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competition

Opportunity Hoarding III: Positive, Neutral & Negative Competition

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Competition, by its very nature, yields winners and non-winners. For individuals and teams (individuals acting collectively) the results of a competition can be positive, neutral or negative for them. For example, a parent who leaks information about rival children to college admissions officers might get a positive outcome (her child is admitted over the competition) and the competing children might get a negative outcome (they are not admitted). While assessing from the perspective of an individual or team is one way to approach assessing the consequences of competition, it is also worth assessing competitions in terms of their consequences for all involved. This is especially important when the competition is occurring within a society and is under the control of that society. The competition for educational opportunities in the United States is an excellent example of this.

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When assessing the consequences of competitions for all involved, the results can be positive, neutral or negative. This is a spectrum rather than an absolute division and, of course, individual experiences can vary.

 A positive competition yields positive value (which must be defined) for all those involved (which must also be defined). In an ideal positive competition, everyone engaged in the competition is better off by competing than they would be without the competition. This would include being better off than if the distribution of benefits was done equally without competition.

Friendly sports and games provide a paradigm example of positive competition. For example, while there will be but winner of a game of Risk, everyone playing it can have fun and thus gain from the competition. As another example, a 5K race will have winners and non-winners, but everyone can have an enjoyable run and be better for the competition. As a final example, some claim that an Adam Smith style economy can be a positive competition: while some business will succeed and others fail, we will all be winners because of better goods/services at lower costs.

A neutral competition has winners who gain from the competition and non-winners who gain nothing but suffer no harm from losing. While not everyone is better off from the competition, no one is worse off for competing. One example would be the sort of random drawing for prizes that occurs after races and other events. While some will win and others will not, not winning just means not getting a prize. It does not result in any harm.

A negative competition has winners who gain from the competition and non-winners who suffer harm or detrimental effect from their loss. In extreme cases, there might just be degrees of harm and winning only means being harmed less. For example, a liability lawsuit can be a negative competition in which the winner gains and the loser suffers a detrimental effect—such as being forced to pay a settlement.

In many cases a society can control whether the competition between its citizens will be positive, neutral or negative. It should never be forgotten that the nature of such competitions is a matter of decision. Deciding how these competitions will operate is a matter of values (ethical, economic, political, etc.). For example, a society can decide to make the competition for educational resources a positive competition: everyone gains, some are better off, but no one is harmed. A society could also make it a negative competition: the winners do very well indeed, the losers end up at terrible disadvantage and suffer because of it. This segues nicely into the overall theme of opportunity hoarding.

While a society will always have only a finite number of opportunities for children and there will be competition for them, the nature of these competitions can obviously be shaped by the collective choices of that society. This includes deciding whether each competition will be positive, neutral or negative. In general, making competitions positive will cost more resources, while neutral and negative competitions will incur less resource cost. To illustrate, making the competition for educational opportunities more positive would cost more than leaving it negative. As a specific example, the current model for K-12 public education is a negative competition: parents who can afford to live in wealthy neighborhoods give their children the advantage of better schools, while the children of the less wealthy often end up in poorly funded schools that hurt their opportunities in life. They often end up locked into poverty and all the harms that entails. Shifting this to a positive competition in which every child gets at least an adequate education would require expending more resources on the poorer schools, thus incurring greater cost. This would also entail that the better off would have less advantage over the poor in terms of education—they would still retain the advantage of better schools, but the gap would be smaller and thus the competition they face in other aspects of life could increase. This is one obvious reason for opportunity hoarding: the less capable the competition, the easier is victory.

This example could, of course, be challenged. One could argue that the education system in the United States is already a positive competition: even the poorest Americans are supposed to get free K-12 education and even the worst public education is better than nothing. While this does have some appeal, the same sort of reasoning would seem to lead to obviously absurd consequences. For example, imagine the competition between a person intent on date rape and their intended victim. It could be argued that the competition is positive: the victim could get a free dinner and drinks, although they are raped. While they did get some “benefit”, the harm is far greater—they would have been vastly better off without that “competition.” I do not deny there can be grounds for dispute over whether to cast a competition as positive or negative—there obviously can be. There is clearly a challenge in sorting out the classifications and there is also the matter of degree to consider.

As such, if someone wants to characterize the current education system as a positive competition, they can do so—as noted above, the students in the worst school in America do get more than nothing. In this case, one would need to recast the discussion in terms of degrees of positiveness in the competition—how the winners and losers fare relative to each other.

