this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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I wouldn’t call sports stats a loss of intelligence for people that like thinking about it, any more than any other math based hobby. Poverty for sure though.
Nah I think we lose a great deal of autists to sports, but that's just based on my personal experience.
If baseball and model trains didn't exist, we'd probably have colonies on the moon by now.
Would we need model trains if we funded trains properly?
Right. And I had always thought we had plenty of poverty. But now I'm thinking how much more we could have by now if we had ever bothered to fund it properly.
What do you mean every nickle spent reinforcing the social order is funding poverty. Its expensive to have both billionaires and homeless people.
also fintech
Am autist in fintech, can confirm
We what? We lose autists to sports...?
Why not? Sports are full of systems, patterns, routines, statistics, and explicit rules, and can be used to mask socially.
I'm just confused about the "losing them" part. As if they're some sort of rare mineral. Also it's autistic, not autist, it's not a profession. Also also, surely they can decide what they want to do themselves?
Also also also, can you give an example of an autistic person playing in the NBA or soccer or something?
What I mean is that a portion of obsessive brainpower that traditionally would have gone towards furthering science or solving humanity's various issues is absorbed by sports statistics and science, not that lots of players are secretly autistic. Maybe 'losing them' is a bit dramatic, but I do think that because certain hobbies and interests are a lot more publicly seen as 'autistic interests' that autistic folk that are into sports tend to not get diagnosed and never even know they're autistic despite it being clearly obvious to anyone who knows what to look for. And on that note, I see you also enjoy rigid structures and rules, my fellow autist! Wouldn't it have been weird if I had called you an autistic just then? It's a fun term with plenty of functionality and I don't see anything wrong with it.
But how many of these would have the right kind of minds to be put to use elsewhere? Surely some will but you can't just force somebody to use that superfocus to catalogue some discoveries all day long for years, it could be psychological torture for some individuals even if they're capable of it.
I don't think anyone is talking about forcing anyone to do anything, here. Just that those interests poach minds who would otherwise be interested and capable.
Can confirm
Sports stats are better than Movie/TV aficionados or even D&D munchkins. Because at least behind Sports is a real person. It's a hobby. Everything doesn't need a purpose.
And I say this as someone who was Moss from the IT crowd until I was well over 30.
If playing d&d and watching/collecting/learning about TV/movies aren't hobbies, what do you call them? And how does that decrease their social value? Real people are behind every facet of human culture, otherwise it wouldn't be human culture.
They are all hobbies. They don't need a point just like sports fans. I still don't have any interest in sports. I currently follow world cup because my children are into it. I'm still Moss. But I understand that it's ALL hobbies and saying that someone is "lost" because they follow sports is ridiculous.
hur dur hur sportsball amirite
I absolutely fucking abhor people who say shit like this. To the extent that I've multiple times made a point of feigning genuine curiosity about their own interests and then shitting on them in the same over-simplifying fashion.
What a tactic, changed any minds that way?
To get them to stop shitting on people for arbitrarily different sets of hobbies? Yes, in fact.
How can you tell?
Agreed
I wasn't the one who said that. I was just curious why you think "sports stats are better than movie/tv aficionados and d&d", which you failed to clarify here. From my pov, the way sports are helpful to society is they can help expose us to other cultures, which I believe is paramount in breaking down toxic cultural barriers. However, the inherent competitive nature of sports can also lead to reinforced toxic cultural barriers, so it's kind of a wash. TV and movies can also break down those barriers but without the unavoidable competitive factor. D&D is just collaborative story-telling, so basically the same as TV and movies, but more personal and private generally. Again I fail to see how that's "worse" than watching sports.
Do you believe that studying history as a a hobby is better than watching Game of Thrones?
Sports isn't just the team winning. People that are into it follow the lives of the players. It is a real person where the drama is from overcoming their personal challenges and inherent skill in the sport. Whereas fantasy is contrived drama. It's invented by the author or by committee in the writer's room.
I personally would rather watch a Trek rerun for the 10th time than a live baseball game. But I'm aware that the baseball is real rather than fantasy. The ending isn't scripted to create the most drama to get viewers to watch and sell ads.
Maybe! Kinda. "Better" for whom and by what metric? It really depends on the person and the "history" being studied. I guarantee the majority of the worst people on Earth (malignant politicians, war mongers, profiteers, Nazis, etc.) are very well-studied in history. I'd guess GoT has had, at worst, a neutral effect on societal progress. This is also quite a different argument than sports fans vs tv/movie/"fantasy" fans, which is what we were talking about. Thanks to documentaries, interviews, lecture series, historical fiction, etc., you could be a history buff and never have read a book in your life. It's possible to learn the wrong thing from history or to take in inaccurate and/or biased and/or sensationalized history, and it's possible to learn from fiction the good things history can teach. Again, largely a wash in my book.
But even restricting it just to fiction, I still don't see the difference. Fiction isn't just the story. People that are into it follow the lives of the creators. It is real people overcoming personal challenges with inherent skill in writing, drawing/animating, acting, directing, music, dancing, cinematography, etc, etc. Whereas sports are endlessly predictable and just as contrived as fiction. They were invented by dead people, they're run like The Mob, and nothing new ever really happens. Someone wins the Super Bowl every year, in effectively the same exact way, we even know to the hour, almost the minute, when it will happen.
Sure, if you're watching a high school football game or a recreational volleyball league match or a T-ball scrimmage. Professional sports are 10% sport and 90% ads, and plenty of sports fans believe they're, not rigged per se, but certainly unduly influenced for ratings and to affect the massive sportsbetting & prediction markets. One well-timed holding penalty in US football (a penalty that could be called on basically every single play) or uncalled foul in basketball or soccer (again, fouls could be called on almost every NBA possession or FIFA challenge/tackle) can completely alter the course of the game and potentially a team's course for the season. Which affects future seasons. The NFL had non-profit status until 2015, meanwhile they claimed 11 billion dollars in revenue the previous year, and that was before the cancerous behemoths of modern sportsbetting and prediction markets.
Plus, as far as we know, no one's ever gotten chronic degenerative brain damage from a ttrpg campaign, so there's that I guess. Also, unscripted TV shows and movies definitely exist, and ttrpgs are usually a loose narrative framework filled out by improvised collaborative storytelling from everyone involved, not scripted.
There are so many hobbies that are leagues more important and productive than knowing who won which game of what when. I'm sorry but I think even media / pop culture knowledge edges out sports. Your example alone; Moss is a cultural touchstone we can use to further quantify and share an understanding of the human experience. Creative writing is done by real people, and exploring the lives of fictional people or elements of fictional worlds is how we explore our own lives and world. It's art and art is integral to humanity. I'm sure play is too and if you get enjoyment out of watching people play ball then more power to you! And I agree that not everything we do needs a purpose, but I don't think that contradicts my initial comment. I think most would agree that some hobbies further you as a person, some further humanity, and some are mostly just a time and productivity sink.
I'm so sorry, I will strive further to spend every waking moment creating value instead of doing anything that makes me happy
You've got to be pretty defensive to get that out of what I said, but whatever makes you happy!
If we both knew more about sports or history I could have used a real person instead of a fictional character created in a writer's room.