Cultivated disinterest

While watching sports, I often end up asking questions like these:

  • If this game was played all over again, would outcome be same again?

  • How much of the game events is purely random chances?

  • Why should I be proud for team X when I really haven’t done anything for them to win, may be except offering slice of my lifespan watching them play?

  • If this team loses next time, why should my life and happiness fall apart given that they play completely outside of my control?

  • Why should I be proud of superiority of any team when I know that they are not going win consistently over any significant period of time?

To me sports is as interesting as watching some one doing coin tosses interleaved with few displays skills. I just can’t imagine myself getting happy or sad watching the outcomes. I would still watch sports for experiencing the state of the art skills. However why should my pride and life be attached to some team who acts completely outside of my control is beyond me.

I realize most people don’t ask questions like above. For them, even if team wins because of random chances, probability be damned with and it’s still something to celebrate as equally as if it was meant to be. Cultivated disinterest may not be because of need for belonging to “elite class”. May be this is a curse of being “intellectual”.

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Shital Shah

A program trying to understand what it’s computing.

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