While each competition for opportunity would need to be assessed morally, I would suggest a general guiding principle. When our society is shaping the competition between our children for opportunities, the morally right thing to do is to make them at least neutral and there should be every effort to make them positive. After all, members of a society should strive to avoid harming each other and this is especially true when it comes to the children. We are, one would hope, friends and not enemies.

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Knowing I am Not the Best (Extended Remix)

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Long ago, when I was a young boy, I was afflicted with the dread three Ss. That is, I was Small, Smart and (worst of all) Sensitive. As a good father, my dad endeavored to see to it that I developed the proper virtues of a young man. Fortunately, his efforts were ultimately successful although the path was, I am sure, not quite what he expected. Mainly because the path was mostly track, road and trail rather than field, court and gridiron.

As part of this process, I was sent to basketball camp to develop my skills in this reputable game. I was a terrible player with no real skill and I had no real interest in the sport. I much preferred reading over shooting hoops. However, I went to the camp and tried to do the best I could within the limits of my abilities.

During one drill, the coach yelled out for the best player to run to the center of the court. Immediately all the other boys rushed to the center of the court. Being honest in my assessment of my abilities I did not move. While I might not have been the worst player present, I was clearly not the best. I was not even within free throw distance of the best. For some reason, the coach made all the boys do pushups. He also made me do pushups, albeit double the number done by the other boys.

I thought this was very odd since this sort of thing seemed to encourage self-deception and that seemed, even to the young me, wrong. I recall quite well getting considerable abuse for my actions, which made me think even more about the matter. I did know better than to discuss this with anyone at the time, but I have thought about it over the years.

In recent years, I have run into something similar. I am always asked before I go to race if I will win. I always give an honest answer, which is usually “no.” This always results in an expression of dismay. While I have won races, I am now 46 years old and folks with far fewer years and miles show up to take their rightful place ahead of me, earning this because they are better than I am. My pride and arrogance, of course, compel me to say that when I was the age of many of my competitors, I was faster than they are now. But, as the saying goes, that was then and this is now. Barring a TARDIS picking up my twenty-something self to go to the races of now (to save the galaxy, of course—racing is very important) I am forced to content myself with a folly of age: looking back on how good I was and comparing the younger me with my current competition.

One the one hand, I do get the point of self-deception in regards to one’s abilities. After all, it could be argued, that a person thinking incorrectly that he is the best would help him do better. That is, thinking he is the best will push him in the direction of being the best. I do, in fact, know people who are like this and they often push very hard in competition because they believe they are better than they actually are and are thus driven to contend against people who are, in fact, better than them. On the downside, when such people are defeated by those who are better, they sometimes grow angry and concoct excuses for their defeat to maintain the illusion of their superiority.

On the other hand, such self-deception could be problematic. After all, a person who wrongly thinks he is the best and operates on this assumption will not be acting rationally. There are, in fact, two well-known cognitive biases that involve a person thinking he is better than he is.

One is known as the “overconfidence effect.” This bias causes a person to believe that she has done better than she has in fact done. As a professor, I commonly see this bias when students get their grades. For example, I have lost track of the times a student has said “my paper felt like an A” when it was a D (or worse) or has said “I think I did great on the test” when it turns out that they did not do so great.

A closely related bias is the “better-than-average Illusion.” A person falls victim to this when she overestimates her abilities relative to others, usually those she is engaged in competition with. Since people often think very highly of themselves, people commonly fall into this trap.

While confidence can be a good thing (and thinking that one is going to do poorly is a way of contributing to making that a reality), this bias obviously has negative consequences. One rather serious problem is that it can lead people to actually do worse. After all, a person who overestimates her performance or abilities might not try as hard as she should—after all, she will think she is already doing much better than she is, thus overestimating her performance and coming to a false conclusion about, for example, her grade. This is most likely to occur when the person does not have immediate feedback, such as on a test or paper.

It can also have the impact of causing a person to “burn out” by trying to hard it based on a false assessment of his abilities. For example, a common sight at road races is inexperienced runners sprinting out ahead of the experienced (and better runners) only to quickly discover that they are not as a capable as they had believed. It can even happen to people who should know better. For example, some years ago I went to the USA 15K championship race as part of a team. Our supposed best runner was bragging about running with the Kenyans. Unfortunately, he got passed by some female runners (as did I—the race attracts top talent) and this apparently broke him to the point where he gave up. I knew my capabilities and was honest about them, so when the fast ladies surged past me I just stuck to my plan. I knew what I could do and what I could not do—and I knew I had a lot of race left and no reason to burn myself out due to a false belief in my abilities. Fortunately, the rest of the team delivered solid races and we took an honorable third place. My experience has been that I do better when I have an accurate assessment of my abilities relative to my competition, most especially in running. Naturally, I do my best—but to do this, I must have a reasonable gauge of what this is to avoid being overconfident and to resist being defeated by my own foolish and unfounded pride.

