If losing is a soul-crushing defeat to be avoided at all costs and winning is The Delicious Cake, not the icing, there is a much stronger incentive to win.

Soul-crushing is a bummer but is technically optional. If you can train yourself away from soul-crushing it may make losing better for you. The same goes for winning: if winning holds no intrinsic value other than "Haha! I won!" I would argue that the incentives are purely emotional. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I like to get more of my contests than feeling good about winning or feeling bad about losing. Personally, I get more emotional satisfaction from learning something new or cool.

See the OB article on Lost Purposes- there's a distinct chance that a process optimized for fact-finding or interesting-fact gathering won't be optimized for winning. Sometimes our map needs to reflect the territory just enough for us to find the treasure.

Here is a link to Lost Purposes for those who need one.

I agree with your point. Most of what I talked about is only terribly relevant for contests such as board games where the rewards for winning are easily measured. When losing holds a significant loss factor such as a generation of children not learning science, playing to learn makes no sense and it is time to play to win.

In the real world where games have consequences, there is specialization, insofar as it is possible, in exploration and winning. [...]

Agreed. The big gap in my article that I left out for brevity are examples of physical contests. If someone stabs me with a sword, I die. Playing to learn would make no sense in a sword fight and losing is most decidedly not good.

(Edit) After thinking a little more, I would relate "Lost Purposes" to this article with the following question: "What is the purpose of winning?" Don't win just because you are supposed to win. Win because it has value.