Do you agree with Belichick's 4th down attempt?
View Poll Results: Do you AGREE with Belichick's 4th down attempt?
Yes
344
64.06%
No
193
35.94%
I don't have a horse in this debate, but the first paragraph seems like an articulate attempt to escape the question that was posed to you. The premise in the 2nd sentence is linked to the rest of the paragraph, but those connections (and the example) answer a hypothetical that wasn't put forth. You are correct in that emperical validation is not always verifiable by other parties, but in the context of this debate the question at hand should be and is verifiable. Providing an example where validation is not possible doesn't rationalize your position, regardless of how authoritatively it is stated.
I dont honestly have much emotional stake in this either way. Like PB accurately points out, I put my life in the hands of experts every single day without batting an eye. I'm more than willing to cede some of my decision-making to people who have demonstrated they are better than me at it. This applies to sports, but it applies to everything. I just want him to recognize that it is ESSENTIAL to know how LARGE their edge is, and hopefully he can provide me with some sort of evidence (preferable) or some set of anecdotes (questionable) that illustrate the magnitude, not just some reasonable-sounding arguments that show the presence, of this ability.
just in case phone booth passes his next ''wisdom test'' i will voluntarily fail mine.
yes, your priors should favor the hypothesis that their evidence gathering and decision-making algorithms are better than yours at outputting behaviors that satisfy the myriad objectives of their profession. this is especially true when their job is highly sought after (CEOs, football coaches, wealthy business owners, etc.).
there are very few decisions in any complicated social game that can be isolated from the other decisions of the game. objectives are never clearly defined or stable (defining sub-goals often changes them - life is fun!). payoffs are unknown and dynamic (same problem). real-life games are tough. as a handy example, what are the objectives of this sentence and the next? how well am i achieving those objectives? how did my decision to try to satisfy those objectives effect the probability of my convincing you that your line of questioning is wrongheaded (the meta-objective of selecting objectives is part of the game)? in all seriousness, just how would you go about answering those questions ''scientifically''? how would trying to mathematicalize the situation aid your understanding? i'd guess the answer to the very last question is, ''it wouldnt; it would actually make you less likely to understand whats going on''.
i know you love science and all but lots of phenomena are not specific or straightforward enough to be precisely discussed or modelled. that's just the way it is.
empirical validation of what, exactly? here's another example.
sometimes my goal when chatting with my girlfriend is to make her laugh. i'm merely OK at it. if a comedian were kibbitzing i'd hear a lot of, ''that would have been funnier IF..'' and he'd usually be right. my joke-making is sub-optimal. but guess what? i make jokes within the context of the much bigger Relationship Game. in that game i want her to be horny for me all the time and to bake me cookies whenever i want. if i was insanely funny it would change everything. conversations would evolve differently, her expectations would change, and the ''payoff matrices'' of other interaction types would be drastically altered. it would not surprise me if waking up much funnier would actually make me a less competent boyfriend given my general dispositions and talents. in any case, it would change things, and there is no way of knowing that those changes would be for the better. thus, naively following the comedian's (bf amateur) advice could just as easily make me a worse bf as better a bf (i cannot meaningfully evaluate the prob distribution; i am not an expert at self-improvement within this context and so i plead ignorance)
in short, when the winners of complicated games appear unwilling or unable to learn a straightforward procedure for solving a set of frequently encountered problem when they have the incentives and the brains to do so, you're missing something.
that "you should probably never question them at all" are ENTIRELY dependent on the MAGNITUDE of their advantage over me.
If I know that you are, on average, very slightly better than me at making this decision, but I also know for a fact that I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about this specific decision and you likely havent, I'm a huge favorite over you. In this specific spot.
i know you love science and all but lots of phenomena are not specific or straightforward enough to be precisely discussed or modelled. that's just the way it is.
