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"fwiw" is internet shorthand for "for what it's worth" and I think it captures the spirit of what we're doing here - let's call it, "earnest, good-faith conversation and criticism." Just trying to add a polite and humble tone to anything that goes on here.This was originally meant to be your ordinary blog, but is now more like a simple hub to post stuff friends and I have made, whatever it might be. Think of it like a little digital bulletin board you've stumbled on where a few friends are pinning their very amateur attempts at creating and producing stuff. There's writing, there's podcast episodes, music, maybe some guides on random stuff we're into down the line, and... whatever else! Frankly, it's just a fun little project. Hope you like what you see, and hope you might want to post something here too! Get to Recent Posts and the homepage with the button below, and you can use Contact in the top right to send us a message.

It would be hard to fault anyone for labeling the vitriol, stubbornness, and outright insanity that is American sports discourse as irrational. But, if you'll allow me, there's a case to be made that the debates we have about our favorite teams and athletes are actually often genuine philosophical pursuits (even if the debaters themselves don't realize it). I think the fact that we're even aware that there is a debate to be had points to our implicit understanding that there likely is a correct answer. Figuring out, say, who the NBA GOAT is might be difficult, but I think people know deep down... it's not impossible.<h3>The absolute basics of philosophy and how sports can have anything to do with it at all</h3>To be clear, when I say "philosophy" I am talking about the pursuit of truth. The stuff that Socrates, Kant, and the like were trying to sort out. What's good? What's real? Is there a God? That sort of stuff. The common thread here is the underlying assumption that statements we make are either true or false. Saying, for example, that you think God is real isn't an opinion - either God exists or God does not. It is a matter of truth, not a matter of opinion. Now, I'm not going to help sort that out here or any other place (that's for sure) but I just want to stress the fact that a lot of the things we call "opinions" are really just topics whose "true/false value" are really difficult to nail down. Of critical importance is the fact that "really difficult" does NOT mean impossible. Am I going to solve here any of the great philosophical quandaries that have plagued humanity for centuries if not longer? Of course not. I just want to make it clear that when we give our "opinion" on something, we are really staking a claim in reality and we need to admit that our claim might be wrong (as in, objectively wrong). And that's okay. That's how knowledge works. You articulate an idea, you measure it against reality and logic in every way you can in order to find out if it is true or not, and you accept the outcome. Finding out that it's false isn't a bad thing, it just means you now know that you need to stake your truth claim somewhere else. Is it possible that you may never find out if your statement is true or false? Of course. Again, I'm not here to be some objective assessor of truth. I'm just here to hopefully convince you that statements, sentiments, ideas, claims or whatever you want to call them are either true or false. And I think this applies to claims about sports and their athletes as well. "I prefer chocolate over vanilla." That's an opinion. It is either literally impossible to ascertain its true/false value or it is nonsensical to think that there is one. "LeBron James is the GOAT." That's a claim, it's either true or false, and that's the type of thing we're talking about here.It's possible this might be a semantic issue for some, and you might think of an "opinion" as simply any claim that hasn't had it's true/false value settled, and that's fine. But we know that it's common for "opinion" to be used in a way that means something more like "you can't be right or wrong about this" and that's what I'm hoping to get away from. So, for simplicity's sake, let's just use and see the word "claim" to signal something that is either true or false; a topic that might not be easy to figure out, but one that we know does have an objectively correct answer and we need to try our best to find it.Now, just because you and I are aware that our sports claims are matters of truth and not opinion doesn't actually make our claims any better or worse. But what it can do, and really what I hope to do, is shift our perspective into one that forces us to admit that we could be dead wrong about what we think. But I think most of us sports fans know this already. If I said something like "Hank Aaron was a terrible hitter" then you know reflexively that it's false. It's not an opinion that I am entitled to hold, it's not something we can agree to disagree on; we know that it's a false statement. Now that's an obvious one, but it points to something critical about the less obvious claims we make: the truth of the matter isn't changing, how difficult it is to assess the truth is changing. Will it sometimes be so difficult that we may never know with certainty? Yes, that's a risk we are always taking. But we can rest well knowing that one day, us silly humans might come up with new methods or technology that make this whole truth assessment process even easier, and we could settle the previously unsettleable. Given all that...u think lebron is the GOAT omg ur so dumb bruh like for real how could u even think that<h3>The most obvious example of truth seeking in sports</h3>I should note that my goal here isn't really to convince you that my claim for NBA GOAT is true. I mean... it is. But this is really more of an exercise to convince you that sports debates (and most debates for that matter) are really just philosophical exercises. Do I want Stephen A. Smith to be thought of in the same category as René Descartes? Honestly, kinda, yeah I do. Not in terms how we revere them, but in terms of how we receive and criticize them. Descartes thought that his thinking proved his existence. Smith thought that Donovan Mitchell was the best Jazz player ever. Both are simply claims that should be taken in and considered (one much more quickly than the other) before responding with your own claims. You might simply say "this is true, Descartes" or perhaps you say "Stephen A. Smith, you personify all the worst things about sports media and journalism and I wish that somehow a black hole would swallow all of ESPN without destroying the entire world but if the entire world has to go with it, then so be it. Also, false." Now I'm aware that Smith isn't out here earnestly trying to make claims about the truths of the sporting world and that he's just a hot take artist trying to generate clicks, but