Binary decisions can be the most difficult to make because you cannot make a correct choice if each option seems equally correct. This can turn a simple "yes" or "no" question into a form of torture that only sociopaths are spared from. This universal truth (as Adam Sandler might put it) was best illustrated in the Mr. Show sketch 'Change for a Dollar.' What should you do when someone asks for change for a dollar, quarters mostly? The sketch does not definitively answer this, but we do learn that ultimate success in life is not about making the correct decisions, it's about making decisions. This is an important truth to know.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Mr. Show Searches for Truth
Adam Sandler infamously declared during a video segment at the 84th Academy Awards that he's "eventually trying to, one day, tell the truth." Sandler might not be the most credible truth-seeker out there, but his pursuit to portray reality through comedy remains noble (even if this somehow involves the existence of Grown Ups 2). After all, humorously exploring universal human experiences fertile ground for comedy. The agony of making binary decisions is one such experience.
Binary decisions can be the most difficult to make because you cannot make a correct choice if each option seems equally correct. This can turn a simple "yes" or "no" question into a form of torture that only sociopaths are spared from. This universal truth (as Adam Sandler might put it) was best illustrated in the Mr. Show sketch 'Change for a Dollar.' What should you do when someone asks for change for a dollar, quarters mostly? The sketch does not definitively answer this, but we do learn that ultimate success in life is not about making the correct decisions, it's about making decisions. This is an important truth to know.
Binary decisions can be the most difficult to make because you cannot make a correct choice if each option seems equally correct. This can turn a simple "yes" or "no" question into a form of torture that only sociopaths are spared from. This universal truth (as Adam Sandler might put it) was best illustrated in the Mr. Show sketch 'Change for a Dollar.' What should you do when someone asks for change for a dollar, quarters mostly? The sketch does not definitively answer this, but we do learn that ultimate success in life is not about making the correct decisions, it's about making decisions. This is an important truth to know.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Deceiving Blowouts
It's hard for a football game to be more one-sided than Super Bowl XLVIII. The Seahawks dominated from the first play from scrimmage and at no point did Broncos fans witness anything to get excited about. Denver's only reprieve from humiliation was as meaningless third quarter touchdown that ended the shutout. It's rare to see a wire-to-wire thrashing of this magnitude; rare to the point I do not believe it proved the Seahawks are the better team.
The rules of the NFL playoffs are simple: win every game and you're the champion. The Seahawks claimed their title with such emphasis there is no disputing their champion status. Their claim to "The Best Team in the NFL" title, however, is something we will never truly know. It's difficult to determine the best team by looking at individual games, especially when one of the games is such a significant deviation from the expect outcome that you wonder if what you saw was a macabre figment of your imagination.
We all know that the better team does not always win in sports. This is why the NCAA Tournament is so fun and the core of Kurt Russell's inspirational speech in Miracle. Nobody will argue that the Arizona Cardinals are better than Seattle because they won at CenturyLink Field in Week 16. Similarity, it's hard to argue Seattle is not better than Denver after last Sunday, but are they really 35 points better? Considering nobody 35 points better than anybody in the NFL, the answer is no. So what is there to make of Seattle's 43-8 win?
Sometimes athletes perform poorly. Very, very poorly. Patrick Roy was one of the best goalies in NHL history, yet he surrendered 6 goals before being pulled in Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals at Detroit. Last year's NL Cy Young Winner, Clayton Kershaw, surrendered seven earned runs in four innings in the deciding game of 2013 NLCS at St. Louis. Each player has such a comprehensive track record of greatness that their respective shellackings are indicative of nothing other than them having a bad day against good opposition. The same can be said about teams.
The 1999 Miami Dolphins were pretty good. They won the Wild Card, their first playoff game, and then lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars 62-7 in the Divisional Round. In 2003 the Marquette Golden Eagles, led by future NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade, lost in the Final Four to Kansas 94-61. (It was 59-30 at halftime.) Both the Dolphins and Golden Eagles losses were that nightmarish anomaly that happens when peak performance meets poopy performance, and that's about it.
The 2013 Seahawks do deserve credit for being a buzzsaw. The 49ers were hopelessly over-matched in their first meeting with Seattle, losing 29-3. However, a regression towards the mean occurred as the 49ers emerged victorious in their subsequent game and nearly won the rubber match in the playoffs. Unfortunately the Broncos will not have the opportunity to prove the Super Bowl was a fluke. The next best thing for them to do is to burn the game film and pretend like it never happened. Getting 111,500,000 more people to forget might be a bit more challenging.
The rules of the NFL playoffs are simple: win every game and you're the champion. The Seahawks claimed their title with such emphasis there is no disputing their champion status. Their claim to "The Best Team in the NFL" title, however, is something we will never truly know. It's difficult to determine the best team by looking at individual games, especially when one of the games is such a significant deviation from the expect outcome that you wonder if what you saw was a macabre figment of your imagination.
We all know that the better team does not always win in sports. This is why the NCAA Tournament is so fun and the core of Kurt Russell's inspirational speech in Miracle. Nobody will argue that the Arizona Cardinals are better than Seattle because they won at CenturyLink Field in Week 16. Similarity, it's hard to argue Seattle is not better than Denver after last Sunday, but are they really 35 points better? Considering nobody 35 points better than anybody in the NFL, the answer is no. So what is there to make of Seattle's 43-8 win?
