Many people are willing to participate at brief events, such as human performances in sports events (e.g. sprint), acrobatic performances in airplane meetings, fireworks displays, sunsets, or introductions to meetings. These so-called brief events last only a couple of seconds or minutes, or are consciously perceived by individuals during a couple of seconds or minutes, that is when they pay attention to it.
Do people join so-called ‘brief’ events because they provide reliable information about past environmental conditions that allowed development and expression of these events, such as environments that allow training or art expression opportunities being proxies of other environmental conditions useful for the individuals watching the events?
Do people join brief events because they are memorized and replayed in the mind? Does this imply that the time devoted to memory experiences last much longer than the time devoted to direct observation. For instance, taking a photo will last a couple of seconds, but watching the same photo over and over again may last a lifetime.
Do people join brief events because they attract many people, providing unique opportunities for exchange among people with the same social or mental interests?
Many claim that the definition of a brief event is scale-dependent. For instance, a couple of seconds may be long for one organism and brief for another organism, or one decade may be perceived as long for an individual bird and perceived as brief for a specialist interested in human history. Does this imply that philosophically all events could be defined as brief, just depending on the scale of analysis?
Victory may be defined by seconds or minutes, but the training takes months and years. It's for that thrill that we undergo the training, no one goes through that training for exercise or health...
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Victory may be defined by seconds or minutes, but the training takes months and years. It's for that thrill that we undergo the training, no one goes through that training for exercise or health...
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Probably so, Marcel. But I don't gamble anymore, since I was converted. Now, I'm too busy to miss the vice :)
People very like generalizations. The final result is very often perceived as short-term events (e.g. victory), but preparations are usually long-term (e.g., planning and training). The everything depends on multi-criteria, which we use to analysis.
I think a key factor is memory to relive the same event over and over again with emotion. It's like taking a photo (one second moment) and looking at it again with intervals of a couple of years, sometimes decades... but then again how to explain this in an adaptive/Darwinian framework?
The stronger the emotion (pain, pleasure etc) the more the memory is etched. This is to ensure the survival of the species. Only stupid rememberers put their hands in the fire fifty years later.
I think people are pleasure seeking animals: ranging from adrenaline rushes to alcohol/endorphin sedation.
But only if we can afford to do so; a precondition is that we have spare time e.g. we have enough to eat. I'm not sure whether evolutionary forces are at work when a species (or many individuals of such a species) have a lot of leisure time.
Most animals just go sleeping when there is nothing important to do; some are only inquisitive in their youth.
Viva homo ludens!
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