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Comment by barry-cotter | Hacker News Reader

> I wish more sports would embrace technology the way F1 does.

If F1 embraced technology they wouldn’t have cars they’d have airplanes that as a design constraints must always remain in contact with the ground. Technology is a huge factor in F1 but they’re perfectly happy to ban new technologies and materials to maintain the spectacle.

> Waiting for people with random mutations, or ready to put huge amount of time for training, or crazy enough to take illegal and harmful drugs, in pursuit of hundredth of a second is not very interesting and not very useful.

The audiences for sports worldwide show that you’re in the minority.

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I would argue that the most salient point is that without technological spinoffs, sport is not very useful in the long term. If we create the conditions to encourage technology transfers to society, humanity benefits in the long run from a short term spectacle.

> The audiences for sports worldwide show that you’re in the minority.

The audience shows that there's room for sports, which, you know, nobody disagrees with. There's not really an established alternative.

I myself would love to see sports separated into "pure" and "enhanced" sports. The former is pretty much what we have today, while the latter would be modified with as little regulation as possible. If it's a car race, something like "don't intentionally hurt other participants" and "your car should touch the floor" would certainly boost creativity.

>> I myself would love to see sports separated into "pure" and "enhanced" sports. The former is pretty much what we have today, while the latter would be modified with as little regulation as possible.

We already tried that. Group B, for example.

>> If it's a car race, something like "don't intentionally hurt other participants" and "your car should touch the floor" would certainly boost creativity.

What it boosted was the risk taking by the drivers, also it motivated to put gas tanks right underneath the passengers so when they ended up in accident they most surely were dead.

You would still need rules meant for spectator safety. And then a degree of driver safety. And then the rules meant to control costs. And and and. The number of rules meant to slow the cars down is relatively small.

Remember too that racing rules are not the product of some nanny state government trying to keep everyone safe. They come from associations made up of the people and organizations participating in the sport. They come from racers to regulate racers.

>There's not really an established alternative.

There is: it's called war. Sports is war without (for the most part) death.

I do know that my dislike of professional sports is in minority even on hn, that's why i wish there was a way to channel part of the money that goes into sports, to the technology instead.

Some rules are of course always needed, as you do not want someone on car to come into running competition, but currently the rules are unnecessarily strict even in F1.

At least we are not a minority of one, then.

Except that 'dislike' is probably too neutral a description of my views on the phenomenon.

Count me in this rarified group as well. Never did get the point of 'sportsball' myself.

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