Hello, friends, Romans, countrymen,
I again write to you on a Tuesday, this time with the aim of considering sports, games, and other assorted activities; before we can do that with any efficiency, though, I believe it necessary to properly define and establish our terms.
Games are interesting to me because they strike at the heart of why we exist. I’ve recently written a short Twitter thread containing opinions on holding both nihilism and an attitude of play; suffice it to say that a core tenet of my belief system controlling this topic is twofold: that, within this balance, we live for the aspect of play, and “within this balance” sums up much more than we realize or care to think about.
(The sentences are rather long because I have finals this week; hence, this is much more a wordvomit than usual, for which I apologize.)
Games are typically defined as an entertaining activity; this is a smidgen too broad to do anything with. Any real usage of the word introduces a modicum of assigned structure and some measured, competitive aspect; I will add this to my working definition moving forward. The definition of a sport relies on establishing sports as a subcategory of games, distinguished by the presence of physical activity as the most prominent factor.
Thus, if I slip up and use the terms interchangeably, or if the arguments I put forth appear incongruent, I’m most often referring to games. However, if I’m making a particular point which makes most sense applied to sports, I’m likely doing so as a sort of rhetorical extension, aiming to demonstrate my thinking in the more closely defined arena before applying it to the more general (read: more nitpick-vulnerable) case. For the most part, though, they can be addressed in the same sort of verbiage and logic; let’s continue by exploring the commonalities of the two which manifest their resultant significance.
There are two major methods of engaging with either a game or sport: observing in some fashion or actively playing. (Analysis, arbitration, etc. are of course similarly interesting, but I’m no expert, and so we’ll stick for the time being to dealing with the most common use cases.)
When we watch, it is primarily for social reasons: we can imbue a given participant or team with a shared value, and thus come to a common understanding. The rules of the competition create a social fabric which facilitates further interaction among the observers. The forms this temporary language takes are several; as Tim Urban enumerates here, the most important include
Greatness and admiration of aesthetics
Micro- and macro- levels of inbuilt bonding
Transcension of difference
Escape into detail
It’s difficult, almost, to condense such a list to its most critical without describing these bullet points in the same terms; at their core, observation is valuable due to an artificially consistent relation among us which results from the endeavour’s set-apart nature, accomplished through its artificial rules. The core of the concept is its construction without regard to the natural order of the world; the surreal is the most important thing.
When we play, though, this comes across yet more clearly; we engage in a cognitive dissonance of sorts, in which we optimize for the metrics offered with nearly complete disregard for their illogical nature and rationale for existence. The exceptions to this are in moments of pain, when we question it as a proxy for our own participation, and these moments are typically fleeting: see, for example, the re-registration and finish rates of marathons. Even these moments’ primary function is to contain artificial suffering, a heightened experience within which we can coexist more effectively
In either case, a game is comprised of —in fact, is— two things: its ruleset and the population which engages with it; the consequences arising from these two components, and their effects on each other, are what we’ll consider next week.
Work
This week, I’ve written another ill-advised web series episode; as with the first, I don’t expect it to ever be made or developed upon, but I do think it’s fun creative problem-solving, and it might make me better at similar media.
Schoolwise, I’ve written a longer essay for English (my last of the semester, thankfully) which deliberates upon the usage of public space; I’ve taken the opportunity to make an argument for bigger thinking in urban planning using the Manhattan Bridge as a case study.
Links
In that essay, I reference the idea of first-principles thinking; I’ve often appreciated Tim Urban’s rumination on the subject, which uses Elon Musk as an example, and it’s from there that I first learned of the term. This week I’ve read James Clear’s more focused post on what that means exactly, and it’s provoked further thought.
I’ve written in this newsletter previously about constructing an optimally valuable set of skills from first principles, including my long-term aims to achieve depth in multiple arenas; in this vein, I appreciated a Farnam Street post this week which noted Einstein’s idea of “combinatory play” and making connections, though it’s not the most entertaining read.
Less personally, one broader application is in education. I often think about modifications in that area; Nathan Bashaw’s sketched proposal is an example of the sort of interest-driven reimaginings I think are worth considering, though they come with the usual caveats and constraints.
In contrast, Junaid Mubeen, in applying the Chinese Room thought experiment to math pedagogy, contemplates the issues with a depth of instruction which in many cases remains strictly syntactical: “…to be educated is not to exhibit intelligence.”
[Earmark] Lastly, Alex Danco’s illumination of the status game which upholds incentive alignments in angel investments has done the rounds on Twitter and other newsletters; moving forward next week, however, I’ll attempt to build on the article in somewhat more original fashion by connecting it to the social politicking which underlies game-playing.
The above links are all in the exploration of these dynamics of game-play; hopefully they’re well-chosen enough to provoke the mindset towards their examination. Until next week, as usual, feel free to respond via email or on Twitter; I always welcome thoughts, ideas, and criticism of all kinds.
Best wishes,
Orion Lehoczky Escobar