Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports • Hacker News Board

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#501

Post by murbard2 » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 1:00 AM UTC

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #495

murbard2 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I give you the Nika Riots, to begin with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots

Well that's just the sorriest thing you could have responded with. Finding riots relating to sporting even over a millennium ago, or even a few riots period, is hardly very interesting or enough to indict sports with the cause of all of our political problems.

1) I said no such thing. I said tribalism causes both bad politics and interest for sports.

2) Did you even bother reading about the Nika riots? It shows the deep connection there is between arbitrary tribal affiliations, sports, and politics.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#502

Post by teddyh » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 12:28 PM UTC

omegaham wrote: post #360

civilian wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of commercials required to watch a game of football is intrinsically bad. The tax exempt status of the NFL is intrinsically bad.

Chinese stream. No commercials. It is, by far, the greatest thing that has happened to football.

Why do the Chinese streams exist? The Chinese streams exist because Chinese people are interested in watching the games. Why are they interested? Because they are betting money on the games. Why are they doing that? Because their local teams and sport are susceptible to corruption. The obvious result? Chinese organized crime are sending people to influence these teams as well, causing corruption.

So, the Chinese streams may seem like a good thing, but they are a symptom of a bad thing.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#503

Post by teddyh » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 12:32 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #337

skybrian wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a bit tangential to your post, but I think there's an important distinction that's being missed in most of the comments on this thread: Not liking watching sports and not liking _sports_ (i.e. playing) are very different things with very different causes (though they are, to a degree, correlated). The article is primarily talking about watching pro sports, so IMO what you're describing doesn't really give a c…

“[…] sports are something one does, not something one watches on TV.”

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/physical.html

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#504

Post by scotch_drinker » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:14 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #101

scotch_drinker wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is contempt. It implies that there is no valid reason for liking X. You may not look down on them but when someone says "I don't see how anybody...", that is contempt. Not understanding is vastly different from expressing disbelief that anyone would do a particular thing.

> It implies that there is no valid reason for liking X. This is completely wrong. You're essentially saying here that "I don't understand the valid reason for X" necessarily means "therefore X has no valid reason". I really hope you're just confused here, as opposed to actually believing this line of thought and applying it to things in general. To use my example again, when I say "I don't understand the appeal at a…

"I don't understand the valid reason for X" is vastly different in connotation from the original statement I commented on, "I don't see how anybody can like X". It is not completely wrong. Words have meaning outside the strict definitions. Have you tried to see how anybody can like X? Have you done the work to understand why other people do like X? The latter comment is full of assumptions regarding viewpoints and their validity.

You've changed the original wording that I was commenting on to mean something different. Telling me I'm completely wrong and that you hope I'm confused does nothing to change that.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#505

Post by doktrin » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

Rusky wrote: post #475

doktrin wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If not liking sports makes me a snob then ok, I can live with that. but let's not pretend working class sports culture is all good clean fun. It can be as venomous as any other culture. As evidenced by the top comment in this very thread calling out non-sports fans as being elitist snobs without social skills. What a joke.

There's a big difference between not being a sports fan, and going out of your way to be an elitist snob about it (even if that "going out of your way" stems from emotional self-defense). Same thing happens with math, or programming, or various other intellectual pursuits. People will specifically talk about how bad they are at math, and wear it like a badge of pride. Or, they can just not enjoy it without being rude…

> There's a big difference between not being a sports fan, and going out of your way to be an elitist snob about it

This entire line of reasoning strikes me as such an epic straw man. What is the difference between not being a sports fan, and being an "elitist snob"? It's completely subjective.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#506

Post by wutbrodo » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 6:31 PM UTC

scotch_drinker wrote: post #504

wutbrodo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It implies that there is no valid reason for liking X. This is completely wrong. You're essentially saying here that "I don't understand the valid reason for X" necessarily means "therefore X has no valid reason". I really hope you're just confused here, as opposed to actually believing this line of thought and applying it to things in general. To use my example again, when I say "I don't understand the appeal at a…

"I don't understand the valid reason for X" is vastly different in connotation from the original statement I commented on, "I don't see how anybody can like X". It is not completely wrong. Words have meaning outside the strict definitions. Have you tried to see how anybody can like X? Have you done the work to understand why other people do like X? The latter comment is full of assumptions regarding viewpoints and th…

You're right I did switch the wording there, but in my view it was only to clarify. I didn't consider the fact that you would see a difference in meaning between the two phrasings.

I literally see no difference (beyond the latter being slightly clearer) between "I can't see why X happens" and "I don't understand the valid reason why X happens" (where X in this case is "people being interested in pro sports"). As such, I didn't consider switching it out to change the meaning at all beyond slightly clarifying.