You are correct in that emperical validation is not always verifiable by other parties, but in the context of this debate the question at hand should be and is verifiable.
sometimes my goal when chatting with my girlfriend is to make her laugh. i'm merely OK at it. if a comedian were kibbitzing i'd hear a lot of, ''that would have been funnier IF..'' and he'd usually be right. my joke-making is sub-optimal. but guess what? i make jokes within the context of the much bigger Relationship Game. in that game i want her to be horny for me all the time and to bake me cookies whenever i want. if i was insanely funny it would change everything. conversations would evolve differently, her expectations would change, and the ''payoff matrices'' of other interaction types would be drastically altered. it would not surprise me if waking up much funnier would actually make me a less competent boyfriend given my general dispositions and talents. in any case, it would change things, and there is no way of knowing that those changes would be for the better. thus, naively following the comedian's (bf amateur) advice could just as easily make me a worse bf as better a bf (i cannot meaningfully evaluate the prob distribution; i am not an expert at self-improvement within this context and so i plead ignorance)
in short, when the winners of complicated games appear unwilling or unable to learn a straightforward procedure for solving a set of frequently encountered problem when they have the incentives and the brains to do so, you're missing something.
AGx19,
Phone Booth is trying to win an argument via word bomb.
Phone Booth is trying to win an argument via word bomb.
VV,
i told myself i wasn't going to post in this thread again, but here I am. sick example with the girlfriend/comedy stuff.
I don't, however, agree with this: "in short, when the winners of complicated games appear unwilling or unable to learn a straightforward procedure for solving a set of frequently encountered problem when they have the incentives and the brains to do so, you're missing something." this is the logic i objected to at the outset, and i think it's the point that vhawk is trying to make, namely that i am more than willing to admit there are people more capable than i, but how much more capable do they have to be for this to be largely a true statement? i objected to it on the grounds that it is fundamentally panglossian - it assumes human fallibility isn't a concern, and that in a very real sense, we live in the best of all possible worlds. i just don't believe that to be true - not without evidence beyond conjecture, at least.
i told myself i wasn't going to post in this thread again, but here I am. sick example with the girlfriend/comedy stuff.
I don't, however, agree with this: "in short, when the winners of complicated games appear unwilling or unable to learn a straightforward procedure for solving a set of frequently encountered problem when they have the incentives and the brains to do so, you're missing something." this is the logic i objected to at the outset, and i think it's the point that vhawk is trying to make, namely that i am more than willing to admit there are people more capable than i, but how much more capable do they have to be for this to be largely a true statement? i objected to it on the grounds that it is fundamentally panglossian - it assumes human fallibility isn't a concern, and that in a very real sense, we live in the best of all possible worlds. i just don't believe that to be true - not without evidence beyond conjecture, at least.
VV, you make a good point: coaches are suboptimal wrt 4th down calls, but being suboptimal there is probably optimal, overall. we can still complain about it and hope that the culture of our own team changes before that of the rest of the league, so that we gain an advantage, but it's not necessarily a sign that the coach is incompetant.
another example: i'm the player/manager of a good C league softball team. last year we got a new player who is just a freak - he's friends with one of our guys, but no one else knew him prior to his joining. he's the best pitcher i know of, can run, can throw, and hits the ball 350 ft on command. like he is definitely over 90% to hit a homerun when he wants to. he is far and away the best player on the team. when he tries not to hit a homerun he is probably about 60% to get on base (there is a homerun limit and he is prone to the accidental homerun), which is approximately the OBP of the rest of the team.
I think he should bat 5th - because i think that's the spot where homerun situations come up the most in softball (we get between 2 and 5 homeruns depending on where we play). you're likely to come up with more outs and more guys on base batting 5th compared to batting 4th. but he is always a little bit offended that he's not hitting 4th - because 4th is the traditional homerun spot in baseball (because there are more outs in baseball). i try to explain to him but he doesn't get it. no one else on my team gets it either save for about 2 guys. while i'm pretty sure i'm right, and that batting him 5th gains us a small amount of EV all else equal, it's not worth it for me to insist on it because it's bad for morale.
another example: i'm the player/manager of a good C league softball team. last year we got a new player who is just a freak - he's friends with one of our guys, but no one else knew him prior to his joining. he's the best pitcher i know of, can run, can throw, and hits the ball 350 ft on command. like he is definitely over 90% to hit a homerun when he wants to. he is far and away the best player on the team. when he tries not to hit a homerun he is probably about 60% to get on base (there is a homerun limit and he is prone to the accidental homerun), which is approximately the OBP of the rest of the team.
