Sports are Minimaxed to the Point of Boredom and Predicta...

Outcome maximalization across sports has created "smarter" games with less variety and more all-or-nothing play. The fixation with quantifiable success can lead to a collective flattening of the human experience. Perhaps we need to include more randomness in the game. Each home field or home court should have distinctive features, different playing surfaces, or outdoor elements. Think of how fun the wrigley field ivy is, or the boston green wall. Maybe put a dog or cat on the playing field. ...

 The Sacrifices Necessary to be a Sports Star

But it’s better for us not to know the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade athlete has made to get so very good at one particular thing... the actual facts of the sacrifices repel us when we see them: basketball geniuses who cannot read, sprinters who dope themselves, defensive tackles who shoot up with bovine hormones until they collapse or explode. We prefer not to consider closely the shockingly vapid and primitive comments uttered by athletes in post-contest interviews or to cons...

 We value throwing a ball through a hoop more than science

That we have come so far in the enterprise of understanding nature, far enough to pry open the nucleus of the atom, to sail through interplanetary space, to lose ourselves in the Internet, and perform medical surgery with laser beams, all of this is cause for great celebration, not fear, and it's time we quit hiding all this under the covers and let these people come out of the shadows into the light of day and take accurate stock of their accomplishments and their failures and make an attemp...