The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

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jacob
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The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

Post by jacob »

https://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Ping ... 0835609421

Some experience with racket sports or one-on-one sports may be helpful, but the book is about different approaches to the game and by extension life or whatever it is one practices (practice is life?). It reminded me of the WL5->6 discussions we're had here. It also suggests why some approaches (e.g. empiricism) have a permanent ceiling in terms of what mastery is possible.

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grundomatic
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Re: The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

Post by grundomatic »

Jacob recommends? WL5 to 6? Purchased, despite only having rudimentary tennis skills. Message me if you are interested in forming a book club.

mathiverse
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Re: The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

Post by mathiverse »

So what is the true form (re: Chapter 9: Two Breeds of Players and Men: Metaphysicians and Empiricists) of ERE? This?
jacob wrote:
Sat May 17, 2014 11:57 am
When I want or need to use goods and those aren't automatically provided to me, I define that as "work" (for the purpose of this discussion). If I have goods that go unused, I define that as "pollution".

At its most fundamental level, ERE is about designing one's world so as to eliminate work (the kind that is required to satisfy needs and wants, not the fun kind that done voluntarily) and pollution (wasted effort, wasted goods, ...). When things are optimally designed goods will flow through me with little effort and waste.
...
ETA: Chapter name along with chapter number
Last edited by mathiverse on Sun May 29, 2022 8:31 am, edited 2 times in total.

jacob
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Re: The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

Post by jacob »

@mathiverse - I forget what chapter 9 is (it was a library book), but if the true form of ping pong is the world of spin, then the true form of ERE is recognizing what everything in the world actually means at the component level rather than the non-spin world where the world is made out of pre-assembled objects and ideas that just are. Those who understand what each component means can rearrange and take them apart and change the game. Those who can't are doomed to forever whack the ball thinking that the spinny behavior of the ball, which they don't want to understand, is a kind of unpredictable random magic.

IOW, there are two ways of seeing the world.

1) The world is made out of abstractions that mean something [in reality]. E.g. ping pong is a mental game of spin vs spin.
2) The world is made out of things that simply exist [in reality]. E.g. ping pong is whacking a ball back and forth over the net.

To appreciate the ping pong metaphor philosophically, eyes can't directly see spin, because it is against the rules to paint a pattern on the ball. Therefore spin has to be deduced with the mind from the curve the ball takes in the air, how the opposing player hit it, and what the ball does when it hits the table. This is what turns spin into a mental object.

This difference in perception between mind-space and "eye"-space applies to many different subjects---like all subjects---since it goes to the root of perception. For example, it can be hugely frustrating to both parties when two extremes of these perceptions meet in a debate. Mind-space sees eye-space is overly simplistic and refuse to believe why anyone is stuck in it. Eye-space sees mind-space as overly complicated and refuses to deal with it to the point of denying its existence insisting that the world should be simple ("you won because you were lucky, cheating, use a special paddle, ...").

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Re: The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

Post by dustBowl »

Based purely on the title of the book, I'm reminded of David Foster Wallace's essay on the metaphysics of tennis. He talks about how the best players see the ball in a different way even from other great players, which seems related to Jacob's comment.

Now I'm wondering, though: is there a whole literary sub-genre of The Metaphysics of [racket sport X]? Just in this thread, we have ping-pong and tennis - is someone out there writing about the metaphysics of badminton? What about racket-adjacent sports like baseball and golf, where you're hitting a ball with a non-racket object? Do the metaphysical conclusions you draw change as your chosen sport becomes less racket-oriented?

Realistically, I would expect the the team sport vs. 1-on-1 sport dynamic to have more of an effect than whether you hit a ball with some implement. E.g. I would expect principles drawn from studying tennis to align more closely with principles drawn from studying martial arts competition than with principles from the study of baseball, even though baseball is closer to tennis on the scale of racket-y-ness.

I guess I'll have to read the book and start collecting data points...

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Re: The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

Post by theanimal »

The parallels are very stark, in regards to metaphysicists vs. empiricists, with regards to ERE and ping pong. The empiricist in the ERE world is the individual who is content being a basement king at WL5 optimizing solutions away in the cave. In ping pong, this strategy is employed by those who are "anti-evolutionary" as the author observes and have one tool (bashing the ball over the net as hard as they can), neglecting to pursue any higher artistic forms of the sport (ie spin). This is not unlike the WL5 individual who bashes away at FI by only accumulating a large number of monetary assets then organizing his life not unlike the rest of society, just more optimized. The empiricist/WL5 has not completely left the cave, but has moved away from the shadows and chains and closer to the world beyond. The following snippet illustrates the author's view on this a little further:
I’ve watched very advanced players and marveled at certain strokes of theirs. At a professional level, what impresses one the most is the players’ control and the constantly changing parabolas of their loops. They’re competitive, of course; that’s the nature of the beast. But there’s more to it than meets the eye. When world-class competitors play a perfect game, they live, for its whole duration, in the Platonic realm of true and perfect form.

