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I can understand the value of sports, and of doing anything at a high level. Mastery of anything is its own reward. I get that. But what these Thai champs ar
by feralimal 6y ago
I can understand the value of sports, and of doing anything at a high level. Mastery of anything is its own reward. I get that. But what these Thai champs are doing seems crazy.
Imagine, as an English speaker, waking up wanting to win the Hungarian scrabble tournament. No, you don't want to know how to speak Hungarian. You only want to win the Hungarian scrabble tournaments. And you're prepared to invest months of your life memorising sequences of letters to do it!
Its insane.
- jobigoud 6y agoWhen you do something competitively it decouples the activity from the original use. Just like a Pole vault champion is not really interested in being able to reach the second floor with a stick. In this sense the fact that the words have to match the Hungarian dictionary feels arbitrary. But it's a bit like the rules for triple jump where you have to land the first jump on the same foot, or the rules of high jump that prevent you from taking off with two feet at the same time, these rules feel arbitrary in the context of the original utility of the skill.
- feralimal 6y agoYou like to argue huh? :) Triple jump is valuable in itself - you train your body, and that has consequent benefits. Learning strings of consecutive characters characters perhaps has a memory benefit. But then, why not train your memory to get that benefit AND get a consequent benefit at the same time. Eg card counting to make money at casinos? Or actually learn English, so this becomes a vocab extension exercise? But all that effort to win....? At scrabble?!? The mind boggles. And anyway, if you were that good, no-one would want to play scrabble with you at Christmas...