Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

Here you have a picture of the world as Wells would like to see it or thinks he would like to see it. It is a world whose keynotes are enlightened hedonism and scientific curiosity. All the evils and miseries we now suffer from have vanished. Ignorance, war, poverty, dirt, disease, frustration, hunger, fear, overwork, superstition all vanished...But is there anyone who actually wants to live in a Wellsian Utopia? On the contrary, not to live in a world like that, not to wake up in a hygenic garden suburb infested by naked schoolmarms, has actually become a conscious political motive.

This is a neat summary of the ideological contradiction of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. Everyone wants edginess with safety, but no one wants the Disnified, safe version of edginess. We want the hard-nosed meritocracy of innovation, technical prowess, and commerce, but we don't want to let our children risk even the failure of losing in sports.

All ‘favourable’ Utopias seem to be alike in postulating perfection while being unable to suggest happiness.

'Favorable' Utopias are like Mary Sue characters or fanfics without real conflict. There is no interest without real risk and real adversity. Even Iain M. Bank's Culture universe has imperfections, conflict, and death, even if there are untold trillions in it living idyllic lives of enlightened hedonism and curiosity.

Humans can't really tell the difference between real and simulated risk.

Online games are incredibly compelling for the people who play them, but they're a lot less risky than taking part in a real war and risking real blood and real body parts.

I don't see why we couldn't sublimate games like economics in the same way. The experience of winning would be almost identical, but simulations wouldn't have to be zero sum in the way that meatspace acquisition games usually are.

Humans can't really tell the difference between real and simulated risk.

Even so, some of us have our kids play baseball-like games where they're not even allowed to strike out.

Or kids playing football with no scores shown. The mind boggles.

The mind boggles. That's a fair comment. Here's the logic: Young children are obsessed with winning and losing. If you coach a game and say it was a draw or that you didn't keep score they will insist that one or the other side lost - even if it is their side.

The problem is that they are not always able to keep some kind of perspective on this obsession unlike most adults. So they may either start playing in a very defensive way, or just always give the ball to the big guy on their team. In general this means that they fail to explore and express themselves and develop skills. In the worst case they just drop out.

So the aim of de-emphasising the winning at a young age is so that you develop winners in the long run. New Zealand, the world champions in rugby, do this. The end product is a ruthless winning machine.

Children are not small adults, mentally or physically and most coaches have to be taught this explicitly (including me)

This is getting off topic, but here we are...

I’ve seen the opposite on several occasions. I saw one kid (not mine) at a “no win” game get taken off the field for putting his hands up in the air celebrating a goal. I asked about this and was told he was “too competitive”. That kid played very differently the rest of the afternoon and I noticed he held back as did his 12yo teammates. Since I was keeping score, I noticed his side lost. Badly.

It will be interesting to see the long term results of this. Hopefully the “no win” logic produces better technique and play style. After all the whole point of good sportsmanship is that others will want to play future games with players.

Having umpired many games it’s often the parents who are the bad sports. I’ve actually banned some parents from even attending for multiple games due to bad behaviour. One parent turned up on my doorstep attempting to berate me and when I later reported the incident they got a reprimand from the principal.

Agree completely about parents. Also I think that was extreme about not celebrating a goal. We did keep score, because the kids keep score in their heads anyway, but at a young age we didn't emphasize it and there were no trophies or medals.

Err, I think going much further down that line of reasoning, you will discover something unpleasant: The winning, for some, isn't as important as someone else losing.

Which can still happen in a simulated way that minimizes harm but maximizes perceived harm by the inflictor. The gory death of an opponent in an FPS who respawns without incident elsewhere, for instance.

Which can still happen in a simulated way that minimizes harm but maximizes perceived harm by the inflictor.

The old form of this is known as "sports."

Is it really that someone else has to lose? Some people are toxic like that. Others are only that way because they've been antagonized. However, if they are or they aren't, in either case there has to be something at stake.

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