I think he should bat 5th - because i think that's the spot where homerun situations come up the most in softball (we get between 2 and 5 homeruns depending on where we play). you're likely to come up with more outs and more guys on base batting 5th compared to batting 4th. but he is always a little bit offended that he's not hitting 4th - because 4th is the traditional homerun spot in baseball (because there are more outs in baseball). i try to explain to him but he doesn't get it. no one else on my team gets it either save for about 2 guys. while i'm pretty sure i'm right, and that batting him 5th gains us a small amount of EV all else equal, it's not worth it for me to insist on it because it's bad for morale.
just in case phone booth passes his next ''wisdom test'' i will voluntarily fail mine.
yes, your priors should favor the hypothesis that their evidence gathering and decision-making algorithms are better than yours at outputting behaviors that satisfy the myriad objectives of their profession. this is especially true when their job is highly sought after (CEOs, football coaches, wealthy business owners, etc.).
there are very few decisions in any complicated social game that can be isolated from the other decisions of the game. objectives are never clearly defined or stable (defining sub-goals often changes them - life is fun!). payoffs are unknown and dynamic (same problem). real-life games are tough. as a handy example, what are the objectives of this sentence and the next? how well am i achieving those objectives? how did my decision to try to satisfy those objectives effect the probability of my convincing you that your line of questioning is wrongheaded (the meta-objective of selecting objectives is part of the game)? in all seriousness, just how would you go about answering those questions ''scientifically''? how would trying to mathematicalize the situation aid your understanding? i'd guess the answer to the very last question is, ''it wouldnt; it would actually make you less likely to understand whats going on''.
i know you love science and all but lots of phenomena are not specific or straightforward enough to be precisely discussed or modelled. that's just the way it is.
yes, your priors should favor the hypothesis that their evidence gathering and decision-making algorithms are better than yours at outputting behaviors that satisfy the myriad objectives of their profession. this is especially true when their job is highly sought after (CEOs, football coaches, wealthy business owners, etc.).
there are very few decisions in any complicated social game that can be isolated from the other decisions of the game. objectives are never clearly defined or stable (defining sub-goals often changes them - life is fun!). payoffs are unknown and dynamic (same problem). real-life games are tough. as a handy example, what are the objectives of this sentence and the next? how well am i achieving those objectives? how did my decision to try to satisfy those objectives effect the probability of my convincing you that your line of questioning is wrongheaded (the meta-objective of selecting objectives is part of the game)? in all seriousness, just how would you go about answering those questions ''scientifically''? how would trying to mathematicalize the situation aid your understanding? i'd guess the answer to the very last question is, ''it wouldnt; it would actually make you less likely to understand whats going on''.
i know you love science and all but lots of phenomena are not specific or straightforward enough to be precisely discussed or modelled. that's just the way it is.
empirical validation of what, exactly? here's another example.
sometimes my goal when chatting with my girlfriend is to make her laugh. i'm merely OK at it. if a comedian were kibbitzing i'd hear a lot of, ''that would have been funnier IF..'' and he'd usually be right. my joke-making is sub-optimal. but guess what? i make jokes within the context of the much bigger Relationship Game. in that game i want her to be horny for me all the time and to bake me cookies whenever i want. if i was insanely funny it would change everything. conversations would evolve differently, her expectations would change, and the ''payoff matrices'' of other interaction types would be drastically altered. it would not surprise me if waking up much funnier would actually make me a less competent boyfriend given my general dispositions and talents. in any case, it would change things, and there is no way of knowing that those changes would be for the better. thus, naively following the comedian's (bf amateur) advice could just as easily make me a worse bf as better a bf (i cannot meaningfully evaluate the prob distribution; i am not an expert at self-improvement within this context and so i plead ignorance)
in short, when the winners of complicated games appear unwilling or unable to learn a straightforward procedure for solving a set of frequently encountered problem when they have the incentives and the brains to do so, you're missing something.
When my friend Mike says something that seems wrong to me, then there is probably something I'm missing...but Mike is just BARELY smarter than me, so all it really means is he's spent 5 minutes thinking about it, and I havent. Basically, its the equivalent of one of those puzzles where you have to remove X matchsticks to make Y boxes or something. I know, from collecting empiric data about my friend Mike, that with a couple minutes consideration I will "catch up" to him and be able to solve most problems he can solve. So, I get to make a decision: blindly accept Mike's solution, or spend a couple of minutes figuring out if he is right. This is awesome, because sometimes I do one and sometimes the other.
