I’m not a big fan of competition. I’m unsure if the issue is with competition itself or with how others go about competition.
This is not about economic competition. Maybe some of the stuff I’ll say can apply there, but my issue is more so with competition in general. Sports and video games are the two places where I know there is a lot of competition, but people compete in a lot of things. There are baking contests, art contests, music contests, architecture contests (though I think that was just The Fountainhead), and much more.
My issue with how people approach(?) competition is that they focus on being better than the other person (instead of wanting to get a good job) and, relatedly, fail to appreciate what they have accomplished. Something that comes to mind is any kind of sports media (I’m unfamiliar with sports themselves, I’m assuming here that media like movies and anime are accurate in this respect I’m discussing) where you follow a team and see everything they do to win.
You follow this team, see all the struggles they go through, and eventually see them win. That’s great. However, what about the other teams? Sometimes you see their perspective. Their crushed, devastated. They say things to make themselves feel better, but at the end of the day they didn’t win. My issue is related to how caught up they can get in the loss.
People focus too much on winning. Winning is how they know their good. Lots of amazing athletes probably don’t appreciate their career because they never won. The best is appreciated, everyone else is kind of seen as water. Maybe that’s reasonable from an outside perspective, but for the people involved I think it’s bad. People should be able to appreciate their accomplishments outside of comparisons to others.
Now that I read this, I’m not sure if Im a big fan of competition either. I practice it sometimes, but the times I made it a habit, it became too stressful to maintain.
After briefly reading @Eternity’s post, I think I don’t know a lot about competition. I think I’ll make mistakes understanding some points when responding. Also, I don’t know if I fully agree with my own position from the other thread:
Also, I don’t know what rationality methods to use and how to make them helpful. Like, when should I use a grammar tree? Do I want to use a grammar tree to analyze something? A part of me thinks I’ll only get a small amount of info to use for the debate.
I think I still want to respond to a few parts and maybe express a disagreement. Maybe I can show an error of mine or say something that helps with the topic.
My question would be what’s the difference between competition itself vs. its approach? Maybe knowing what competition is helps with knowing if it’s bad or not. Maybe people are making mistakes when practicing competition. Also, how do social dynamics work in competition? Is that a big factor why the approach is bad? Idk too much about social dynamics but I thought maybe it’s relevant.
Is there a difference between competition in general vs. economic competition? Is there a reason it has the word “competition” in it? Also, why exclude economic competition and not competition in baking contests, art contests and music contests?
I thought economic competition was the same as competition in like a video game. I thought that cuz there’s a competition in both somewhere. Like, there are people who win and lose. I think I’m using the word competition intuitively here.
Edit: a part of me doesnt want to reply to everything cuz I think I might clog up the thread. Like, isn’t it better to talk about a few things at a time in a debate?
Eternity would go first and put his thesis/claim into a short statement, ideally one sentence, to be the root node. He can explain more on the forum but the tree needs a short version. Then you would respond with one or more disagreements/criticisms, including short versions for the tree. Then he could respond to each of your disagreements, and you could respond again, etc. You can also ask questions and discuss outside of the tree.
You have a potential disagreement after he commented on competition and you thought you disagreed. But until he writes a specific, clear claim it’s hard for you to finalize deciding if you disagree or not.
You could also write your own claim that he could disagree with (or not).
It depends. A few at a time is often reasonable. But surprises can be a problem, so sometimes it can be good to share more disagreements now, even if you set them aside for later discussion. Sometimes in discussions people do one disagreement at a time, and the other guy thinks if he can answer this thing then he’ll persuade you, but when he answers it then a second disagreement is raised, and when he answers that then a third one, and so on, with no end in sight. If the disagreements are being made up as you go along, it can be a sign of bias, whereas if you knew at the start “these are my 5 concerns; answer all 5 and i’ll concede” then people would be less concerned about bias than if you brought them up one by one after losing the previous point.
That sounds nice to do cuz we’re literally debating.
I think we could use the debate tree website or make one using a tree making app.
I think since Eternity requested a debate and he has a point about competition he could start first. When he has his thesis he could start the debate tree by putting it in a short statement. Is that like a summarized version of his thesis? I think I forgot what a thesis/claim was. A claim is like a sentence long I think. It could have supporting points. You could probably summarize that into a short statement?
Ok, I see the short statement is ideally one sentence. And that’s the root node of the debate tree. That doesnt sound too hard but the part that would get me is making a claim and turning that into a root node.
That makes sense. The detailed version could be on the forum. That’s what we’re gonna use to discuss. A while back I thought debate tress were as detailed. I think the reason why it needs to be short is that you can organize the debate. Like, it’s important to say what you gotta say for the debate, but the tree is important too.
I think on the tree this would look like a root node with a few children node. I don’t know if @Eternity 's gonna need a root node and some child nodes for his turn.
I could make a shortened version of my criticisms. That would go on the debate tree. The nodes would look like @Eternity’s root node. Idk how much the same tho. I think an example could probably be: “X is wrong cuz of reason y.”
The following is after I make a disagreement with @Eternity’s thesis:
The first sentence makes it seem like a cycle. Like, if we get the disagreement part down then we can keep going. I think tho that’s if we keep disagreeing with each other down the line of discussion. I don’t think him responding necessarily means we’re disagreeing. We could agree there and I think something else happens. It’d be good to view some debate trees and articles.