It might be objected that my rational assessment of my abilities robs me of the critical passion that one must have to be a true competitor. This is, however, not the case. As my friends will attest, while I am gracious in defeat I also hate to lose. In fact, honesty compels me to say that I hate losing slightly more than I love winning. And I really love to win. As such, when I get to the starting line, start presenting a philosophical paper to people looking to score philosophical pissing points, or join a competitive video game I am there to win and to make others lose. But, victory often rests on knowing what I and my competitors can and cannot do. I gain no advantage by deluding myself into thinking I am better than I am or they are worse than they are. True, I am not free of self-deception. But I do not willfully add to it.

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Hitchens on Sports

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BEIJING - AUGUST 20: Wilfred Kipkemboi Bungei...
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While I am a professional philosopher, I am also an amateur athlete and, as such, found Hitchens’ recent article on sports to be rather…interesting.

Hitchens does make some reasonable and valid criticisms of international sports. To be specific, he does point out that international sporting events have led to serious conflicts and some rather reprehensible behavior. However, he does not stop there. He moves on to attack sportsmanship itself by pointing out bad behavior on the part of athletes and fans. He also attacks the overuse of sports metaphors in politics, complains about the coverage afforded sports, and takes the usual shots at the overemphasis of sports in major universities.

His criticism of sports does have some merit. After all, the incidents and behavior he points to are quite real. Like him, I find the excessive coverage of sports a bit tedious and I also have been critical of how sports is often handled at the university level. However, Hitchens sweeping attack has a rather serious flaw, namely that he is engaging in a relentless straw man attack.

His specific form of a straw man is one that I point out to my students in my critical thinking class: one way to make a straw man of something is to focus entirely on the negative aspects of the target, while conveniently ignoring or underplaying the positive aspects.  To fairly assess something, such as sports, it is important to consider the positive aspects as well. After all, focusing merely on the negatives will produce a rather distorted assessment  (as would focusing only on the positive). Naturally enough, such a balanced assessment can lead to the conclusion that something is rather negative. But, at least such a conclusion would be properly justified.

This tactic is standard for Hitchens and one he routinely employs against religion.  Perhaps he honestly sees the world this way and is psychologically incapable of duly presenting a fair assessment. Perhaps he merely uses this tool because it works as a persuasive device (while failing as a logical method). However, his motivations are (obviously enough) irrelevant to assessing his case.

To begin with my reply, I am obligated to say once more that I am an athlete so as to allow people to be aware of this as a possible biasing factor in my views. I competed in high shool and college and still compete today. Of course, the merit of my case has no connection to my status as an athlete-to think otherwise would be to fall victim to an ad hominem fallacy.

My main contention against his case is, as noted above, that he seems to simply ignore any positive evidence in favor of sports. While my view of sports is based on my own experiences, these still count as evidence for the positive aspects of sports.

First, my own experience as an athlete has made me a better person. My coaches always emphasized fairness, good sportsmanship and character and they took all this very seriously. Through their guidance and through the lessons of competition I learned the importance of competing fairly, of maintaining integrity and showing respect to my fellow athletes.  I can honestly say that sports helped shape my moral character and much of what is best about me has come through sports.  I am not claiming to be a saint or exceptionally good. But, I do know that my experience in sports has, as Aristotle would say, has developed my virtues.

Second, my observations of my fellow athletes has shown that most of them have also benefited from sports. With some notable exceptions, the people I have competed with and against have shown good character. To see this for yourself, go to a local road race or even a large race and observe how people behave. To use just a few examples, runners will share water with their competitors, tell people they are racing against the right way to go, and even stop to help an injured competitor.  People also volunteer to work at such races, often getting up very early and sometimes enduring rather tough conditions. This is hardly a sign of bad character or poor behavior. Yes, there are some people who are jerks (I’ve taken a few needless elbows to the chest, for example). But, what I have observed has generally been rather positive in character. Lest I be accused of presenting a small sample or a biased one, I have competed in hundreds of races ranging from the Beach to Beacon 10K to the Columbus Marathon to high school meets to college meets and so on. As such, I have a fairly broad sample to work with.

