Rationalist Sport

MathiasZaman

This post is a bit of an experiment; Most of the time, Discussion post lay out an idea and this idea then get commented upon. This post, on the other hand, will be purely about discussion on a topic. If this works out well, I'll might post more of these in the future.

On to the meat of this post:

I got this idea from a reddit post on /r/LessWrong.

To quote:

I remember my sociology textbook explaining that sports often show what a group values. Bowling was popular with machinists and factory workers who valued repeated precision, while American football was watched and played by a culture that valued extreme specialization of individuals, but able to work as a team.

So I've been thinking about what we would value in a sport, and what sport we could create that exemplifies those values (not interested in picking an existing sport).

So have at it.

I only ask for one thing and that is to hold off on proposing solutions for 24 hours before giving suggestions for actual sports. In the first 24 hours, please discuss what makes current sports unappealing to rationalists and what aspects a sports designed for aspiring rationalists should have.

Edit: The 24-hour window has closed and solutions and suggestions can now be given.

On to the meat of this post:

I got this idea from a reddit post on /r/LessWrong.

To quote:

I remember my sociology textbook explaining that sports often show what a group values. Bowling was popular with machinists and factory workers who valued repeated precision, while American football was watched and played by a culture that valued extreme specialization of individuals, but able to work as a team.

So I've been thinking about what we would value in a sport, and what sport we could create that exemplifies those values (not interested in picking an existing sport).

So have at it.

Edit: The 24-hour window has closed and solutions and suggestions can now be given.

discuss what makes current sports unappealing to rationalists

(1) Like CronoDAS, I dispute your assumption that current sports are unappealing to rationalists. To the list of counterexamples already furnished, I add American football (with its astoundingly sophisticated strategizing) and baseball (with its well-developed culture of betting and probability calculations).

(2) Yet it does seem to me that aspiring rationalists are less interested in athletic sports than your average person. But even if this is true (and even if it remains true after controlling for education and income), it doesn't entail that the fault lie in sports. A more plausible explanation is that rationalists turn up their nose toward sports because of the kind of people who shout about sports at bars. In other words, aspiring rationalists actually just dislike sports enthusiasts, and the sports themselves get the hate spattered on them by association.

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