Joseph_Knecht comments on The Two-Party Swindle - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 January 2008 08:38AM

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Comment author: Joseph_Knecht 02 January 2008 11:19:48PM -1 points [-]

Benquo: I thought the point was not that nobody likes football for reasons unrelated to allegiance, but that there would not be the kind of support that sustains professional football without team loyalty.

No, Eliezer's statement wasn't that there would be much less support but that football would not exist without the truck driver in-group/out-group mentality. The exact quote is "there would be no such thing as football." When somebody says "there would be no such thing as X", the standard interpretation is not "X would be different" or "there would be much less support for X" but that "X would not exist."

For instance, Mr. Knecht, I highly doubt that there are enough people like you who "occasionally watch a tennis or soccer match" to support anything like professional tennis or soccer. I suspect there is a core audience that regularly spends a lot of money on tickets etc.

Do you believe that most tennis fans are rabid fans with single-player allegiances, as in football? I don't think that is the case, and tennis seems to be doing fine -- it's not the grotesque extravagance that football is, granted, but it certainly exists.

Of course, football in particular would have much less money without the in-group/out-group mentality, but many of those now more enlightened former fans might still appreciate the sport, just as I and many people appreciate tennis without turning it into an tribal us-vs-them affair.