[HN Gopher] Refinement Culture (2020)
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Refinement Culture (2020)
Author : ptr
Score : 111 points
Date : 2021-06-12 10:00 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulskallas.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulskallas.substack.com)
| agumonkey wrote:
| As if too much [0]information is not information.
|
| Or not enough depending how one interprets information
| [deleted]
| greenail wrote:
| "It has to do with refinement of things, games, products and
| aesthetics. It's hard to describe exactly WHAT Refinement Culture
| really means."
|
| The author fails to provide any shape to this. He doesn't
| describe what refinement culture is. It's a list disconnected
| changes. I don't know what he's trying to say other than "I don't
| like how some things change". An AI may have written a better
| article (if this wasn't already AI generated).
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| One example is movies. How many new and innovative movies come
| out this year versus rehash and continuations of existing
| franchises?
| chdaniel wrote:
| Help me understand Paul, as I'm a tad bit younger - what's that
| mid-to-late 2000s writing style? Mind giving some examples?
| [deleted]
| golemotron wrote:
| Paul learned a lot from Taleb. He internalized this insights
| and applied them more broadly to culture. Insightful.
| galuggus wrote:
| This explains the popularity of youtuber boxing. People are
| looking for unrefined, less predictable sport
| dqpb wrote:
| This is like looking at the behavior of RL agents as their
| policies improve/stabilize.
| kickscondor wrote:
| > They shaved Little Caesar's chest.
|
| Would love to see the full documentary on this one.
| [deleted]
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| "It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It
| shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a
| nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that
| only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the
| nation is merely looking on." -GK Chestertong
|
| edit: typo left in for reflexive humor
| georgeecollins wrote:
| >> "It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly.
| It shows that all the people are doing them.
|
| That's a great quote to describe the meme stock phenomena.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| The article uses the examples following:
|
| 1. Sports. Specifically, basketball, swimming, and gymnastics.
| Pretty much every community of any reasonable size has a
| community pool and a community basketball court. There are at
| least 6 basketball courts and 3 lap pools within a 10 minute
| drive of my house -- that I know of! -- and all get regular
| use. Gymnastics is also reasonably popular.
|
| 2. Logo design. I'd wager there are way more logo designers
| today than ever before. Also, this was not a compelling example
| IMO.
|
| 3. Cars. This one is more complicated, but it's really safety
| regulations that push homogeneity. First, I'll assert that
| sacrificing participation for fewer bodies splattered across
| the pavement is a good thing. And, second, again, that's
| probably a false choice -- I'd wager that there are a larger
| total number of people designing/making/modifying cars today
| than ever before. Maybe even a larger percentage of the
| population (thanks, youtube).
|
| This works for other examples too. E.g., climbing will be added
| to the next Olympics. The Olympic versions of the sport are
| what I would call _extremely_ refined, but climbing is more
| popular than ever.
|
| When TONS of people do a thing, and the rewards for doing it
| well are reasonably good, _that_ is when you get refinement.
| hirundo wrote:
| In professional sports the more crucial metric is the number of
| butts in the bleachers and watching on the tube. Winning more
| games sure helps with that. But in baseball there's a tension
| between winning more games and playing more exciting games with
| more action. With those things going in the opposite direction,
| the whole business model is threatened. Politics have been blamed
| for the ratings drop, but a lot could be just that games have
| gotten progressively more boring.
|
| I wonder what rule change in baseball could fix this, along the
| lines of the basketball shot clock. From a business perspective,
| the leagues as a whole should be refining that instead.
|
| Up to a point, anyway, given that gladiatorial combat to the
| death would probably be a huge draw. "Next on ESPN, The Hunger
| Games XXIII. Stay tuned!" Maybe we're already evolving in that
| direction with the popularity of competitions like "Alone" and
| the battle royales on Twitch.
| Buldak wrote:
| The article suggests that the original Olympic athletes aimed
| at some ineffable ideal of human form, not just winning. By
| contrast, athletes now optimize for winning with results that
| the author finds unappealing. Did baseball players in the 70s
| really have some more holistic ethos of the game, though? Or
| were they doing their best to win, just as players do now, but
| with more imperfect knowledge of how to do it?
