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mwengler comments on Open Thread, Feb. 2 - Feb 8, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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To any of you football fans out there, I think the outrage over the Seahawks' decision to throw it on the goal line is a classic example of hindsight bias. Throwing on the goal line is hardly unheard of, and they couldn't run it 3 times anyway. This FiveThirtyEight article explains why throwing actually was a good decision. Anyway, everyone thinks that the decision to throw it was terrible, and I think that they're being victims to the hindsight bias.
I have always thought that any discussion of sports was sort of a playground for human bias and human error. So much passion for no real purpose. Affiliating with a team? The opposite of taking a principled position.
I guess it never occurred to me before that actually making this thought explicit might be valuable. But since discussion of the pass has reached less wrong, here it is.
What does have "real purpose"? Could you elaborate on this?
My thoughts are that most things we do for fun don't really have "purpose", that sports are no different, and that they're an underrated way (amongst this community and most of society) to accomplish the goals of having fun, being in good shape and being happy.
Ah! I may have a meta-contrarian position to contribute:
This is not useful -> This is useful for having fun -> Fun is a valid goal, but this is a fairly ineffective way to have fun.
In the same way that people are routinely in error about how to improve everything else, they are routinely in error about what things are good at actually providing fun. And there is a familiar resistance to the direct application of thought to the problem, which relies on the normal excuses ("Isn't it all subjective?", "But thinking is incompatible with feeling! Haven't you seen Spock?").
Playing sports looks really good from an "effective hedonism" standpoint, even up to several hours a week. But for most people, I'm skeptical that regularly watching sports provides a decent long-term return, when done for more than a few hours every month or year.
Tangentially related: My local baseball team is far funner to watch than the top teams, because they make more mistakes, which leads to more unpredictable and exciting plays, but at the same time they're still athletic enough that you're not just watching children flounder around. In the same way, I really enjoyed the last superbowl.
Good points. Particularly about watching vs. playing. I'm a lot more skeptical about the value of watching.