Now, if Christopher Langan says something that seems wrong to me, there is CERTAINLY something I'm missing....but he is so massively smarter than me, that I will likely NEVER figure out what it is. Maybe after years of study and contemplation, but its no lock. In that situation, there is basically no reason for me to question him, because its a waste of time and energy to question him. I'm better off just listening.
Thats the spectrum. Everyone falls somewhere inside that spectrum. There are no discrete categories along this spectrum. So, you can, hopefully, see how the question of WHETHER there are people who are better than me at making these kinds of decisions is essentially a trivial one. The question of HOW MUCH BETTER they are is a far more important question....and its also entirely a scientific, empiric one.
My point is, are you basing these "insights" of yours on anything besides anecdote? You seem like a smart enough guy that you wouldnt be lecturing so confidently if you werent.
Surely you dont think that your personal experience is enough to make broad sweeping conclusions about the types of people that succeed at business...do you? Or even if you do, to then decide that others must be wrong when their anecdotal experience contradicts you?
I just dont quite get it. The conclusions you draw, i.e. that "you should probably never question them at all" are ENTIRELY dependent on the MAGNITUDE of their advantage over me. How can you possibly come to these conclusions without some pretty solid evidence that their edge is pretty large? How can you have any sort of confidence in the size of their edge, unless you've seen or done some rigorous evidence-collection?
You are treating this like its a logic or reasoning problem, when in fact it is 100% a science problem. I'm not opposed to appeals to authority at all, but it seems like a poor choice to do so blindly. Or even worse, to trust MY OWN INTUITION to quantify the authority, when the whole point is that my intuition is insufficient.
Surely you dont think that your personal experience is enough to make broad sweeping conclusions about the types of people that succeed at business...do you? Or even if you do, to then decide that others must be wrong when their anecdotal experience contradicts you?
I just dont quite get it. The conclusions you draw, i.e. that "you should probably never question them at all" are ENTIRELY dependent on the MAGNITUDE of their advantage over me. How can you possibly come to these conclusions without some pretty solid evidence that their edge is pretty large? How can you have any sort of confidence in the size of their edge, unless you've seen or done some rigorous evidence-collection?
You are treating this like its a logic or reasoning problem, when in fact it is 100% a science problem. I'm not opposed to appeals to authority at all, but it seems like a poor choice to do so blindly. Or even worse, to trust MY OWN INTUITION to quantify the authority, when the whole point is that my intuition is insufficient.
I don't have a horse in this debate, but the first paragraph seems like an articulate attempt to escape the question that was posed to you. The premise in the 2nd sentence is linked to the rest of the paragraph, but those connections (and the example) answer a hypothetical that wasn't put forth. You are correct in that emperical validation is not always verifiable by other parties, but in the context of this debate the question at hand should be and is verifiable. Providing an example where validation is not possible doesn't rationalize your position, regardless of how authoritatively it is stated.
Right, I'm really not asking for all that much, imo. PB has put forward this hypothesis, that those who are successful in business are exceptional in a specific skillset, and that skillset spills over into many areas of life. This seems reasonable. I'm not even asking him to detail every aspect of that skillset or anything. I'm just asking him, essentially, how does he know this, and can he give me some idea of the magnitude of this exceptionality? Because in my day to day life, knowing that CEOs are better than me at making critical decisions is essentially useless unless I have some sense of HOW MUCH better than me they are. If I know that you are, on average, very slightly better than me at making this decision, but I also know for a fact that I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about this specific decision and you likely havent, I'm a huge favorite over you. In this specific spot. If I know that you are, on average, MASSIVELY better than me at making this decision, then it is essentially irrelevant how much time I've spent thinking about it....you are still going to crush me, day in and day out.
I dont honestly have much emotional stake in this either way. Like PB accurately points out, I put my life in the hands of experts every single day without batting an eye. I'm more than willing to cede some of my decision-making to people who have demonstrated they are better than me at it. This applies to sports, but it applies to everything. I just want him to recognize that it is ESSENTIAL to know how LARGE their edge is, and hopefully he can provide me with some sort of evidence (preferable) or some set of anecdotes (questionable) that illustrate the magnitude, not just some reasonable-sounding arguments that show the presence, of this ability.