Whenever I play with Pedro, on the other hand, we leave such heights behind and tumble down into the cave. Before and during my furious matches with him, I tease him, “¡No tengas miedo!”—“Have no fear!” He and everyone around laugh. He gives it his all, running around and back to return my loops. I’ve been told that it’s a spectacular display, particularly for newcomers, since beginners assume that whenever one smashes he scores a point; but Pedro will return five, six, seven loop drives of mine in a row. Some of his “gets” are hard to believe. Does he win? If I don’t concentrate fully, yes, he does. All the more, then, one regrets that he hasn’t striven to probe the secrets of true table tennis, because he has developed a style of his own, but he has to work much harder to score a point. Often what seems a shortcut, both in table tennis and in life, is in fact a longcut. Pedro has been at it for years. In the meantime, a humbler and dedicated player with a modicum of talent has begun to savor some of TT’s secrets, has taken the hard way out of the cave into spin and true form, and by now can probably defeat him.

The TT cave dwellers, the empiricists, must be animated by a strong anti-evolutionary impulse. I confess that, as a fellow human being, I fail to understand it. When writing about Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley said: “The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable . . . but susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being.” And that’s the point: we can, in our limited way, experience this absolute, pure form. Humble and yet humbling table tennis accords us this opportunity, suggesting implicitly that we can try the same in other aspects of our existence.

And yet there are people who play table tennis for decades and still reject such a transcendental possibility. If only they realized that once a player finds true form, victory comes with it as a mere corollary. . . . I suppose the cave must feel very snug and cozy.

Such anti-table tennis I just fail to understand. The words that come to mind to describe it are uninventive, destructive, parasitic, and just plain boring. Above all, the empiricist will never gain an insight into the World of Forms. Between living in prison and living free, I’ll always pick the latter—but shouldn’t we all?
Metaphysics of Ping Pong Chapter 9 page 89 digital edition
The book made me realize that ERE is essentially The Metaphysics of Life. ERE is an art form in itself when pursued in the pure (non-FI focused) form. Like in ping pong, the art itself and how it is expressed becomes more captivating as you reach higher and higher levels which can lead to a corresponding increase in skill (ie how Jacob's expenses continue to decrease each year while he continues to do more things). As mentioned previously, to the non artist, the higher levels aren't apparent and are dismissed away by luck, better equipment or outright cheating (ie "You can only retire because you eat lentils and live in an RV" "Ya but your wife still works." etc)

The book also often reminded me of this quote:
The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.
For those interested, the book covers many of the themes that are often discussed here like flow, Plato's cave, Jung/shadow work, interpersonal dynamics and skill pursuit among other things.

I really enjoyed it, thanks for the recommendation.

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Re: The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

Post by grundomatic »

I have a taker for the book club that has already read the book. I just started the book today but will probably finish fairly quickly, so a book club meeting will be taking place sometime in the future. If you would like to take part, message me.

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Re: The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

Post by jacob »

dustBowl wrote:
Sun May 29, 2022 5:44 pm
Now I'm wondering, though: is there a whole literary sub-genre of The Metaphysics of [racket sport X]? Just in this thread, we have ping-pong and tennis - is someone out there writing about the metaphysics of badminton?
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tenni ... 0679778314 is perhaps not so much about the metaphysics, but the mental aspects.

Samurai literature like Book of Five Rings and Hagakure could be classified as metaphysical since they deal with the potential of dying (existence).

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Re: The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

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Re: The Metaphysics of Ping Pong

Post by Lemur »

I've watched (but not performed) MMA for probably a decade now. For tennis, I've a few years now of practical experience.

In both sports, especially more at the top levels where everyone is good and the margin of error becomes really thin, I've recognized that one can almost tell who has has the upper hand by seeing which person is more relaxed in the beginning of the match. I've had many tennis matches where I've dropped the lead to my opponent because I was closing in on winning the game, set, or match...I wanted it bad mentally and that caused me to tense up physically. I would lose my flow state. In MMA, sometimes you'll see an opponent who is conserving his energy very intelligently. They're light on the feet, almost bouncy, but they aren't doing it in a jerky kind of motion. They're flowing more like water...

One of my favorites: Dominick Cruz (24-3). Two Time 135 lb (Bantamweight Champion) and winning over a decade and defeating multiple generations of fighters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE9JIP6y53g

Rousey was overspecialized in Judo and was a pioneer but the division eventually caught up with her when a larger pool of MMA women fighters like Nunes started being signed on to the UFC. The latter were much more generalized in multiple areas of MMA - giving them more tools.

Zhang Weili (22-3) Former Woman's 115 pound champion coming off a big win recently...
http://www.china.org.cn/china/Off_the_W ... 284629.htm
"The fighters in the octagon are tough in all ways. After all, it's all about the mentality. Whoever with a more stable mentality wins the fight."

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