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Better question why do we spend so many global resources on such a useless metric for humanity in its current life? When would you ever need to be so fast at 1

Better question why do we spend so many global resources on such a useless metric for humanity in its current life? When would you ever need to be so fast at 100m that you over train your body for one specific task?

bglazer 2y ago
How many people and resources (dollars) would you estimate are involved in professional track and field? Bonus points if you express this as a proportion of total human population and economic activity
SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
Might I introduce you to the concept of sports in general? We build giant coliseums costing hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to keeping ice cold in the middle of summer just so people can answer the question of who is best at stick puck.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  Sports serve a social purpose, and contribute positively to society's overall fitness since most people playing sports aren't pro athletes A 100m sprint, as fast as humanly possible is super impressive, but the person you're replying to does have a point: this is an extremely specific and narrow activity with no purpose other than competition. You don't socialize with sprinting, and most people wouldn't use 100m sprinting as an activity to improve their fitness At best, it's designed to test fitness, but it even fails at that really
  - tatersolid 2y ago
    I’d wager that sprinting races, like most sport, have their origins in warfare. Being able to move from point of cover A to point B as quickly as possible is very useful in avoiding projectile weapons.
    - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
      That seems too complicated. Racing from one point to the other it's really one of the simplest things two people can do and it's one of those purest expressions of athletic ability. Even animals do it.
  - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    I don't think your second paragraph follows your first. Just because you're doing an activity like sprinting solo doesn't mean there aren't social elements. The Olympics this summer will prove that hundreds of million if not billions of people can come together around sprinting, and several dozen other extremely specific and narrow activities, if only for a brief time.
    - bluefirebrand 2y ago
      This doesn't reflect reality as far as I've ever seen Hundreds of millions if not billions of people may watch sprinting, or diving or any number of niche solo sports, but do they really care further than "I hope our guy wins"? Do they care about the technical aspects of running or discus or whatever else? Not a chance It's not even remotely close to how passionate people get about team sports. Millions of people will celebrate in the streets if their soccer team wins a medal. People will argue endlessly about the technical little details of a soccer match, the calls refs make, etc Solo sports aren't really comparable to team sports in the social aspect, either for society or for the players on the teams
      - jiceo 2y ago
        I agree with you. Of course it doesn't get remotely close to how passionate people get about team sports. The audience and money involved in these won't be beat anytime soon, simplify due to traditions. But your comment is short-sighted because you don't seem interested in sprinting or track and field sports and haven't been following recent events coming out of that space. Just as an example, have you seen what Marcell Jacobs did for his country, being the first Italian sprinter to ever win a world championship, not just once but a couple of times, defying the Jamaican and American hegemony against all odds? He became an overnight sensation, was on the cover of a bunch of magazines, and inspired millions in his country. Nowadays he's under a lot of criticism because he couldn't keep his position exactly because sprinting requires the utmost physical and mental toughness. > At best, it's designed to test fitness, but it even fails at that really > You don't socialize with sprinting, and most people wouldn't use 100m sprinting as an activity to improve their fitness FAILS to test fitness? Really? Have you ever read anything about sports science and psychology? First, athlets don't compete singularly in the 100m sprinting event, a lot of them compete in different modalities, like the 100m, 200m, relays, etc. Sprinting 100m and specially the 400m are considered the hardest races for humans. It tests endurance, lactic acid build-up, pacing, mental toughness, strategy at the rawest level, and not to mention the mental preparation you have to have to deal with the pressure and criticism of the media, when you're on the track being viewed by millions and you have just a few seconds to prove yourself. How is that not testing someone's fitness well? You just can't isolate 100m sprinting especially as an activity. Sprinting up to your 100% max heart rate is excellent for fitness, muscle growth, and longevity. There's a lot of research on this coming out with concrete data about the benefits of sprinting vs other kinds of sports.
  - Nashooo 2y ago
    Just because it is not a team sport does not make it not social?
- drdaeman 2y ago
  Can someone help me to understand this concept? In particular, why so many people watch it - what drives them them do so? I'll try to explain my own vision, why I think I don't care - which, of course, is entirely subjective thing, so despite it may read as such it's not exactly meant to say "[some] pro sports are nonsense" but rather more of "[some] pro sports don't make sense for me". Say, Olympic games. I can watch the opening ceremony (it can be visually or aesthetically impressive), but I don't care about the actual event. Yea, some folks do some impressive things, that... utterly fail to impress me. I'll try to explain why, and I wonder how others are different in this regard. I can understand watching sports that have a significant strategy component to them. I would've probably watched Go or chess if I would be able to understand what's going on there (I don't), but I occasionally watch e-sports and those can impress me with how people think outside of the box, doing things that no one thought of - but that are so obvious in the hindsight. For those kind of sports, when I understand the game mechanics and when those feel interesting to me, I can relate and feel engaged. I have a suspicion that a number of people watch it (among other reasons) for the "this is our athlete(s) doing it" vibe. This is something that doesn't click with me. Never really did when I was a kid (the country I was born in doesn't exist - and good riddance), and since then I've immigrated a few times, so - long story short - save for obligatory subconscious biases, I don't care about other folks' flags and passports. But even though this is not commonplace (I guess), this doesn't feel like a reason why I have no feelings for the Olympics. Back to the e-sports example, I watch international events, and people from different bubbles bringing their different strategies and play styles makes watching fun, as the games are more diverse. So, when someone's running, jumping, lifting, throwing, shooting, spinning, or alike... I honestly don't get what impresses so many viewers so much everyone and their dog