What does it mean when you could ask questions and discuss outside the tree? I think we could do that stuff but it just won’t go on the debate tree. I wonder what the questions are about cuz at first I thought they were tangential. Also, discussion seems different than debate. We could discuss but that wont go on the tree either.
Can you include the questions and discussions in the debate tree? I think im having a hard time reading the prepositional phrase “outside of the tree.” I thought prepositional phrases had one preposition? I think “outside” is modifying “and” and “and” has “discuss” and “ask” under it.
I think it’d make sense to first ask questions or discuss and thatd go on the forum. But idk if it’ll be included in the tree too. I know each response includes a version on the forum and a short version on the tree. I just dont know if questions and discussion counts as a response too. A response sounds more direct than question or discussion.
I think my potential disagreement was on the initial debate request reply. Is that when @Eternity commented on on competition? What about what he said on the first post of this thread? Is that a clear claim? Is it still a comment?
I didnt see that I haven’t finalize disagreeing or not. I didnt think about it in those terms. That makes it clearer. I don’t think I knew a lot what was going on.
That claim would have to be clear and specific too? I think it would help if it was. If it wasn’t then maybe @Eternity would find it hard to finalize deciding if he disagrees or not as well.
I think I could try making my own claim. Maybe it’ll help giving us another starting point for the debate. Idk how clear and specific I could make it.
Could not making the claim clear and specific stop us from having the debate? Like, it seems to make it hard for me if I disagree or not. I could still comment on the rest of his points. That could get the debate going? I know ET’s next reply says something along the lines that it can be good to bring up some more disagreements now. But is that more so for another reason?
I know Elliot said some stuff about the debate itself but I’m just going through the start real quick.
What do you mean by practice competition? Like if you’re playing a game like League of Legends and are just having fun, but not being “competitive”, you would make yourself more competitive?
In a larger context of a debate I don’t think a grammar tree itself provides much. I think the value is just clarification for you (I think that’s the value of grammar trees in general, right?). Though if there’s something you or I write that is very important and we cleared it up with a grammar tree that could be very valuable to the debate.
I think their kind of based on the same thing. I don’t know much about economics, but I think the basic idea behind economic competition is that you’ll have two similar businesses that compete with each other to lower prices. They don’t lower prices, or make a better product or whatever, because they “want” to or something. They’re doing it because they have a competitor and they need to stay in business. I do think the mentality is kinda bad here too, but I wanted to stay away from it because it may turn into a debate/discussion on economics which I know very little of. It wouldn’t be productive (as a debate, as a pure discussion topic it’s fine).
Yeah I think there similar in ways. There are "winners’ in an economy and losers (though losers in an economy can still get business).
I mean, it’s just us. It’s fine! I would say maybe for organization sakes it may be better to multiple posts responding to points, instead of having one big post responding to everything (kind of like what I’m doing).
Imma try to make some shortened versions for the debate tree here:
I think I can say:
I don’t have a favorable opinion of competition cuz of my personal experience with it.
That sounds kinda vague no? Like, I don’t mention why exaclty the opinion is not favorable.
Can I say, “I don’t know if competition is good cuz when I partake in it I don’t enjoy it.”? Maybe I could say that it’s hard for me to make it a habit.
When I think about practicing competition, I think playing to win. When I played the competitive mode in the game Marvel Rivals to rank up, that’s practicing competition. Is practicing the right word?
A part of me thought whenever you play a game where you could win or lose, you’re being competitive. I didn’t think about the distinction of playing to have fun vs. playing to win.
In the quote, above you’re saying you could play League of Legends and just have fun. You’re not being competitive in that scenario. When you just have fun are you not being competitive? Would that mean that you don’t care if you win or lose? That would make sense cuz sometimes I play a casual mode of a pvp game and I don’t care a whole lot about winning or losing. Like, if it happens it happens. Im not investing a lot of hours to get at the top.
I don’t think I get the question. Is it asking that even if you’re not playing to win does it still count as being competitive? I don’t think it does. You’re just playing to have fun.
I didn’t think about the larger context of the debate. I was thinking of using a grammar tree for the debate, but I was thinking for what? Like, it doesn’t sound as useful as a debate tree.
Usually I do use grammar trees to clarify stuff for me. Clarifying stuff for yourself does sound like what’s valuable about grammar trees in general. Maybe, if the debate was about what an author meant in a novel then grammar trees would be good there to use.
Also, I could see how clearing up something important one of us wrote could be very useful. What if there’s a grammar or sentence issue holding us back? A grammar tree could help.
I wanna make a shortened version of my reply for the debate tree:
Can i say, “Don’t separate economic competition from general competition because people compete to win or lose there too.”?
I’m not sure about economic competition in my quote above, but I thought I turn it into a negative statement anyways. Also, I think my quote above is saying there’s similarities between competition in video games and the economy. I might also be saying don’t separate the two cuz that similarity is what the thesis is referring to. Here’s @Eternity’s reply to the quote:
The “winners” seem different than the winners in like a video game competition. It also seems that the losers in economic competition are winners too. They can still get business and make money. What’s the difference between economic competition and competition in like a sport or video game?
Ahh, that makes sense. Maybe practicing is the right word? Idk. I think when you say practice competition my mind goes to practicing having a competitive mindset or something. Otherwise practicing competition would just be practicing the thing you’re competing in (which seems to be more about practicing the thing and less “practicing” competition).
I mean technically you are. I think it’s more of a mindset thing. Some people can enter a competition and only think about the competing aspect and winning or losing. Others can enter a competition and just focus on doing well and enjoying it.