Of course, I can still  be accused of presenting a biased sample. After all, my experience has been primarily with runners and often with runners I know. Perhaps running is different from other sports in significant ways. Also, there is the obvious concern about extending my experiences from this one sport to other sports. However, even if running is unusual it does serve as counterexample against Hitchens’ attacks on sports. Also, Hitchens can also be accused of using a biased sample: he focuses only on the negative while ignoring the positive.

To finish up, I do agree that Hitchens makes some points well worth considering. Sports can lead to rather bad behavior and serious problems. However, this is not a quality that seems to be inherent to sports. Rather, it is a problem with how people react to sports and how people behave. The fact that some athletes act badly and that some fans are true fanatics who engage in violence over sports merely serves to show their failings rather than the failings of sports. As noted above, my experiences with running have been very positive and shows that sports can be something very positive. Like everything else in life, sports is largely what we make of it. Those who bring vice to sports will find it there. Those who bring virtue will find that.

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Gender Mystery & Sports

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Testosterone
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Since I am a runner (well, returning to running as my tendon heals), I pay some attention to news about the sport. One thing I like about the coverage is that it tends to involve less controversy and bad news than other sports. Of course, running is not free of such controversy as a recent incident attests.

Semenya, a South African runner, is currently the world’s champion in the women’s 800 meter race. The controversy is that it has apparently been claimed that she is not a woman. The basis of this is that her testosterone levels were tested at three times the normal level. She has also been under observation since her racing ability has made incredible advances in a relatively short time. Since natural improvements are generally gradual in nature, this raised suspicions.

One reply that has been given to the charge that “she is actually a he” is that Semenya certainly seems to be a female.

This sports controversy also raises a controversy over the nature of gender. Presumably Semenya appears to be a female (it has been implied that sort of check has been done). However, there are cases in which a person looks like a female yet is genetically male. This is complete androgen insensitivity syndrome and is more common than one might expect. Such people have higher testosterone levels than “normal” women because they have testes (albeit not descended). I must emphasize that I am not making any claims about Semenya, I am merely bringing this up for the sake of the discussion.

Since human societies are generally built around an obsession about gender identity and divisions, this syndrome does create some difficulties. If the syndrome is discovered when the child is young, there is the option of assigning a gender through the use of medical means (including surgery). In some cases, the procedure is delayed until the child can make his/her own decision.

Sports are, of course, not free from the gender obsession. Of course,  the concern over gender can be seen as quite reasonable. One interesting thing about gender sorting is that it is presumably justified on the basis of fairness. As noted above, men tend to have an advantage over women in physical competition. For example, the best male runner will be much faster than the best female runner. Given this fact, having men and women compete against each other in such events would be unfair, because the men would tend to win because of their natural advantages. This seems to be morally on par with divisions based on age (like age groups in road races) and weight (like in boxing). However, if someone looks like a women yet has male genes (and the higher testosterone) then that person might be seen as having an unfair advantage over “normal” women. Of course, such a person might be at a disadvantage relative to “normal” male athletes.

One way to deal with this sort of concern would be to determine the degree to which a person with this syndrome has an advantage over “normal” woman in regards to athletic competition. If such an advantage exists and places the person into the male range, then it would seem to be unfair to allow the person to compete against “normal” women. Of course, if people are to be tested to determine how they fall on the competitive spectrum, then fairness would seem to require that all athletes be tested and grouped based on their capabilities rather than on gender. Of course, practical concerns (costs, for example) would make this sort of testing and sorting very unlikely. As such, the sorting of folks by gender is likely to remain the standard in sports.  Of course, this approach is the cause of the difficulty in the matter at hand.

Some sports, like running, could sort people based on performance rather than gender. While this would tend to result in men being in the top slots, it would make for some interesting competition and would provide more in the way of gender equality. It would also be fair since people would be competing against those of comparable abilities.

Naturally, it could be argued that women would be being treated unfairly in such competition-after all, while they would compete in their performance grades, they would almost certainly not be winning the top places overall. This would create a nifty bit of irony: this most equal sort of competition would also seem to be rather “unfair” to women because they would have to compete against men.

Getting back to the original story that started the discussion, it should be noted that high testosterone levels can occur naturally in “normal” women. This would not be “cheating” anymore than a person who is born with superior lung capacity would be cheating.

