G4techTV, a cable network that shows people playing video games, has simulated the entire missing National Hockey League season using NHL 2005 from Electronic Arts. According to an article by Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Globe, the network has played all 1,230 games on the NHL schedule using the computer-plays-computer option. (The game has a large set of stats for each player.) The network is releasing the results according to the hockey schedule, so although the computers know who won the Stanley Cup, we don’t.

The response has been anemic. The network stopped showing its nightly “highlights” show in November. The network’s sr. vp of programming says it’s because people don’t care about hockey. “”I think it would have been better if the NBA had been locked out instead of the NHL,” he said.

I doubt it. But if we knew why we don’t care about sport simulations but care absurdly about actual sports, we’d be a long way toward understanding our implicit metaphysics: free will, agency, the contingent, personhood, virtue…the whole shooting match, so to speak.

Categories: Uncategorized dw