|
| As for your suggestion that we ought to optimize the rules
| themselves (i.e. so that players and teams end up playing in
| the way that we want), I'm skeptical of this. I have a feeling
| that, whatever rules we adopt, optimization of the sort in
| question is liable to produce the same sorts of distortions.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Refinements already killed the most easily refined sports, like
| anything involving a car or a horse. Team sports are next. I
| don't know about baseball, but volley and soccer are moving
| quite fast on that direction. Basketball is already gone. Games
| are all the same nowadays.
|
| Individual sports should be more resilient to refinements,
| because more capable athletes can do a larger diversity of
| moves. But that also won't last forever, at some point people
| will get enough flexibility that they are able to do the
| optimal performance for each modality, and then all
| competitions will be the same there too. (Muscle based
| modalities are mostly there already.)
| e67f70028a46fba wrote:
| Sabermetrics has absolutely ruined baseball.
| Xc43 wrote:
| What are the alternatives? Which future do we want among those
| alternatives?
|
| Alt0: Stop optimizing. Unlikely. The incentives will pull agents
| to optimize.
|
| Alt1: Change the rules of the games. Unlikely to a lesser degree.
| They did this to hockey relatively recently.
|
| Alt2: Go local. Like the rise of kabbadi in India, going for
| local sport or local groceries will allow for greater diversity.
| Somewhat happening.
|
| Alt3: ?
| infogulch wrote:
| Alt3: Teams compete across an aggregation of multiple sports,
| which are randomly-ish chosen from a pool at the beginning of
| the season. Say, 10 sports total, 3 of which are chosen each
| season.
|
| This is the same way ML models are kept from specializing too
| much, right?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| My impression is that professional sports won't have a long-
| lasting future. I don't see any way to avoid that fate.
| watwut wrote:
| The best future would be people actively doing sports and
| competing locally in insignificant but fun leagues.
| rubslopes wrote:
| Somewhat related, but about academic economics:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27273346
| RubenSandwich wrote:
| Here is part two if anyone wants to continue reading:
| https://paulskallas.substack.com/p/refinement-culture-c1b.
| l33tbro wrote:
| I thought the data in sport stuff was interesting, but the rest
| of your arguments were fairly superficial and got lost in the
| weeds.
|
| I guess my main gripe was that a lot of your thesis can be
| explained by trend. Women looking like Kardashian is simply no
| different than looking like Sophia Lauren in a bygone era.
| AirBnB's being sameish? Go back to the 70s and notice the
| uniformity of interior design with plywood, rockwalls, bright
| orange vinyl, etc. Brand mascots being smoother and slicker -
| again - just reifying the values of our era in the same way the
| original mascots reflected the masculine values of their day.
|
| As for your broader argument about refinement (itself a clumsy
| descriptor for all this) - is this really anything new? Hasn't
| optimisation been the fundamental constant since humans started
| doing stuff?
| [deleted]
| adamjb wrote:
| This deserves to be shouted from the hilltops
|
| >In human relationships we can't optimize without becoming
| greedy selfish unethical crooks. And in commerce we prefer
| relations to transactions, ready to support the local butcher
| because we feel we are part of a community and we are not alone
| --we are paid back with a smile and someone who says hello in
| the street. Indeed the central flaw in optimization is thinking
| that "everything else" ceases to exist and makes people think
| the individual, not the collective, is the true unit --when
| such thinking blows up the system. We humans are punished when
| we try to optimize, as if we suddenly ceased to be humans.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I wonder how true the preference for relationship over
| transaction is. I buy fish from my local fishmonger because
| it's qualitatively substantially better tasting. If that
| stopped being true, my relationship with him would end
| immediately and "supermarket fish it is now, because that's
| about 50% the cost". He can basically only stay in business
| by competing on quality because he can't possibly compete on
| price and there aren't enough people who would pay his rent
| out of a sense of charity for the local fish butcher.
| lovemenot wrote:
| If your fishmonger is good they've correctly identified you
| as a quality-driven customer. And for you quality means
| freshness trumps cut, which trumps knowledge, which trumps
| variety, which trumps packaging and so on.
|
| Another customer was identified as driven by service,
| banter, tradition, speed, familiarity etc.
|
| It's all relationship.