It should also be noted that athletes can test for higher levels of testosterone because they have been using synthetic testosterone as a steroid. In this case, the ethics of the situation would be quite clear.

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Will the Bailout Hurt Competition?

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One view that is typically touted by capitalists is that competition is good. This view was most famously presented by Adam Smith. His view, to oversimplify things a great deal, was that competition between individuals and businesses would result in better and cheaper products. This would be good for everyone. Obviously, the monopolies of the robber baron era showed that unregulated competition turns out to have rather negative effects. However, too much limitation of competition can also have very negative effects as well.

While I am not an economist (which is looking like a better thing each day), one concern I have about the bailout is that it might create some unforseen harms.

One harm worth considering is that bailing out failing companies serves to limit the rise of competing companies. For example, with AIG failing (yet still trying to pay out huge executive bonuses) there would seem to be new openings where AIG had been doing business. This would seem to open the door for new companies (or older companies that are still functional) to move in and take AIG’s business. Since AIG is failing, this would seem to be a good thing-after all, having successful companies filling these allegedly essential niches in the economy would help stabilize the economy. Further, these companies would not be using taxpayer money to get the job done.

While we need companies in key niches to be successful, we should consider whether propping up failing companies is better than allowing other companies to arise or healthier companies to move in.

In the past, capitalist types loved to (mis)use Darwin’s theory to justify their misdeeds. Well, the eco-system metaphor can be trotted out once again. AIG and the other dying companies are like failing species that occupy key niches. We can try to keep them alive; but we must be aware that doing so is very expensive and serves to keep others from moving into those niches.

Masters

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Most sports, such as running, divide the competitive field by age. This means that if you are, for example, competing in a road race, then you could place in your age group even if you did not place overall. This approach is based on the fact that a person’s abilities vary with age. Most age groups are just designated by number ranges (15-19, for example) some of them get actual names.

If you are a competitive athlete, when you turn 40 you get classified as a  master (at least in many sports). This is, on the whole, much nicer than being called “old.” A special name is granted for this age because, presumably, when a person hits forty their age is significantly impacting his/her performance. Some events add the Grand Master level and there are rumors of Supreme Grand Masters. Some speak of a rare category known as “damn, you’re not dead yet?” But these rumors have not been confirmed.

In the past, it was generally accepted that hitting 40 was the end of a person’s glory days in most sports. In some sports (such as gymnastics), the end is much earlier. However, there is some evidence that this is changing.

While I do not have the time or desire to do a proper research project, I have noticed that runners 40 and over have been doing quite well in running events.  At this moment, the most famous masters division athlete in the world is Dara Torres. As the media has been pointing out, she is competing with women (girls in some cases) twenty or more years younger. Even her swimming goggles are older than many of the women she is swimming against. She recently won a silver medal, thus setting a new record in terms of age.

Given that people are supposed to get slower and weaker with age, people might be wondering why she is doing so well in particular and why masters athletes are making good showings these days.

In Ms. Torres’ case, she has excellent physiology and body type.  She has kept up with her training and this serves to diminish the draining power of time. Further, she has professional trainers and support people. Also, she has that unquantifiable factor that athletes recognize: the will.

In terms of the general matter, one factor that contributes to the current good showings by older athletes is that they often have been in their sports a long time and have maintained themselves. Staying fit has numerous physiological benefits and one of these is that an active body does not age the same way as an inactive body. From a physiological standpoint, an active body is biologically younger than a non-active one. Hence, an athlete who stays active can stay competitive for quite some time because her/his body is effectively younger than the calendar age.

Another factor is that sports medicine in particular and health sciences in general have made advances. As such, people are better maintained and thus are able to stay in the sport longer (and be in better shape while doing so).

A third factor is that people seem to have different attitudes about sports now. When I was a kid, it was rare to see “older people” being really active. Kids did sports in high school and perhaps college. But, after that, people seemed to settle down to less active live styles. These days, people seem to be more inclined to stay active and remain competitive. This is especially true in running. There are people 70 and above who still race and people in their 50s are still able to compete effectively with many of the young folks. In my own case, I’m not as fast as I was twenty or even ten years ago (I’m 42). But I still place well in races and especially enjoy beating the twenty somethings who weren’t even born when I started running track.

I think this is an excellent trend and I hope that Ms. Torres success will encourage people to remain (or become) active as they get older. Obviously, we all cannot take home an Olympic medal, but we can all be masters.

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