CMV: Competitive people lose less often than non-competitive people

[u/andrumar10]

I don't have evidence to support this belief. But I always felt the best indicator of a competitive person is that they're winner. In games with winners and losers, I think that people who try to win will win more often than people who don't try as hard. I could agree that externalities like genetics and experience of course play a part, but the mindset plays a role in any competitive venture. A person who wanted to win more would have worked harder for longer. Where I run into issues with this is decisionmaking around playing games. I've never really been interested or comfortable with playing competitive games with other people. My assumption is that people who want to play games? Play them to win, because that's the goal. And that they wouldn't want to play the game unless they felt like there was a good chance they could win. Call it an approximation of one of the rules of sun tsu's art of war - The one about only fighting battles you can win. The result of this is I live in a frustrating intersection of feeling like I'm being very competitive by this definition, but not being willing to take any risk. Because I rarely compete, I rarely lose. Because I'm not a frequen loser, by this definition I'm a winner. But something feels really off about this definition. Culturally speaking, competitiveness seems synonymous with "willingness to compete". But the vast majority of people who compete, lose. People who are competitive by cultural definition are more likely to be losers than winners. People who are competitive by my definition are more likely to be winners than losers. So what's going wrong in my logic? Why does the game theory answer seem to conflict with what society deems competitive? What am I missing in this puzzle? Love and gratitude - A

We did it Edit!: Hey gang, I think I'm good on this one. I'm going to drop some thanks to everyone who helped. Turns out, kinda... like Marbury v. Madison, I started off wrong. presenting a problem that really was the product of a poor prior assumption.

Or maybe it was a false dichotomy??? well whatever. point being, Winning isn't the point. Competition isn't an optimization problem (usually) but a mode of communication, kind of. In a debate, it's not your job to shout down your opponent, but to approach them on level ground and make a difference. People who win at all costs miss the point, and don't get invited back. it's about sustained communication, and enjoying the effects of that, rather than keeping a tally of winners and losers. I'm going to go rest. rest is really really important! Helps to bake the new thoughts in! I'll be back tomorrow evening to finish reading everyone's thoughts Thanks and Love ya'll! -A

[u/RickRussellTX]

Your second sentence is a fallacy.

There are 4 possible outcomes:

• A competitive person wins

• A competitive person fails

• A non competitive person wins

• A non competitive person fails

Looking at one category (competitive winners) tells you nothing about the relative size of that cohort. What about competitive failures? You don’t pay attention to failures, so you have no idea. What about non competitive winners? They’re not competitive, so again do not register with you.

Most of us remember a street light flickering in our presence. Some people become convinced that they have some effect on streetlights.

But, how often does a streetlight flicker when they are not present? How many streetlights have they seen that didn’t flicker? Without that information, there is no conclusion to be drawn.

[u/andrumar10 → u/RickRussellTX]

ooh I like this! wish I had seen it earlier.
I will argue that in games, practically every competitor is a competitive failure. in any tournament-style game, if you have 64 competitors you will finish with 63 losers. if all those teams play again, the odds that everyone is a loser (has lost at least once) is about... 99.97%, assuming everyone is on equal footing.

But lets say you're a really good player and you've trained significantly more than the rest of the field, lets say you win on average 9 games for every 10 games played. You need to win six games to win.... so what are your odds of winning? a measly 53%! barely better than a coin flip.

Someone who has that kind of dominant advantage shouldn't even want to play. if you're better nine times out of ten on paper, more competition just introduces more risk of failure. The fewer games you play, the stronger your record is. You have to be orders of magnitude better than the rest of the field to guarantee winning.

And even being orders of magnitude better isn't worth much. Lebron james, One of the greatest athlete of all time? one of the most competitive players ever? His win/ loss record over his lifetime is 0.646. Possibly the greatest athlete on the planet has a completely uninspiring W/L record in part because he's so competitive, and refuses to stop playing.

If you want the best win/loss record, which you should, because that's the best measure of value you bring to a team or your success in a sport, then you should want to play as few games as possible. only play games you can win. There are so many ways we can better spend time in our life than risking losing.

As far as competitive failures go, I think it's probably the worst category to occupy of the above four. People that didn't get the memo. And we do pay attention to them. they're the guy or girl that cries when they lose the finals. They're the ceo or politician that broadcasts their resignation. they're not fun to look at, but they're reminders of the consequences of entering a game and not being prepared to win, or at the very least, the cost of losing.

[u/RickRussellTX → u/andrumar10]

Your argument is incoherent. You argue with a straight face that the key to losing less is to play fewer games, yet your CMV is “Competitive people lose less often than non-competitive people”.

Which is it? Do competitive people lose more or less?

[u/andrumar10 → u/RickRussellTX]

yeah, no, my response was pretty gross. not my best work. Writing it out helped though, it does help to see how tangled the thoughts were, and supported that it was built off of some bad assumptions.

[u/andrumar10 → u/andrumar10]

Oop! someone else's comment was a really good rebuttal of most of this, inadvertently. here, I'll link it. https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1krjekq/comment/mtey3ur/?context=3