| danuker wrote:
| > In human relationships we can't optimize without becoming
| greedy selfish unethical crooks.
|
| I disagree. I optimize for myself AND the people around me.
| That is because I don't feel good when I have everything and
| others have nothing.
|
| > we are optimized _enough_ for survival already
|
| Survival up to reproduction age, and maybe a bit more for
| raising grandkids. Past that, everything is our own making -
| we haven't ever lived so long, and the current epidemic of
| heart disease and cancer is as a result of never-before-seen
| ages and chemical substances - like the Standard American
| Diet.
| ysavir wrote:
| > I disagree. I optimize for myself AND the people around
| me. That is because I don't feel good when I have
| everything and others have nothing.
|
| How much do you optimize for the people around you? Do you
| spread things between yourself and others equally, or
| optimize that everyone still get some, but you still get
| most?
|
| I don't mean that as a challenge or attack. It's a genuine
| question.
| amelius wrote:
| > I disagree. I optimize for myself AND the people around
| me. That is because I don't feel good when I have
| everything and others have nothing.
|
| True. But most try to make sure that they have just a
| little bit more than anybody else around them.
| simonh wrote:
| That is not always true in my experience. Several
| generations on my and my wife's families put up with
| backbreaking hard work and privations in order to build a
| better future for later generations. Simultaneously other
| branches of our families spent what they had and enjoyed
| better lives at the time instead. It was a huge
| investment that really paid off in my generation, my
| family's debt to them is incalculable and largely
| unpayable.
| underwater wrote:
| Sure, things become boring as they become popular, and therefore
| optimised.
|
| Rather than lamenting the loss of baseball, you can go and find
| another sport that is more immature, scrappier, and so on. If pop
| music is predictable then find a music genre that is less well
| known.
|
| The key is to look to where the money is, and then go elsewhere.
| Buldak wrote:
| This article reminded me of an excerpt from "Diary of a Bad
| Year," where J.M. Coetzee complains that the insistence on
| accuracy and objectivity in sports officiating represents an
| anti-social, inhuman attitude toward sport (think about why many
| people find the prospect of robot umpires in baseball
| distasteful). Coetzee suggests that this trend began in horse
| racing because bettors had money riding on the outcome, and that
| demanded accuracy.
|
| It's tempting to think that the "refinement culture" that Skallas
| is talking about, which encompasses everything from hyper-
| optimized athletic training, to corporate mascots rebranded for
| sex appeal, is similarly motivated by what is, at base, just
| capitalism.
| michaelterryio wrote:
| Most people, including me, do not think bad officiating is
| randomly distributed, so human officiating is inherently
| unjust.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I am a professional cartoonist and it is my professional opinion
| that the older picture of Chuck E Cheese at the end of the
| article is a steaming pile of nasty airbrushed mess. Not
| appealing. Over-rendered.
| watwut wrote:
| I generally found article meh, but old Chuck is better then new
| Chuck. And I dont even know who Chuck is, just that head is
| overly large in new one and it looks worst.
| zumu wrote:
| A nit on the basketball portion of the article:
|
| > Now the game has shifted to 3-point shooters and players who
| drive to the basket for close shots. How did this happen? Almost
| every team now has an NBA analytics department in the front
| office.
|
| This is minimizing the effect of the rules changes in the NBA
| that have occurred over the past 20 years to restrict defensive
| players and protect shooters. The basketball of the 2020's is a
| different game from the basketball of 90's.
|
| For consideration:
|
| Rules Changes:
| https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bRnr3x...
|
| Analysis: https://sidelinesources.com/the-defensive-rule-change-
| that-s...
| gumby wrote:
| Great essay. I've been thinking of this as a rise in
| "professionalizing" everything (I have neighbors who hire people
| to string up Christmas lights and decorate their tree) but this
| essay gets to the heart of it.
|
| It's a movement to a monoculture which, in every context,
| increases risk of failure. Plus it's boring.
|
| Edit: part two of the essay expresses this risk well: "...
| systems cannot really optimize; optimization leads to nonlinear
| increase in hidden risks which invariably blows up the
| apparatus."
| Ishmaeli wrote:
| It reminds me of all the new ways Wall Street has found to
| squeeze every last dime out of American life.
|
| Such as: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-
| happens-w...
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