I dont honestly have much emotional stake in this either way. Like PB accurately points out, I put my life in the hands of experts every single day without batting an eye. I'm more than willing to cede some of my decision-making to people who have demonstrated they are better than me at it. This applies to sports, but it applies to everything. I just want him to recognize that it is ESSENTIAL to know how LARGE their edge is, and hopefully he can provide me with some sort of evidence (preferable) or some set of anecdotes (questionable) that illustrate the magnitude, not just some reasonable-sounding arguments that show the presence, of this ability.
In short, I'm not saying that I've answered your questions rigorously, but rather that that you're asking the wrong questions. Your questions are irrelevant. Do you guys believe that quantifying the edge of experts - what does that even mean? - would help your everyday decision making skills? Does that tell you how much time you should spend obsessing over Belichick's or other head coaches' potential mistakes? If this is so important, you must have done this quantification for other classes of experts on whom you rely all the time? Can you share the results? If you haven't, why are you asking now? What changed your mind? Or was it, as I already explained, an instance of faux rigor where statements you don't want to believe, no matter how reasonable or effectively equivalent to things you alreay believe, are held up to an impossibly strict standard?
Everything you know - you either learned from others or derived from personal experiences that are framed based on things you learned from others. If you can't trust experts in a general sense, you can't trust yourself either. On things that you haven't had time to think about in great detail, you're always trusting others.
in all seriousness, just how would you go about answering those questions ''scientifically''? how would trying to mathematicalize the situation aid your understanding? i'd guess the answer to the very last question is, ''it wouldnt; it would actually make you less likely to understand whats going on''.
VV,
i told myself i wasn't going to post in this thread again, but here I am. sick example with the girlfriend/comedy stuff.
I don't, however, agree with this: "in short, when the winners of complicated games appear unwilling or unable to learn a straightforward procedure for solving a set of frequently encountered problem when they have the incentives and the brains to do so, you're missing something." this is the logic i objected to at the outset, and i think it's the point that vhawk is trying to make, namely that i am more than willing to admit there are people more capable than i, but how much more capable do they have to be for this to be largely a true statement? i objected to it on the grounds that it is fundamentally panglossian - it assumes human fallibility isn't a concern, and that in a very real sense, we live in the best of all possible worlds. i just don't believe that to be true - not without evidence beyond conjecture, at least.
i told myself i wasn't going to post in this thread again, but here I am. sick example with the girlfriend/comedy stuff.
I don't, however, agree with this: "in short, when the winners of complicated games appear unwilling or unable to learn a straightforward procedure for solving a set of frequently encountered problem when they have the incentives and the brains to do so, you're missing something." this is the logic i objected to at the outset, and i think it's the point that vhawk is trying to make, namely that i am more than willing to admit there are people more capable than i, but how much more capable do they have to be for this to be largely a true statement? i objected to it on the grounds that it is fundamentally panglossian - it assumes human fallibility isn't a concern, and that in a very real sense, we live in the best of all possible worlds. i just don't believe that to be true - not without evidence beyond conjecture, at least.
his whole "I need to know EXACTLY how much better they are than me before I can trust them" mindset is quite hilarious. You're not the center of the epistemlogical universe.
Empirical validation of their superiority over me. You've made the claim that those that are successful at some specific goal have skills that make them successful at other things, like critical decision-making. I'm asking you how you know this. What I'm hoping you give me as an answer is some set of experiments or data, testing these people at tasks unrelated to their jobs but that illustrate their superior ability at making critical decisions. What I'm AFRAID you are going to give me is "CEOs are successful, and the way you know they are successful is that they are CEOs."
it doesnt do much to support PB's overall theme that CEOs are better than me at making decisions.