what's great is that if you operate as if all claims are simply true or false, you can hear the inane things people like him say, think to yourself "false, moving on" and then go about your day.I think the NBA GOAT debate is a genuinely great place to illustrate the sort of truth seeking that goes on in sports discourse and it's one that I'd like to use moving forward for a couple of reasons. One, I'm just a massive basketball nerd and I love having this conversation with people (most of the time - sometimes it makes me want to never attempt to have a conversation with anyone ever again until the end of time). Two, I think basketball is uniquely suited to these sorts of truth seeking debates. Basketball is both a high volume game that inherently generates a lot of possessions, actions, data, and opportunities to attempt objective truth seeking, and it is a game played with only five players on a team who are playing both offense and defense which allows a single player to generate an outsized impact on winning. Critically though, despite the weight one player can have and its high volume nature, it still leaves so much to ascertain in the nuanced and beautiful folds of the game. I find this incredibly compelling and I think it's what makes me love basketball so much and love talking about it even more. It's different from something like baseball, for example. Baseball is high volume and, within the pitcher-batter dynamic, allows us to see exactly how impactful a player is in nearly every action of the game, or at least the pitching-batting parts of the game. This is useful for giving objective truth-seeking assessments, but it's almost too useful because, unlike basketball, it doesn't leave as much to debate and argue over (notice I said "as much" - I am aware that not all matters of truth are totally settled in baseball, I just mean to point out that it's more settled than something like basketball). Basketball simultaneously generates tons of answers and tons of questions. Of course, it commonly generates the question: who's the greatest of all time?This leads us into more common ground between philosophy and sports: setting terms. If we want to figure out which basketball player is "greatest of all time" then we need to know exactly what we mean by "greatest." It seems like most of us have a pretty similar intuition here, but if we want to come to certainty about the truth of a matter, then we need to be certain what that matter even is. Philosophers do the same thing. They begin writing an argument on something trivial like the nature of reality and they have to make sure that the person examining their argument knows what they mean when they say those silly things like "reality" or "God" or "free will." The stakes are a tad lower in the sports world, but we still need to make sure we can agree on what we're arguing about before we even begin arguing. So, what do we actually mean when we say greatest of all time?This is a point of disagreement that I find nearly as interesting as the GOAT debate itself. We're running into a semantic issue and it's important we know what we're arguing about so we need to be annoyingly explicit to move forward. We know it's not as simple as "most successful" because if that were the case, we'd all just immediately know the GOAT is Bill Russell. More rings than anybody in NBA history and clearly the leader/best player for every one of those eleven championships? If GOAT means "most successful" well then there he is. But it seems clear that's not what we're after and even as someone who thinks that Bill Russell is criminally underrated and should be included in the GOAT debate more often, he's not where I or most people stake their claim for GOAT because we know we're not just after team success. We also aren't talking about off-court influence. There was a time where Michael Jordan was arguably the most famous person on the planet and the city of Chicago's NBA franchise was a worldwide institution in a way that no sports team since has emulated. But if you are arguing for MJ as the GOAT and you are leaning on his off the court influence, then people will start correctly rolling their eyes a bit because, clearly, we aren't trying to include public influence or popularity. There's nothing wrong with it, that's just a different debate. Lastly, let's make clear that having a "Mamba Mentality" doesn't actually make a basket worth more than two points. We aren't arguing over on-court or locker room aura or presence or whatever you want to call it. Perhaps those sorts of things tip the scales when trying to figure out your favorite players, which is totally fine, but if we are attempting to nail down some objective truth, then quibbling over something as ethereal and preferential as "mentality" is only going to derail us. If a player's mentality or approach actually does result in better play on the court, then it's already being considered and we don't need to give bonus points for something we can assume about all athletes: both physical and mental factors affect on court performance.Let's define "greatest" as: the basketball player whose on-court performance has the largest positive impact on a team's chances of winning. Again, I think this is close to what most people are talking about when they discuss the GOAT, but there's no such thing as being too careful when it comes to truth-seeking arguments. We are talking about the greatest of all time when it comes to playing basketball and nothing else. So with that important term set, we can tell your dad that his thoughts about how big a star MJ was simply don't matter in this conversation. Tell him that maybe later he can tell us about how they used to play real defense back in the day.<h3>Relativism rejected, argument selected, relevant terms are set... How could we possibly go wrong?</h3>There's a lot of ways, really. Too many for one blog boy to cover. So let's talk about some of the most common pitfalls when engaging in a truth-seeking argument. We're going to use some silly phrases and a little Latin here so to make things easy, I'm just going to put a super simple table below that gives each term and a simple definition of it. Then we'll tackle each one in the context of our GOAT debate. Before we do that, it's worth noting that these aren't some fancy-shmancy tricks of the philosophical trade - anyone can find a list of logical fallacies in about a thousand different places online. These are things we do all the time and being aware of them can help out with all attempts at reasoning, not just sports discourse. I'm focusing on ones that seem to appear very often in the sports discourse world, but just know there are A LOT of them out there, and this is the opposite of an exhaustive list.Ad hominem: ---to be continued---

it felt good to shoot a ball around. Haven’t done this in well over 10 years. I felt like Tom Shep playing against Nutso.