seem to be glued to the screens. Please don't get me wrong, I don't want to diminish athletes' personal (or team) achievements. What they're doing is objectively impressive, but subjectively it's in some... detached, unrelated way. Also, as someone raised on sci-fi I can't shake off the feeling of it being sort of unimportant or meaningless on a global scale - I suppose I'm gonna give post-/trans-human Olympics a try, if I'll live to the day, maybe I'll find something to cheer for. Not sure. Either way, in the modern day, personally, I don't feel any engagement as I fail to relate with the athlete, leading to the total lack of the entertainment value for me. Best I can do is "uh, that looks fast/heavy/far/...", but 9s, 9.5s, or 12s are all the same for me - just "fast" - nothing in my brain fires off, as I don't have any experience of such speeds/levels of exertion anyway. So I wonder, does it for others, do they subconsciously tighten their muscles watching, do they feel connected or something? Maybe not, because people also watch races and I suppose they don't associate with horses? As you can see, with all this blabbering and guessing (sorry!) - I'm really confused here. I realize that even if someone explains it to me, I still won't feel that way, but what I'm missing is the idea - I only have guesses, and I have no clue how accurate they are. And I'm curious to understand others, even if a tiniest bit better. ====> tl;dr: If y'all watch the professional sports (esp. if aren't an athlete yourself), what makes you engaged and entertained watching it? Thanks!
k__ 2y ago
Maybe, it's like art and math.
cglace 2y ago
People want to see who is the best at X. As long as someone cares who is better at X, people will try to be the best. It's that simple.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
Without circuses you better hope everybody has bread.
- deleted 2y ago
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tbrake 2y ago
Before you asked the first question did you try to put yourself in someone else's (running) shoes and figure out their motives? If you haven't, try. Steel man the case for running and getting better at running before you just declare it "useless."
shadow28 2y ago
It's fascinating to see the physical limits of a human body being pushed as far as possible.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  And not just physical. There's an iron hard will in there pushing past those limits.
FeteCommuniste 2y ago
People like watching excellence in action, especially if it's in a domain they can relate to in some way. Almost everyone has tried to run as fast as they could at some point, so they're naturally curious to watch others who have spent years training to do it really, really well.
- jojobas 2y ago
  People like all sorts of useless things, and their life gets worse once they get introduced to them. The amount of people involved in pro sport is lamentable.
  - goatlover 2y ago
    It's useless to you, but you're not the arbiter of what is useful to other people. It's certainly useful for the professional athletes making lots of money, getting to travel, becoming famous, and you know, pursuing their dreams from childhood.
  - FeteCommuniste 2y ago
    How are sports any less "useful" than other spectation-based forms of entertainment like watching movies, reading novels, or listening to music?
    - jojobas 2y ago
      You get no getting new insight, catharsis or inspiration from watching someone run. Like chewing gum, it exploits your desire to watch, but there's no substance. Then again, there's the problem of how thousands of kids drop out of school to become pro athletes, and don't even reach college level, and the problem of colleges admitting illiterate athletes and letting them graduate illiterate for "prestige".
      - hm10 2y ago
        Apart from getting inspired (like other replies have mentioned), there is plenty of insight to be obtained from watching sports. It is quite fun to observe and analyze the strategy and technical aspects of a sport - especially a sport that you play and train yourself. If someone never partakes in that sport, then yes - they may not necessarily understand the subtleties that happen in a particular move. But even if you're a hobby player, watching top pro athletes or teams utilize the techniques you are learning can make you appreciate the amount of work, skill, practice, and determination that goes into it. And that can be useful for people to apply in other areas of their lives.
LargeWu 2y ago
Sport, in general, is about the quest for excellence. It's a tradition that dates back millennia, across nearly all cultures, which suggests it is a deeply-rooted and possibly evolutionary trait in humans. Racing in general, and specifically the 100m dash, the crown jewel of track and field, might be considered one of the purest expressions of athletic excellence.
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
  >> Sport, in general, is about the quest for excellence. Is it, really? It feels like it's a business and a spectacle, a form of entertainment not fundamentally different than cinema or theater, except that it lays claim to being "about the quest for excellence". A claim that unfortunately is hard to support in view of how common is doping, for instance, or how common is violence around football matches. Today's sport is very different than e.g. the ancient Greeks' Olympic games which were an event held in honour of a god (Apollo) that very few people still worship today. The Olympic were also a sex- and race-segregated event (only Greek free men could take part) so even for that period, maybe sport was about "excellence", maybe it was about something else. The Nazis were certainly quite ready to embrace the Olympics. A certain totalitarian, eugenicist ideology is never very far from sport. Sports and games, and "noble competition" seems to have been a universal, though. I'm thinking for example of the Afghan national sport, Buzkashi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzkashi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzkashi
- boringg 2y ago
  I understand the sentiment - and yes tradition is important in human culture. That said its like we've trained so acutely for the test but the test doesn't really answer any good questions. Historically running had a very important part of humanity. You needed to run from animals for hunting, if you were a warrior you needed to fight and run, etc. It feels like this is one of those races that was historically important as a human metric but no longer has the heft of value except for nostalgia.
  - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    What are physical tests that are actually important to a modern day human? I don't think there's anything that can be taken to an extreme that is a good measure of an activity that is valuable to modern society.
Tao3300 2y ago
There are worse things we could be doing with our time. Personally I'd rather watch the synchronized swimming.
piva00 2y ago
Because humanity is not about minmaxing a game where output is the most important metric. We are humans, and a human thing to do is sports, we love being impressed by other's physical prowess even if they are narrow and of no economic value. Why do people paint? Or make music? Or play football (whatever version of it)? Because we like to do it.
zepolen 2y ago
Mainly because it sells, but also because the pioneers never needed a reason beyond why not.

