improving peoples lives in concrete ways other than entertainment.

It's not that I don't consider sports legitimate entertainment. Clearly people feel that their lives are enriched from participating or spectating. Great. Good for them. The problem I see is a matter of priority. Society as a whole treats watching other people play sports as if it's something as critically important, heck, more important than say, hospitals.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#403

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 3:02 AM UTC

nerfhammer wrote: post #167

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…

I find this view to be highly overly teleological. The idea that there's really a secret nefarious purpose is one of those extraordinary claims that needs extraordinary evidence

Be careful, you are making too much sense! No, but this overly conspiratorial stuff is common among non-philosophers when discussing such matters. It's all about what one can conflate with anything with some mildly plausible excuse.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#404

Post by electronvolt » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 3:08 AM UTC

jpindar wrote: post #387

electronvolt wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think even among those who don't necessarily care for sports, calling them 'sports-hating snobs' is often at odds with reality. I grew up in an academic family. My parents were at the top of their respective fields, and their work, to them was as much a labor of love as it was anything else. I found that really very few things competed in their eyes with the fun/enjoyment of doing their job. Sports didn't really ma…

That would explain a lot of the hatred on reddit, for instance.

I think hatred on reddit is a complicated mess of legitimately bizarre people being given a forum for the first time, trolls, signalling, and groupthink, depending heavily on the topic and subreddit.

Signalling of social and political grouping is particularly prevalent and obvious on the internet because you can't rely on extrinsic or physical factors to demonstrate your social groupings. In the real world someone can rely on their appearance to telegraph a lot of things--clothing and grooming choices alone can hint at sexuality, politics, social class, and a variety of other things, to say nothing of existing social structures and bonds (who you surround yourself with also telegraphs a lot). On the internet, you either need to explicitly say these things ("I'm not straight", or "I came from a well off family" or "I'm a conservative") or signal them somehow, and there are areas where it's less acceptable to overtly announce your membership in a group, so implying it through general biwords for it is socially necessary. ("I'm filthy rich" or "I'm really, really smart and intellectual" or even "I'm really, really, really ridiculously good looking" all likely fall under that category. I think that generally the more desirable the category, the more it requires either actually costly signals--e.x. displaying expensive artwork in your home or donating lots of money in the case of wealth--to do 'acceptably'.)

You see some of it on HN, too, although I think it's generally much less accepted to negatively signal here--but especially in the more social-justice-y threads, you see a lot of signalling of people picking sides going in both directions, because that's something that HN doesn't really have any sort of unity on but individuals here feel strongly about. In this thread there was a perhaps unsurprising backlash against the author (usually backed up with some logic--which is thankfully required by the etiquette here) about why the posters were justified in their active dislike of sports.

In my experience most social signaling/biwording is fairly well summed up by the basic theory of "You will only expend effort signaling if there's (a) a chance you'll be mistaken for someone in a group you don't want to be mistaken as, and (b) there's a chance you'll be seen as being in the group you want to be in because of it."

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#405

Post by javert » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 3:33 AM UTC

kulak wrote: post #243

To my ears, this "cultivated disinterest" label comes off as something of a cheap stereotype. Simply put, not everyone who lacks interest in professional sports nurtures a "cultivated distinterest" in the subject, nor are we driven by some need to display this disinterest as some kind of marker of class rank or intellectual superiority. We simply lack interest in the subject, period. And when pressed on the subject,…

I feel the same way as you, but I think the article is perfectly accurate. A lot of self-styled "academic" "intellectuals" (e.g. humanities professors, etc.) really are that second-handed. i.e., so concerned about their perceived "status" and, in general, how others perceive them, that they'd rather pretend to be what is wanted than simply be an authentic person.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#406

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 3:34 AM UTC

nlawalker wrote: post #12

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people" - Eleanor Roosevelt Sports, in the context of the article, is 100% people and events. I don't necessarily agree with the quote, I just wanted to point out that the idea expressed here is the same. I don't think that intellectuals (to use the author's term) are necessarily disinterested in sports in general. However, it makes sense t…

Honestly, what does that even matter? Most of what gets posted on HackerNews are people, events, and 100 JavaScript frameworks that all do the same thing, namely allow you to do in a browser what you could do with a computer 25 years ago. So, it's a cute quote but what do with that?

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#407

Post by jpindar » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 3:39 AM UTC

toolz wrote: post #153

rinon wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are sports unhealthy? They are in fact extremely healthy, in the physical sense. Professional sports are simply an outgrowth of more "natural" sporting activities. Sports, even the professional variety, are not carefully engineered social prisons, but an evolution of natural human activities: physical activity and training combined with competition and the desire to observe others who are better than one's self.…

Professional sports are anything but healthy, as soon as competition is even remotely recognized and praised illicit drugs come onto the scene. As for a more idealistic world and my choice, I never even hinted at trying to legislate your ability to do what you want, but if you want me to clap and jump up and down and pick a favorite team because a bunch of grown people make ridiculous sums of money doing absolutely n…

>a bunch of grown people make ridiculous sums of money doing absolutely nothing for our future

Do you feel the same way about musicians, actors or other artists making money?

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#408

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 3:44 AM UTC

canvia wrote: post #314

There are several reasons why I dislike sports. Professional sports are expensive and inefficient forms of entertainment. What is your cost (and opportunity cost) per hour for sports? Compared to films, books, video games, or board games you are burning money/time on a completely passive experience. When was the last time you learned something about yourself or others while watching a sporting event? Do they cause yo…

I'm curious, does supposed high quality beer not lead to drinking and driving? As far as the us vs then situation, what do you call board games? Do you play board ganes that do not allow competition, same eSports? Why do you think you can learn more about people from video games than sports? I'm not sure, this just seems like a fancy way of saying, in an elitist way, that you don't get into sports because other people do.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#409

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 3:49 AM UTC

golemotron wrote: post #46

I won't deny that there's a cultural aspect but I've never been into team sports for the same reason I'm not into religion. When I was a kid I realized that thinking your home team is better than everyone else's is something that happens just because of where you are. It's the reason why people believe that Jesus is better than Buddha or Mohammed also, or any other ordering of those three. Teams sports amplify and di…

The whole discussion here is about intellectuals not liking sports but of all these supposed intellectuals here in not seeing a lot of intellectual reasoning. Rooting for a team is not the same as believing the universe is actually based on some particular religion, I don't think we can equivocate the two at all.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#410

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 3:50 AM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #59

golemotron wrote: post #46

I won't deny that there's a cultural aspect but I've never been into team sports for the same reason I'm not into religion. When I was a kid I realized that thinking your home team is better than everyone else's is something that happens just because of where you are. It's the reason why people believe that Jesus is better than Buddha or Mohammed also, or any other ordering of those three. Teams sports amplify and di…

The other side of that coin is to realize that who you are, where you came from, what you believe often (but not always especially in the last case) is something you have no control over. Sports is the perfect example of this in that you can and should take great pride and joy in everything that makes you, you, but also realize that there's someone on the other side of the TV screen that has the same reasons for taki…

So does your reasoning break down when you have people that like sports teams for reasons other than locality?