in reply to Re: Re: Re: At what rate are YOU progressing? in thread At what rate are YOU progressing?
Says turnstep:
No TV. No sports....those things keep
the masses amused and distracted from doing "normal" things like learning, exploring,
and asking difficult questions of themselves and their surroundings.
I don't think that's true. In Annie Hall there's
a great scene in which Woody Allen is at a horrible
party inhabited by horrible boring intellectuals;
he sneaks off to the bedroom to watch the basketball game.
And predictably, someone comes to berate him for
watching the basketball game when he could be improving his mind.
Woody has a great speech about how this is a completely different
kind of accomplishment, a physical accomplishment,
and that the people in the other room are afraid of it because
it isn't their kind of accomplishment and they don't
understand it.
One of the most wonderful things about sports is that
they are universal. Everyone on earth has pretty much the
same kind of body; that's why we can have the Olympics.
To be uninterested in sports is to be uninterested in
the body and what it can do. And of course you know many geeks who
are divorced from their own bodies. But that is
not a healthy way to be.
Sports are not incompatible with learning, exploring, or
asking difficult questions of one's surroundings.
Many people shut off their brains when they sit down to watch
the football game, but that does not mean that is the only
way to do it---lots of people shut off their brains when they use the
-w switch too.
--
Mark Dominus
Perl Paraphernalia
Re: Re: At what rate are YOU progressing?
by merlyn (Sage) on May 02, 2001 at 19:55 UTC
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Right. You'll have to pry my snowboard from my cold frozen fingers. Which often I have to do myself. {grin}
I'm just not historically much for watching other people make millions of dollars
while competing at kids games, simply because the surrounding discussions at this
end of the broadcast tend
to be more tribal than constructive.
-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker | [reply] |
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Snowboarding and Mountain Biking are my "light(s) at the end of the tunnel". When everything is said and done and I've learned as much as I can in a day, I go to the mountains and play.Prost, Moe
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Re: Re: At what rate are YOU progressing?
by turnstep (Parson) on May 02, 2001 at 21:31 UTC
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Dominus writes:
To be uninterested in sports is to be uninterested in
the body and what it can do
Ah, but that was not the thrust of my argument. Their
is a difference between enjoying a sport yourself, and
being in touch with your body, and the mass worship
of sport teams that occurs, and is driven more by money
that true athleticism. Yes, the players on a basketball
team may be good athletes, but the majority of people
watching it are not watching it just for the appreciation
of the athlete's body and the player's control of it -
they are also rooting for their team and vicariously
living through the team, as in "I can't beleive we lost
the game by one point!" and "My team plays again next
Friday." Most sports fans are far from being in touch
with their own bodies, and do not participate in sports
themselves, but merely watch it. There is nothing wrong
with this: it is their choice; I just feel society as a
whole would be better served if just 1% of the energy,
brainpower, time, and money that goes into following
organized sports were spent elsewhere. While I grant that
watching sports does not really detract from a person's
life, neither does it enhance it.
Sports are not incompatible with learning, exploring, or
asking difficult questions of one's surroundings.
Performing sports, no, but watching them? What does one
really gain from watching two hours of basketball? Again,
this is a personal choice, but as you say, it's a
way of "shutting off your brain."
I have no problem with watching TV or an interest in
sports, but I will usually think higher of someone who
*moderates* themselves in such activities, and has other
interests, than someone who hovers around the national
US average of 20+ hours per week watching TV. Is this
an unfair judgement? Perhaps, but I've meet too many
people in my life who have reinforced my opinion that
few people actually *think* anymore, but merely wander
through life. Luckily, a lot of the "thinking" people
end up online, one reason I love PerlMonks as much as
I do. :)
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Says turnstep:
What does one really gain from watching
two hours of basketball? Again, this is a personal choice, but as you say, it's a way of
"shutting off your brain."
I didn't say that, and you have completely missed my point.
We are not in agreement.
Watching sports can be done passively or actively.
It can be as engaging and as fulfilling as any other activity,
or as pointless as any other activity, depending on how it is done.
I always find it interesting that people like to make these sorts
of arguments against sports. The only explanation I have
ever been able to find is that it is intellectual snobbery.
I have never heard anyone say
Performing opera, no, but listening to them? What does one really gain from listening
the opera for two hours?
or
Their is a difference between enjoying
acting yourself, and the mass worship of actors that occurs
and is driven by money.
Similarly, Randal can make disparaging comments
about "watching other
people make millions of dollars while competing at
kids games"
but you never hear anyone say the same thing about
Eddie Murphy or Jon Bon Jovi,
even though they are engaged in pursuits that are just as frivolous
and childish as playing basketball.
At least, I never have heard such a thing.
Eddie Murphy and Jon Bon Jovi make a lot of money.
Why? Because they
entertain a lot of people, so much that millions of those
people are willing
to spend their hard-earned money to see them do what they do.
Professional athletes are the same way. They are entertainers.
The fact that you consider this form of entertainment to
be lowbrow just reflects badly on you.
Watching a sports event
has many of the same rewards as any other spectator activity:
Emotional involvement, the pleasure of seeing something
difficult done well, the sense of participating in a public
spectacle. It has some others besides: The surprise of the unforseen,
and
the drama of struggle and accomplishment.
You may be unable to appreciate this value, but
that doesn't mean it is not there.
Anyway, this is off-topic, so I will not be posting to this
thread any more.
--
Mark Dominus
Perl Paraphernalia
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The two of you are talking past each other.
Dominus is saying that if you watch sports the right way, it can well be a worthwhile experience. You are saying that most people just zonk out in front of the set.
You are both right.
For the record, here is a data-point. At one point I found tennis uninteresting to watch. A few years later I saw tennis on TV (this was a couple of years ago, I had a TV) and I found it a fascinating game to watch. But I was still bored by watching basketball.
What changed?
Well I had started playing ping-pong fairly often with
friends. Tennis and ping-pong are closely related sports
with similar factors mattering. Obviously they are very
different sports, but my interest in playing ping-pong
meant that I was suddenly looking at a different - and far
more interesting - game.
Likewise until I tried to program, I found discussions of
the practicality of programming boring. I could give
detailed considerations of whether a set being uncountable
meant that it was in some sense larger than a countable
set, or merely that it had a more complex internal
structure. (The orthodoxy is larger. I am not entirely orthodox in my opinions about the foundations of mathematics...) Today I find it more interesting to read discussion about questions like whether a better mental model for programming is black boxes with defined behaviour, or black boxes with fixed inputs and outputs you wire together in a network. (Check out the link on my home page about flow-based programming.)
The topic, from sports to CS to math, is irrelevant. There is a world of difference between observers who are engaged in a learning process and observers who are not. I am, like Dominus, someone who enjoys being in a learning process. This engagement has no causal relationship with the subject at hand. Indeed I am not even sure that there is even a positive correlation between that kind of engagement and the subject of their engagement.
But there is a strong correlation between having that kind of engagement and becoming competent.
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