And I can have sympathy for an argument that using tragedy for trivial lighthearted entertainment may be in poor taste.
But engaging in shared analysis of serious issues by way of contests, games, and even bets ? That’s not making light of serious subjects no matter how often the OP insists it is.
I see contests, games, and bets, as reasonable formats to share the bases of predictions about serious subjects. And analyses of what we believe will happen (as opposed to what one wants to happen) and why are not trivializing the events.
I think human events over time have shown that people can become desensitized to very bad things, and that is not good for society as a whole because “very bad” can become the norm if we allow it to do so. In that light, your concern is a valid one and should never be dismissed out of hand.
However, as I said in my original post in this thread, I think you are overreacting to the “gallows humor” displayed in some of the games or general comments posted at this site. Humor helps us deal with the harsher things in life, it doesn’t mean that we actually find the things themselves to be funny.
I think our OP also misses some very basic things -
Posters are spending energy trying to “game out” what happens next because they care about the results. The OP prefers to demonstrate their concern with lamentations alone; it is not the only way to be concerned. It may be a fairly weak way.
There are many functions of games and play across human and even evolutionary history. One has been to develop skills needed going forward. Such has been the case for lion cubs pouncing on each other to knight jousts to chess and the Chinese game of Go. Now I do not pretend that any of us here are of such importance that our skills matter much, but the improving skills of analysis by competing with others in contests and games, especially by losing to others who do it a bit better, serves us having discussions elsewhere in service of motivating action and change, to whatever degree each of us do that.
I’d rather have “my side” full of people skilled at analysis, aware of when their analyses have been wrong, having been humbled some, by way of having competitions, than full of those skilled at lamentations.
To me signaling how much one care by always staying serious matters little.
You can do all these thing. Indeed, people all over the place, including, here, do all these things without structuring the discussion as a form of gambling.
No one is saying anything of the sort. We are only stating that Gallows Humor is how many people deal with horrible occurrences.
It’s a coping mechanism, not an indictment of you.
And you can do it structured in the form of faux gambling and contests.
The advantage of doing in those forms is that provides the structure to see clearly when you are less skillful than you thought you were, to see exactly who was more skillful than you, and to perhaps learn a bit more by paying particular attention to the analyses of those so demonstrated to have bested you. It helps reduce the impact of some of our cognitive biases to see ourselves (and those who agree with us) as more skillful than we are.
The structure of gambling is not a necessary predicate to doing anything of those things. And in this case I am proposing that it adds a distasteful element to the exercise. Given that gambling is not an indispensable component, it does not dispose of the objection.
No one will be able to dissuade you of your “distasteful” sense. I accept that you find it distasteful. You will need to accept that few to none here share your sense of taste.
I will however disagree about the necessity of the structure to do those things. A competition, a contest (faux gambling with bragging rights as the purse) is in fact the simplest way to make it clear that your own skills were not so hot and that some number of others (and which others) did better than you …
Different people different styles but I suspect there is a bias on these boards to competitive bastardry … many of us here learn through competition best. If you don’t then do as you do, stay out of those threads.
I find it distasteful too but it does not bring about the outrage / disgust that @Acsenray feels. Perhaps if you can talk about your personal experiences with this sort of thing, I can maybe relate better ?
As I said earlier, I stay out of them too, because they don’t interest me. I’m not offended by them though. That’s what I am having trouble understanding.
What they’re doing is trying to predict an outcome and then getting ranked based on who got the most predictions correct. That ranking is the only thing that makes it seem like a game.
Humans have been trying to predict the future ever since they started telling each other stories. I don’t see anything wrong with having a bit of fun with it when nothing you do or could do would have an effect on the outcome.
ETA: And considering that one of the things you think we shouldn’t “gamble” on is the Death Pool, calling them grave matters is a lovely, lovely pun.
The format provides a common framework for all predictors to be measured by the same yardstick. It’s a way to quantify the skill of the participants using an apples to apples comparison.
That is, in fact, absolutely necessary for what I am trying to accomplish with that thread and similar past threads.
