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Comment by dpark | Hacker News Reader

>not because sports fans are stupid, but because intelligent people are capable of enjoying more than just sports

So it's not that sports fans are stupid. It's just that non-stupid people aren't so interested in sports. Got it.

There has been and still is something of a shunning of sports among the "intelligentsia". There have been studies about it, and how people who wish to be perceived as smart tend to avoid the things viewed as common. That still continues but I think it's reducing in frequency at least with respect to sports.

I work with a lot of really smart people. A big chunk of them are invested in sports and discuss games at work, wear jerseys on Friday, etc.

Also, if the average person is really interested in sports, then generally rising IQ wouldn't change the number of people interested in sports. The number of average people is still the same when everyone's IQ rises.

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> It's just that non-stupid people aren't so interested in sports. Got it.

No, it's that they have other things they are interested in. Rather than spending 50% of their time on sports, they might spend 10% of their time on sports and 40% on something else. That's not a negative thing: it's just indicative of the fact that the brighter one is the broader one's horizons.

> There has been and still is something of a shunning of sports among the "intelligentsia".

No doubt because sports is something at which one can excel while not being particularly intelligent. Again, that's not a negative statement: it's just that physical and intellectual ability don't seem (to me) to be highly correlated.

> I work with a lot of really smart people. A big chunk of them are invested in sports and discuss games at work, wear jerseys on Friday, etc.

I was very careful not to say that intelligent people hate sports, because I too know many intelligent people who enjoy them. All I'm suggesting is that I suspect that as IQ rises people will spend less of their time on sports because they will spend more of their time on other pursuits.

> No, it's that they have other things they are interested in. Rather than spending 50% of their time on sports, they might spend 10% of their time on sports and 40% on something else. That's not a negative thing: it's just indicative of the fact that the brighter one is the broader one's horizons.

Has it occurred to you yet that your beliefs here might just be incorrect? You're clearly biased against sports and sports fans, and you're letting that affect your critical thinking.

Less intelligent people might spend 50% of their time on sports. They might also spend 0% of their time on sports. There are a million hobbies that people can have and relatively few of them have anything to do with intelligence. Smart people can (and do) watch sports, just as dumb people can (and do) hike, bike, fish, paint, cook, homebrew, and play D&D.

> it's just that physical and intellectual ability don't seem (to me) to be highly correlated.

That's true. There seems to be little correlation between the two. It's critical to realize that the two are not negatively correlated either, though.

> I was very careful not to say that intelligent people hate sports, because I too know many intelligent people who enjoy them. All I'm suggesting is that I suspect that as IQ rises people will spend less of their time on sports because they will spend more of their time on other pursuits.

I'm doubting that's really the case. Has interest in sports declined since the 1930s? Because measured IQ has certainly risen.

I can't watch live TV due to the ads, and sports is no exception. If you've seen the statistics on actual play time during your average football or baseball game, you know how large a majority of time is given to mindless banter and commercial breaks. My sports viewing recently has been limited to gifs of incredible athletic feats, which are the rare moments you watch the games for anyway.

There's so much quality content produced for or available on on-demand streaming these days, to the extent of it being called the golden age of television, that when I have 2-3 hrs I could devote in front of the TV, I'm not going to give it up to a long sequence of commercial breaks. I'll catch the highlights of the game afterwards or just check the score on my phone.

That being said, going to live sporting event with friends always makes for a good time.

NFL All Access is $100/year. It doesn't show live games streaming, but you get the full replay after the game AND the option of watching the 'condensed' version which cuts out all of the crap. I haven't paid for it yet, but I've seen the condensed games elsewhere.

Not being live will hurt that option somewhat, but since most sports I watch are time-shifted anyway (F1 races in the middle of the night, Football games whenever I can find time to watch, etc), it's not that big a deal.

Actually, right now, there's a free week trial and an $85 for the remainder of the year option. For the free week, you have to cancel or they bill you automagically. But I'm thinking of giving it a try (I don't have cable, and I'm a fan of an out-of-market Football team).

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