When my friend Mike says something that seems wrong to me, then there is probably something I'm missing...but Mike is just BARELY smarter than me, so all it really means is he's spent 5 minutes thinking about it, and I havent. Basically, its the equivalent of one of those puzzles where you have to remove X matchsticks to make Y boxes or something. I know, from collecting empiric data about my friend Mike, that with a couple minutes consideration I will "catch up" to him and be able to solve most problems he can solve. So, I get to make a decision: blindly accept Mike's solution, or spend a couple of minutes figuring out if he is right. This is awesome, because sometimes I do one and sometimes the other.
Now, if Christopher Langan says something that seems wrong to me, there is CERTAINLY something I'm missing....but he is so massively smarter than me, that I will likely NEVER figure out what it is. Maybe after years of study and contemplation, but its no lock. In that situation, there is basically no reason for me to question him, because its a waste of time and energy to question him. I'm better off just listening.
Thats the spectrum. Everyone falls somewhere inside that spectrum. There are no discrete categories along this spectrum. So, you can, hopefully, see how the question of WHETHER there are people who are better than me at making these kinds of decisions is essentially a trivial one. The question of HOW MUCH BETTER they are is a far more important question....and its also entirely a scientific, empiric one.
Btw, you appear to have caused some confusion here. VanVeen was largely addressing the question of, are successful people more competent at most aspects of their jobs than you would be. You're now sidetracking into the less relevant question of whether CEOs are simply better at all kinds of random things than you are. Both are true, but the former is much more obvious than the latter. It's highly disingenuous to go from "I'm not sure if I should question experts' decisions so I need to know their edge" to "how much more capable are they than I in a neutral context" because the latter has nothing to do with the former. You wouldn't blindly trust Durrr's chess moves, nor would you blindly trust Obama's high-stakes poker analysis. Unless you got some of those CEOs to give you general life advice that you're not sure if you should follow, quantification of their edge outside of their jobs is an academic question.
If you did, he would be dead and beaten by now....
Um. Can vanveen and phone booth join forces and please write a book about just what's really going on in most social interactions?
can you imagine how long a book by phone booth would be?
a ha! the clue!
I believe Phone Booth has already written a couple of books... most recently:
I believe Phone Booth has already written a couple of books... most recently:
Spoiler:
Ctr-F: Karate Kid returned no results. I think you're off the mark.
In short, NY Times best-seller.
Hmm, except for the length, sounds like Gladwell.
lol thats exactly what I had in mind when I wrote that
I think Phone Booth needs to read "Fooled by Randomness."
Man, thats a MUCH better comparison than Gladwell, thats EXACTLY who PB reminds me of. In basically every way.
Just a littel FYI, I personally find reading one paragraph out of every 15, following this with some sort of debatable accusation that may or may not have been implied, and then returning to my regular life until other regs say funny things typically yields the highest expected utility.
Just a littel FYI, I personally find reading one paragraph out of every 15, following this with some sort of debatable accusation that may or may not have been implied, and then returning to my regular life until other regs say funny things typically yields the highest expected utility.
The Art and Zen of Internet Trolling coming 3Q 2k10
sure it's been said, but it doesn't surprise me that the majority of 2p2'ers agree with the call being that this is a website that is centered around poker and other casino games.
Don't you leave yourself more outs by punting the football.
Going for it = 1 out with 1 card to come
Punting = at least 6 outs with 1 card to come
Don't you leave yourself more outs by punting the football.
Going for it = 1 out with 1 card to come
Punting = at least 6 outs with 1 card to come
sure it's been said, but it doesn't surprise me that the majority of 2p2'ers agree with the call being that this is a website that is centered around poker and other casino games.
Don't you leave yourself more outs by punting the football.
Going for it = 1 out with 1 card to come
Punting = at least 6 outs with 1 card to come
Don't you leave yourself more outs by punting the football.
Going for it = 1 out with 1 card to come
Punting = at least 6 outs with 1 card to come
sure it's been said, but it doesn't surprise me that the majority of 2p2'ers agree with the call being that this is a website that is centered around poker and other casino games.
Don't you leave yourself more outs by punting the football.
Going for it = 1 out with 1 card to come
Punting = at least 6 outs with 1 card to come
Don't you leave yourself more outs by punting the football.
Going for it = 1 out with 1 card to come
Punting = at least 6 outs with 1 card to come
It's a bad call and it's not even close. People destroyed Barry Switzer for this exact thing. In college that isn't a bad call, but in the NFL it clearly is.
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