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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> I think professional sports are the closest we have to real-life dramas, tragedies, or even comedies, and they have profound life lessons.

I think anyone who thinks this is spending too much attention on professional sports and not enough on real life: because there is plenty of actual real-life drama, tragedy, and comedy; professional sports are not the "closest we have" to those things (though there is some of all three in professional sports.)

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I could have phrased it better, but my reference to dramas, tragedies, and comedies was specifically in reference to the theatrical tradition of them (hence not real-life).

Unlike those, sports are not scripted, they unfold in real time. Sure, other real-life situations have this, but sports are one of the few stages where millions or billions watch and share in the same experience.

I wouldn't say it's about being "closest" to real-world, but rather that it's close enough to be useful, but distant enough that the change of perspective helps us see things differently. It reminds me of the way sci-fi can be a device for talking about today's problems in a context that's sufficiently distant from our actual world that it can help people to see things they wouldn't have seen about the immediate real-world issue.

You don't like sports. We get it. Why do you care so much that others do?

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