This is where I collect and write things, mostly on academe and artificial intelligence. Established in 2010, by Vaishak Belle.
I’ll admit I don’t watch a lot of soccer, but have caught a few from the last few weeks. A thing that struck me yesterday was the game for the first 80 minutes was beautiful on the Argentine side, to my lay eyes. And the next 2 minutes on the French side. And so on. I contrast this with some games where the ball may be kicked around endlessly, passes missed etc where “nothing” happens and time feels drawn out.
I wondered whether it is always possible to say when a game is beautiful if you know the objectives of the game and are familiar with how it runs. In soccer, sufficiently many tries at the goal that almost succeeded, strong team playing, legwork, etc are implicitly leading up to the big reward, and that makes it satisfying. Whereas a game where players made bad passes and bad attempts but then had a surprising win at the end is not satisfying. Might this not apply to other games, even ones yet to invented, too?
Although I suppose there are other factors that are features of a beautiful game: worthy opponents, noteworthy challenges, underdogs deserving their due, surprising twists by said worthy opponents etc
The other thought I had was this is not unlike a beautiful math result in a paper: where small brave steps hinting at the goal which then leads to final reward feels really satisfying.