Sometimes athletes perform poorly. Very, very poorly. Patrick Roy was one of the best goalies in NHL history, yet he surrendered 6 goals before being pulled in Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals at Detroit. Last year's NL Cy Young Winner, Clayton Kershaw, surrendered seven earned runs in four innings in the deciding game of 2013 NLCS at St. Louis. Each player has such a comprehensive track record of greatness that their respective shellackings are indicative of nothing other than them having a bad day against good opposition. The same can be said about teams.
The 1999 Miami Dolphins were pretty good. They won the Wild Card, their first playoff game, and then lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars 62-7 in the Divisional Round. In 2003 the Marquette Golden Eagles, led by future NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade, lost in the Final Four to Kansas 94-61. (It was 59-30 at halftime.) Both the Dolphins and Golden Eagles losses were that nightmarish anomaly that happens when peak performance meets poopy performance, and that's about it.
The 2013 Seahawks do deserve credit for being a buzzsaw. The 49ers were hopelessly over-matched in their first meeting with Seattle, losing 29-3. However, a regression towards the mean occurred as the 49ers emerged victorious in their subsequent game and nearly won the rubber match in the playoffs. Unfortunately the Broncos will not have the opportunity to prove the Super Bowl was a fluke. The next best thing for them to do is to burn the game film and pretend like it never happened. Getting 111,500,000 more people to forget might be a bit more challenging.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Concussions and Empiricism
A few months ago Richard Sherman wrote an article for MMQB.com arguing that the NFL's safety measures to prevent concussions are disrupting the integrity of the game. The heart of his argument is that playing football is a choice. Players know the health risks yet still decide to play, and that's how it should be. As Sherman points out, this is true for other sports as well:
A NASCAR driver understands that anything can happen during a race; his
car could flip at 200 miles per hour. A boxer knows when he goes in the
ring what’s happening to his body. Just like them, we understand this is
a dangerous game with consequences not just in the short term, but for
the rest of our lives. All of us NFL players, from wide receivers to
defensive backs, chose this profession.
I disagree with Sherman's confidence in the NFL players' knowledge of the risks, especially as it pertains to concussions. They may understand the risks in an abstract sense, but regarding Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) that is not enough. Consider the following roundabout example.
About 45% of my diet consists of frozen pizza. My affinity for frozen pizza used to be accompanied by the belief the oven mitts are a little too cumbersome. For the sake of expedience I would often remove the pizza from the oven with my bare hands. After burning myself a few times I learned that ovens are hot and the risk of burning myself is too high to not use an oven mitt. More importantly, I gained the knowledge of the pain associated with touching 400 degree metal. But what of pain or discomfort that cannot be immediately associated with an experience? This takes us back to the issue of concussions.
Most NFL players know from experience what sprains, tears, bruises, and broken bones feel like. But do they know what it's like to be unable to remember years of their life? Or live in a constant state of depression? The problem with CTE is its symptoms are unlike ailments football players are familiar with. Furthermore, because you do not experience the effects of CTE until well after your playing days are over it impossible for NFL players to truly understand this unavoidable risk of playing football.
All of this is not to say that accepting the risk of the unknown should be disallowed in sports. Every decision ever made by anybody comes with unknown risks, so this concept is nothing new. Even so, you cannot say football players know the risks when, in fact, is impossible to know them. To simply dismiss this as a choice ignores the more pertinent epistemological question, and in doing so discourages players from performing the necessary analysis that will allow them to better decide if playing football is a risk they want to take.
I disagree with Sherman's confidence in the NFL players' knowledge of the risks, especially as it pertains to concussions. They may understand the risks in an abstract sense, but regarding Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) that is not enough. Consider the following roundabout example.
About 45% of my diet consists of frozen pizza. My affinity for frozen pizza used to be accompanied by the belief the oven mitts are a little too cumbersome. For the sake of expedience I would often remove the pizza from the oven with my bare hands. After burning myself a few times I learned that ovens are hot and the risk of burning myself is too high to not use an oven mitt. More importantly, I gained the knowledge of the pain associated with touching 400 degree metal. But what of pain or discomfort that cannot be immediately associated with an experience? This takes us back to the issue of concussions.
Most NFL players know from experience what sprains, tears, bruises, and broken bones feel like. But do they know what it's like to be unable to remember years of their life? Or live in a constant state of depression? The problem with CTE is its symptoms are unlike ailments football players are familiar with. Furthermore, because you do not experience the effects of CTE until well after your playing days are over it impossible for NFL players to truly understand this unavoidable risk of playing football.
All of this is not to say that accepting the risk of the unknown should be disallowed in sports. Every decision ever made by anybody comes with unknown risks, so this concept is nothing new. Even so, you cannot say football players know the risks when, in fact, is impossible to know them. To simply dismiss this as a choice ignores the more pertinent epistemological question, and in doing so discourages players from performing the necessary analysis that will allow them to better decide if playing football is a risk they want to take.
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