winning

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 17 Jun 2023 08:29
Open in Logseq
    • The constant references to "winning" in Rationalism discourse really grate on my nerves. I get what work it is doing – it's suggesting that life is a kind of competitive game, in which there is some kind of scoring metric, and you are able to compare your score with others. The best, most rational ideas are those that produce the most winning.
    • However – life is not a competitive game; that's just a metaphor. It might be a really great and productive metaphor in certain ways. It highlights the competitive aspects of existence, which to be sure are extremely important and also somewhat repressed (in the sense that in some versions of polite society, one doesn't want to appear to be too competitive, to be trying to hard, because that loses points!).
    • But competition is not the only frame through which to view life, or the best one. It doesn't seem like much fun to me, people who are overly focused on winning tend to be bores or psychopaths. It's a particularly obnoxious form of gradgrindism.