bglazer 2y ago

How many people and resources (dollars) would you estimate are involved in professional track and field? Bonus points if you express this as a proportion of total human population and economic activity

SketchySeaBeast 2y ago

Might I introduce you to the concept of sports in general? We build giant coliseums costing hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to keeping ice cold in the middle of summer just so people can answer the question of who is best at stick puck.

bluefirebrand 2y ago
Sports serve a social purpose, and contribute positively to society's overall fitness since most people playing sports aren't pro athletes A 100m sprint, as fast as humanly possible is super impressive, but the person you're replying to does have a point: this is an extremely specific and narrow activity with no purpose other than competition. You don't socialize with sprinting, and most people wouldn't use 100m sprinting as an activity to improve their fitness At best, it's designed to test fitness, but it even fails at that really
- tatersolid 2y ago
  I’d wager that sprinting races, like most sport, have their origins in warfare. Being able to move from point of cover A to point B as quickly as possible is very useful in avoiding projectile weapons.
  - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    That seems too complicated. Racing from one point to the other it's really one of the simplest things two people can do and it's one of those purest expressions of athletic ability. Even animals do it.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  I don't think your second paragraph follows your first. Just because you're doing an activity like sprinting solo doesn't mean there aren't social elements. The Olympics this summer will prove that hundreds of million if not billions of people can come together around sprinting, and several dozen other extremely specific and narrow activities, if only for a brief time.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    This doesn't reflect reality as far as I've ever seen Hundreds of millions if not billions of people may watch sprinting, or diving or any number of niche solo sports, but do they really care further than "I hope our guy wins"? Do they care about the technical aspects of running or discus or whatever else? Not a chance It's not even remotely close to how passionate people get about team sports. Millions of people will celebrate in the streets if their soccer team wins a medal. People will argue endlessly about the technical little details of a soccer match, the calls refs make, etc Solo sports aren't really comparable to team sports in the social aspect, either for society or for the players on the teams
    - jiceo 2y ago
      I agree with you. Of course it doesn't get remotely close to how passionate people get about team sports. The audience and money involved in these won't be beat anytime soon, simplify due to traditions. But your comment is short-sighted because you don't seem interested in sprinting or track and field sports and haven't been following recent events coming out of that space. Just as an example, have you seen what Marcell Jacobs did for his country, being the first Italian sprinter to ever win a world championship, not just once but a couple of times, defying the Jamaican and American hegemony against all odds? He became an overnight sensation, was on the cover of a bunch of magazines, and inspired millions in his country. Nowadays he's under a lot of criticism because he couldn't keep his position exactly because sprinting requires the utmost physical and mental toughness. > At best, it's designed to test fitness, but it even fails at that really > You don't socialize with sprinting, and most people wouldn't use 100m sprinting as an activity to improve their fitness FAILS to test fitness? Really? Have you ever read anything about sports science and psychology? First, athlets don't compete singularly in the 100m sprinting event, a lot of them compete in different modalities, like the 100m, 200m, relays, etc. Sprinting 100m and specially the 400m are considered the hardest races for humans. It tests endurance, lactic acid build-up, pacing, mental toughness, strategy at the rawest level, and not to mention the mental preparation you have to have to deal with the pressure and criticism of the media, when you're on the track being viewed by millions and you have just a few seconds to prove yourself. How is that not testing someone's fitness well? You just can't isolate 100m sprinting especially as an activity. Sprinting up to your 100% max heart rate is excellent for fitness, muscle growth, and longevity. There's a lot of research on this coming out with concrete data about the benefits of sprinting vs other kinds of sports.