The connotations you refer to are also ones that I don't think the original phrase is laden with. I really don't see how "I don't see why X" connotes a lack of attempt to do so, any more than "I don't understand why X" does.

I'm aware that now we're getting into differences in connotations where there really are "no right answers" (unlike the denotation, we can't just look up a single source of truth). Apparently we've just been exposed to rather different vernacular, at least with respect to these couple of phrases. I guess that makes us "both right", with respect to the "languages" that we each speak.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#507

Post by hiou » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 11:28 PM UTC

copsarebastards wrote: post #500

hiou wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone could make arguments about how involvement in sports teaches kids about things like work ethic and teamwork. One could argue that the tax subsidies given to professional teams work in the cities favor based up increased revenues at local business and higher real estate taxes from increased property taxes. The smug "I've taken the time to educate myself on this subject and the average person hasn't" is exactly…

> Someone could make arguments about how involvement in sports teaches kids about things like work ethic and teamwork. I think grade school sports programs are important for teaching kids how to stay in shape, among other things. That's a very different discussion from the discussion we're having, which is about professional sports. > One could argue that the tax subsidies given to professional teams work in the citi…

I think you pretty much summed up my point. You are obviously in love with yourself and know there is nothing you can learn from others. I would congratulate you, but it seems like you already do plenty of that yourself.

As I said before, I agree with you stance in many ways in professional sports. Yet, for some reason you felt the need to argue my hypothetical points? Strange stuff. Unlike you, I realize these things are not hard facts but opinions and best guesses bases upon available data.

Whether or not professional sports are a positive thing, depends very much upon what a persons priorities are. Many people would shut down all funding for the arts tomorrow if they had the choice. We could argue that in the same way. These discussions go nowhere because they are based on a person's individual priorities and are also why they are debated to death and never get anywhere. They are not topics with a definite answer.

The "feel-good crap" is people not telling you that the only reason you feel so strongly about this is because you have a bias likely based on some experiences from your childhood about sports. If you were rational you would think that maybe 100,000,000+ Americans are probably not idiots. But judging by the size of your ego, I wouldn't be surprised if you thought they were.

Oh and "So you think if people were choosing between their kids being able to read and having a sports stadium, they'd choose the sports stadium? Because that's the choice people are making.": You realize that sounds insane, right? Are you actually saying that in the US children cannot read because of sports stadiums?

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#508

Post by sharer » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 1:09 AM UTC

the idea that you're either an athlete or a nerd is such a tired old stereotype. How have we not left this behind? Raise your hand if you got a 1400 on the SAT and also played a sport in high school (for obvious reasons cross-country doesn't count).

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#509

Post by code_duck » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 5:04 PM UTC

skwirl wrote: post #499

code_duck wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

Why is it that so many people who say "society needs to do so-and-so" feel that they are exempt from doing anything themselves? It blows my mind that you see this as irrelevant. It's always somebody else that needs to do it. They apparently don't see themselves as part of society. Sports get attention because people choose to follow them under their own volitions. If you want mathematics stars in schools to get atten…

Why would you think that I don't follow my own beliefs?

I never said I want the 'sports industries money redistributed'. That amount of resources shouldn't be devoted to a complete waste of time for society in the first place.

Anyway, I believe people should focus on helping each other survive and thrive, rather than spending billions of dollars on mindless entertainment. The idea that people woold argue with me and pick on me personally over this is nothing new - sports are popular and opposing them is unpopular, which as far as I could tell is the entire topic of this article.

Re: Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports

#510

Post by copsarebastards » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 6:47 PM UTC

hiou wrote: post #507

copsarebastards wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone could make arguments about how involvement in sports teaches kids about things like work ethic and teamwork. I think grade school sports programs are important for teaching kids how to stay in shape, among other things. That's a very different discussion from the discussion we're having, which is about professional sports. > One could argue that the tax subsidies given to professional teams work in the citi…

I think you pretty much summed up my point. You are obviously in love with yourself and know there is nothing you can learn from others. I would congratulate you, but it seems like you already do plenty of that yourself. As I said before, I agree with you stance in many ways in professional sports. Yet, for some reason you felt the need to argue my hypothetical points? Strange stuff. Unlike you, I realize these thing…

> Are you actually saying that in the US children cannot read because of sports stadiums?

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. I've explained in my top post why I believe that to be true.

You're not even attempting to refute what I've said, you're just calling me egotistical and insane. So unless you have anything on-topic to say, my point is adequately defended and I'm done here.