Sports discourse as philosophy

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Cowboy Bebop - No escaping it

(Note: written in 2022 when Nope released, posting here because I still find the topic an interesting one)So, is it scary or not?I don’t know. That’s what I want to write about. First of all, this isn’t a review of Nope. If you want to know, I liked it. I thought it was good, not great, but I find myself liking it more as I think more about it. Still, that’s not this piece's focus.&nbsp;It’s not hard to find filmmakers, writers, and other creatives talking about the difference between terror and horror. Summarily, terror is the dreadful feeling you experience waiting for it and horror is the slightly different feeling you get when you finally see it, whatever it is. Again, I liked Nope and I think most people would, but what I liked most about it is how much it made me think about this distinction between terror and horror.It’s interesting that we have an entire genre called horror when I think the thing most people are seeking is terror. I fall into this camp. I love scary movies. I love that some other person had a vision of some scenario or creature, and they made it into something that was able to manipulate my brain into feeling actual fear despite the fact that I’m sitting safely in a theater or my living room. I love the tension and anticipation because my brain and body hate it – my heart rate rises, the sinking feeling in my stomach grows, and then… release. The release comes in many different forms, but for most people, I wager, it’s the feeling leading up to the release that we crave. Nope didn’t do that for me. It did, however, scare me in a different way. It horrified me.&nbsp;Critical spoilers ahead.&nbsp;Obligatory comment on subjectivityI saw Nope with my wife. When I started talking about this whole terror versus horror thing, she said, “Oh yeah, because it’s definitely more terror than horror.” I (clearly) came away with the opposite conclusion. I really want to know how more people feel about this because I think it can reveal something about us. I’m not saying Nope can serve as some psychological assessment that can help you identify how you process and react to fear, but I’m not saying it can’t…As always, these things are subjective. Maybe you didn’t think Nope was scary at all. Maybe you thought the big reveal about the true nature of the flying saucer was a big letdown. Maybe you liked it all the way to that point and then it all deflated after that (Get it? Deflated? Because of the alien and the balloon at the end… Never mind). Maybe you’re like me, and Nope wasn’t really doing it for you until the reveal. These are all fine. Let me explain where I'm coming from though.Can an idea be scary?Ninety percent of my enjoyment of Nope comes from the last twenty percent of the movie, give or take. This is atypical for me. I tend to enjoy exposition and setup. If I find myself disappointed in a movie, it’s usually with the climax or entire third act. This is one major reason I feel confident that Nope is more horrifying than terrifying. (Also, interesting aside: I wanted to write “horrific” instead of “horrifying” there, but then I would have felt compelled to write “terrific” to match, which obviously isn’t the connotation I’m seeking. This says something about what we’re discussing here. Things that horrify us are horrific. Things that terrify us are terrific. Hmm.)Again, final spoiler warning.&nbsp;The big reveal in Nope is that the flying saucer that has been prowling around the Haywoods’ property isn’t a vessel that carries aliens. It is the alien. It’s not an advanced spaceship that zips around with unnatural speed and a disturbing silence while carrying a troop of little grey men; it’s a giant animal hunting and defending what it perceives to be its territory. This revelation transforms the movie. After this, there’s a creeping discomfort that sets in. It makes everything that’s happened so far even scarier. It changes your perspective from waiting to see the aliens that are flying around to realizing how the characters were even more vulnerable than we thought they were.&nbsp; It’s so simple but so, well, horrifying. Just the idea itself that aliens aren’t here beaming people up to experiment on them, but instead aliens are here as giant flying monsters simply searching for prey like any other animal. It taps into this cultural ethos we have of UFO sightings and makes you (even more so) hope you never see one. This is the difference between terror and horror - with terror, once you know, the fear is gone. With horror, once you know, the fear begins. This is how Nope played out for me.&nbsp;Perhaps I felt a lack of terror because little aliens flying around in a spaceship is so familiar… there wasn’t really an unknown (so I thought). What adds to the horror, then, is the realization itself that I was wrong. There’s this mental correction that occurs. I went from, “alright let’s go ahead and get there, let me see these aliens, I’ve had enough of this flying saucer” to, “oh God, it’s right there, get away, run, DON’T LOOK AT IT!” I really appreciated this experience as opposed to what I take to be the more standard formula of built tension followed by a reveal that releases it. Again, I love those types of movies. Nope wasn’t one of them, but I still enjoyed it not despite this modified formula but because of it. To me, it’s actually a horror movie in a genre that’s filled with things more akin to terror, and I think that's neat.&nbsp;Anyway, go see Nope if you haven’t so you can tell me I’m wrong or see what I’m talking about.&nbsp;Last note – I think the chimp sequence and the design of the alien (as in the unfurled “true form” of the flying saucer) were incredible and important to what I took to be the not-so-subtle message of the film: give the natural world the proper distance and respect it demands… just say, “nope” and walk the other way.&nbsp;&nbsp;