- Nashooo 2y ago
  Just because it is not a team sport does not make it not social?
drdaeman 2y ago
Can someone help me to understand this concept? In particular, why so many people watch it - what drives them them do so? I'll try to explain my own vision, why I think I don't care - which, of course, is entirely subjective thing, so despite it may read as such it's not exactly meant to say "[some] pro sports are nonsense" but rather more of "[some] pro sports don't make sense for me". Say, Olympic games. I can watch the opening ceremony (it can be visually or aesthetically impressive), but I don't care about the actual event. Yea, some folks do some impressive things, that... utterly fail to impress me. I'll try to explain why, and I wonder how others are different in this regard. I can understand watching sports that have a significant strategy component to them. I would've probably watched Go or chess if I would be able to understand what's going on there (I don't), but I occasionally watch e-sports and those can impress me with how people think outside of the box, doing things that no one thought of - but that are so obvious in the hindsight. For those kind of sports, when I understand the game mechanics and when those feel interesting to me, I can relate and feel engaged. I have a suspicion that a number of people watch it (among other reasons) for the "this is our athlete(s) doing it" vibe. This is something that doesn't click with me. Never really did when I was a kid (the country I was born in doesn't exist - and good riddance), and since then I've immigrated a few times, so - long story short - save for obligatory subconscious biases, I don't care about other folks' flags and passports. But even though this is not commonplace (I guess), this doesn't feel like a reason why I have no feelings for the Olympics. Back to the e-sports example, I watch international events, and people from different bubbles bringing their different strategies and play styles makes watching fun, as the games are more diverse. So, when someone's running, jumping, lifting, throwing, shooting, spinning, or alike... I honestly don't get what impresses so many viewers so much everyone and their dog seem to be glued to the screens. Please don't get me wrong, I don't want to diminish athletes' personal (or team) achievements. What they're doing is objectively impressive, but subjectively it's in some... detached, unrelated way. Also, as someone raised on sci-fi I can't shake off the feeling of it being sort of unimportant or meaningless on a global scale - I suppose I'm gonna give post-/trans-human Olympics a try, if I'll live to the day, maybe I'll find something to cheer for. Not sure. Either way, in the modern day, personally, I don't feel any engagement as I fail to relate with the athlete, leading to the total lack of the entertainment value for me. Best I can do is "uh, that looks fast/heavy/far/...", but 9s, 9.5s, or 12s are all the same for me - just "fast" - nothing in my brain fires off, as I don't have any experience of such speeds/levels of exertion anyway. So I wonder, does it for others, do they subconsciously tighten their muscles watching, do they feel connected or something? Maybe not, because people also watch races and I suppose they don't associate with horses? As you can see, with all this blabbering and guessing (sorry!) - I'm really confused here. I realize that even if someone explains it to me, I still won't feel that way, but what I'm missing is the idea - I only have guesses, and I have no clue how accurate they are. And I'm curious to understand others, even if a tiniest bit better. ====> tl;dr: If y'all watch the professional sports (esp. if aren't an athlete yourself), what makes you engaged and entertained watching it? Thanks!

k__ 2y ago

Maybe, it's like art and math.

cglace 2y ago

People want to see who is the best at X. As long as someone cares who is better at X, people will try to be the best. It's that simple.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago

Without circuses you better hope everybody has bread.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

tbrake 2y ago

Before you asked the first question did you try to put yourself in someone else's (running) shoes and figure out their motives? If you haven't, try. Steel man the case for running and getting better at running before you just declare it "useless."

shadow28 2y ago

It's fascinating to see the physical limits of a human body being pushed as far as possible.

SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
And not just physical. There's an iron hard will in there pushing past those limits.

FeteCommuniste 2y ago

People like watching excellence in action, especially if it's in a domain they can relate to in some way. Almost everyone has tried to run as fast as they could at some point, so they're naturally curious to watch others who have spent years training to do it really, really well.

jojobas 2y ago
People like all sorts of useless things, and their life gets worse once they get introduced to them. The amount of people involved in pro sport is lamentable.
- goatlover 2y ago
  It's useless to you, but you're not the arbiter of what is useful to other people. It's certainly useful for the professional athletes making lots of money, getting to travel, becoming famous, and you know, pursuing their dreams from childhood.
- FeteCommuniste 2y ago
  How are sports any less "useful" than other spectation-based forms of entertainment like watching movies, reading novels, or listening to music?
  - jojobas 2y ago
    You get no getting new insight, catharsis or inspiration from watching someone run. Like chewing gum, it exploits your desire to watch, but there's no substance. Then again, there's the problem of how thousands of kids drop out of school to become pro athletes, and don't even reach college level, and the problem of colleges admitting illiterate athletes and letting them graduate illiterate for "prestige".
    - hm10 2y ago
      Apart from getting inspired (like other replies have mentioned), there is plenty of insight to be obtained from watching sports. It is quite fun to observe and analyze the strategy and technical aspects of a sport - especially a sport that you play and train yourself. If someone never partakes in that sport, then yes - they may not necessarily understand the subtleties that happen in a particular move. But even if you're a hobby player, watching top pro athletes or teams utilize the techniques you are learning can make you appreciate the amount of work, skill, practice, and determination that goes into it. And that can be useful for people to apply in other areas of their lives.

LargeWu 2y ago

Sport, in general, is about the quest for excellence. It's a tradition that dates back millennia, across nearly all cultures, which suggests it is a deeply-rooted and possibly evolutionary trait in humans. Racing in general, and specifically the 100m dash, the crown jewel of track and field, might be considered one of the purest expressions of athletic excellence.

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
>> Sport, in general, is about the quest for excellence. Is it, really? It feels like it's a business and a spectacle, a form of entertainment not fundamentally different than cinema or theater, except that it lays claim to being "about the quest for excellence". A claim that unfortunately is hard to support in view of how common is doping, for instance, or how common is violence around football matches. Today's sport is very different than e.g. the ancient Greeks' Olympic games which were an event held in honour of a god (Apollo) that very few people still worship today. The Olympic were also a sex- and race-segregated event (only Greek free men could take part) so even for that period, maybe sport was about "excellence", maybe it was about something else. The Nazis were certainly quite ready to embrace the Olympics. A certain totalitarian, eugenicist ideology is never very far from sport. Sports and games, and "noble competition" seems to have been a universal, though. I'm thinking for example of the Afghan national sport, Buzkashi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzkashi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzkashi
boringg 2y ago
I understand the sentiment - and yes tradition is important in human culture. That said its like we've trained so acutely for the test but the test doesn't really answer any good questions. Historically running had a very important part of humanity. You needed to run from animals for hunting, if you were a warrior you needed to fight and run, etc. It feels like this is one of those races that was historically important as a human metric but no longer has the heft of value except for nostalgia.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  What are physical tests that are actually important to a modern day human? I don't think there's anything that can be taken to an extreme that is a good measure of an activity that is valuable to modern society.

Tao3300 2y ago

There are worse things we could be doing with our time. Personally I'd rather watch the synchronized swimming.

piva00 2y ago

Because humanity is not about minmaxing a game where output is the most important metric. We are humans, and a human thing to do is sports, we love being impressed by other's physical prowess even if they are narrow and of no economic value. Why do people paint? Or make music? Or play football (whatever version of it)? Because we like to do it.

zepolen 2y ago

Mainly because it sells, but also because the pioneers never needed a reason beyond why not.