[lotharbot]

> he is saying in effect "What you love is obtuse and low brow"

More than that, he is in effect saying "there is no depth to this thing" (which he hasn't studied in depth enough to know). Which is both rude and arrogant.

It's one thing to say you don't understand a thing and aren't interested in it, and then politely discuss things you are (mutually) interested in. It's quite another to distill something you don't understand into an absurd caricature like "grown men with sticks chasing etc." when it actually has a tremendous amount of depth and strategy -- which every sport has at the highest levels (including things like Snooker and Starcraft.)

There's a reason the weakside linebacker positions himself in a different spot against the pistol formation when the backup tight end is in versus when the starter is in. There's a reason the shooting guard makes a hard baseline cut right after swinging the ball out to the wing if he's matched up with a smaller defender. If you show contempt for people who think that stuff is cool (or even for people who merely think the end result is fun to watch though they don't understand the details) that's a serious social dysfunction.

[toolz]

Depth can have a real defined meaning, though. If you're in the context of discovering a process that will make electricity cheaper and cleaner, that is useful to everyone around the world in some way and then to have someone overshadow that achievement or ignore it entirely because 'the game' is on, is ridiculous. I live in the south east where when a college football coach has a problem with the university president, the president is lucky to last longer than a year.

There's obviously nothing objectively bad about enjoying sports, but the ravenous obsession with sports is not exactly uncommon and to pretend we should celebrate it is not in the best interest of humanity.

There is a reason a lot (most?) NFL players go bankrupt shortly after their career of being paid far more than will reflect their contribution to the future of mankind. It's because that grouping of people has a lot of backwards thinking and irresponsibility attached to it.

It's very interesting to me that someone, here, in academia, is having to defend their disdain to the vocal majority about their distaste for sports culture when it does nothing long term for our species good and could easily be argued to be detrimental via opportunity cost thrown away in human potential that grew up believing it was more prestigious to be a football player than a scientist.

So am I annoyed? A bit. Do I generalize based on your taste for sports? No. Do I think your choice to praise athletes over scientists is detrimental to society? Yes, I do.

[kevincrane]

> There is a reason a lot (most?) NFL players go bankrupt shortly after their career of being paid far more than will reflect their contribution to the future of mankind.

Is the reason because a very large number of them grew up in poverty or with rough family lives and therefore never had the chance to be trained into proper financial management as you were? Because that's a reason for a pretty solid proportion of athletes in the NFL at least.

[quanticle]

>NFL players go bankrupt shortly after their career of being paid far more than will reflect their contribution to the future of mankind.

Isn't that supposed to be because of the mental illness brought on by the repeated concussions that players suffer, which causes physical injury to the brain? I'm not sure how you can blame the players for that.

[omegaham]

I think a far more likely reason is that they grow up in poverty and have no good role models for how to manage their finances. They're very similar to lottery winners in that regard. As a result, they piss it away.

[toolz]

I'm not blaming the players for anything. It's the institution that society has propped up and praised that puts people in a position where they feel the best way to be validated by society is to put themselves in danger doing nothing of lasting good for mankind.

[wtbob]

> More than that, he is in effect saying "there is no depth to this thing"

More precisely, 'there is no depth that is emotionally or intellectually relevant to me.' I'm sure there is lots of depth to the architecture Robin Hood Gardens, but it still should be levelled.

Likewise, while you're quite right that there's lots of depth to professional sports, I don't think that means that anyone should care, or be expected to care.

Contempt is bad, and obviously it's a fact that sports are popular, that most people like sports and that those of us who don't care are, in some pertinent sense, socially ill-developed. Still, what about the contempt which sports-lovers have for sports-haters? I think that's far more harmful, both in childhood and adulthood.

[lotharbot]

> "More precisely, 'there is no depth that is emotionally or intellectually relevant to me.'"

That's less precise.

By caricaturing the sport, he's not merely expressing that he doesn't care about the depth, he's implying it doesn't exist and that other people who care about the sport care about something pointless. It's an expression of contempt not just for the sport, but for their judgment. Like "the depth this sport may have shouldn't be relevant to anyone".

It's like if someone caricatures computer programming as "just typing" and therefore unimportant -- they're not merely saying that they don't care about pointers and function calls, they're implying that there's something wrong with people who do care about those things.

> "what about the contempt which sports-lovers have for sports-haters?"

I'm glad you prefaced this with "contempt is bad" so it didn't appear to be a tu quoque fallacy.

And you are correct, that form of contempt is also harmful. And the form of contempt sometimes displayed by groups of sports fans for other groups of sports fans is harmful. I don't think there's a lot of need to analyze the proposition "children are sometimes immature" -- I know I dished out and took my fair share of insults about everything from intelligence to looks to athleticism to choice of entertainment.

But for adults, we should rise above. If a friend is genuinely passionate about something, whether it's programming or sports or stamps or butterflies, figure out a way to be supportive rather than dismissive -- listen a little bit, ask questions, and then move on. And when you move the conversation to areas of shared interest, do it in a way that respects your friend's interest in whatever it is you don't particularly care for.