Quote:
I am arguing that the urge to dispute several decades of received wisdom and experience is what is driving this sports contrarianism, not a supposedly hyper-rational appreciation of the facts.
kidcolin,
any dispassionate hyper-rational analyst whose one and only objective was to answer the question, ''what should bill belichek have done in this particular instance if his one and only objective was to win this specific football game?" would not be able to provide a definitive answer. they would instead offer up a probability distribution of answers given what we know about the usefulness and reliability of the available evidence and methods. unsurprisingly, that sort of talk is not seen because it is boring, unpersuasive, and signals an unwillingness to accept the ''spirit of the conversation'', i.e., a refusal to participate in the social game that has sprung up around this super exciting event (i think he should probably just punt the god damn ball, if you're wondering; expressed well, it makes the most friends).
what i find so interesting about this thread is how people choose to play this game (this relates
directly to pb's talk of business; perhaps more later) around the game. "I Believe In EV!" "Conventional Wisdom Aint So Crazy" "Meta-Analysis of EV vs. CW/Im Smarter Than All", all of these are techniques people use to..
well, you can finish the thought. bedtime for buzz.