Hyperbole? Nah.

From the Citi Field opening day program:

"There was no lack of shattering news events in the year 1969. There was the Jets Super Bowl III victory, the Woodstock Festival and Concert, Lyndon Johnson leaving office and the ascendancy of Richard Nixon to the Presidency, the implementation of the first artificial heart and Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon.

But for sheer drama and surprise, nothing could match what happened on October 16, the date the expansion New York Mets sent shock waves through the baseball world by defeating the Baltimore Orioles for the World Series Championship."

Man walked on the fucking moon...but that's got nothin' on the Mets winning a World Series.

I don't like this

So apparently Suppan is going to be the Opening Day pitcher.

Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, the order you put your rotation in doesn't really make that difference, but this just doesn't make sense to me. The number one starter typically makes the most starts, so why not put your best pitcher there? The argument about Gallardo not having enough experience just doesn't fly with me, especially if your replacement is Suppan, our worst pitcher.

The decision itself probably won't have terrible repercussions, but the thought process worries me.

God is Not Dead

This is a thought that just occurred to me, so I'm going to make this one quick and pretentious; I suspect my reach is exceeding my grasp, but let's give it a try anyway.

A few days ago, Jon Stewart interviewed Jim Cramer and took him to task for his, and CNBC's, failure to see the financial crisis coming; more specifically, for their continued insistence that everything was just fine when in fact, obviously, things weren't. While CNBC clearly completely failed to correctly read the economy, I don't understand why anyone would expect them to, when the investment bankers who actually had billions of dollars riding on the economy couldn't see it coming, either. I mean, seriously; if the chairmen of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, et al, couldn't foresee their future bankruptcy, how could a cable channel with considerably less interest in the banks' continued health see it coming?

The truth is that no one could see it coming, and this is what people find so hard to accept. So much of life is random and unpredictable, and yet we continually insist on trying to put a framework and predictability onto it. And, so, I would say that Nietzsche was wrong when he said, "God is dead." When he said that, he meant that humans are no longer able to believe in some grand cosmic order, or overarching structure, and are doomed to resort to relativism and nihilism (Wikipedia has a good summary). However, to me, it appears the opposite is true. Humans instinctively believe there is an overarching order; when a financial crisis strikes, it seems impossible that it could not have been foreseen, and if anyone didn't predict, it must be due to their ineptitude, not to any inherent unpredictability. People are frightened by the idea of a true chaotic randomness, and continually resist it. Until they accept it, God will never die.

Bill Gates is crazy

Bill Gates released mosquitoes at the TED conference.

I have to say, I'm very disappointed with this news. If someone as rich and powerful as Bill Gates is going to go batshit insane, there are way cooler ways he could do it. For example, he could call a press conference and say, "President Obama, I understand the need to protect American lives from foreign threats, but this involves putting American lives at risk. In light of this, I'm proud to present you with a new combat brigade of 10,000 troops...made entirely out of butter," and then he'd pull back a curtain to reveal 10,000 soldier sculptures, each uniquely hand-crafted out of Land O'Lakes Sweet Cream.

Or he could build a gigantic airplane hangar, and pay guys to hang out there all day, firing off automatic weapons and practicing karate, and if anyone asks him what it's for, he'd respond, "To kill James Bond." If it was pointed out to him that James Bond is a fictional character, he'd say, "That's not what the Major told me."

Or he could say, "Ladies and gentleman, in the future, we'll purchase more and more consumer goods from vending machines. Ladies and gentleman...the future is now. I present to you the first gerbil vending machine."

Or he could build a complete replica of a small town from the 1950s in the middle of the Nevada desert and hire people to smoke pipes and lead normal lives working in factories and soda fountains, just like the good old days...except none of them would wear any pants.

Anyway, I think I've made my point: if Bill Gates is going to go off the deep end, he should just commit and really do it like only he can. Releasing mosquitoes is weak sauce.

Follow-up on Michael Lewis piece post

Here's a great video from one of the Ted conferences about choice and horizontal segmentation and so forth.

There're a lot of directions I could go with this one, but for now I want to focus on something he mentions in the middle: that people don't know what they want, or at least can't accurately describe what they want. This, I think, backs up to some extent my assertion that people might misunderstand the utility of something to themselves, and thus break a pricing mechanism.

The thing about this point is it really cuts to the heart of most political debate: just how responsible are people for their actions? Libertarians believe in people having complete authority to make their own decisions; extremely statist liberals (for lack of a better term) believe in government superseding people's authority to make their own decisions. Ideologically, I fall more in line with the former belief, and, to a great extent, most Americans do as well, even the liberals, but reality does occasionally suggest that perhaps people shouldn't be trusted to make their own decisions as much. I suppose that's why it's debated over.

Again, I do hope to expand more on these thoughts, but that's what I have for now.

Let's talk about abortion!

When I started writing this blog, I wanted to try to avoid talking about politics. However, I find that is the sort of thing I'd talk to myself about often, so I decided there's not much point in keeping it away from the blog. While I'll make reference to my beliefs, I'm going to try to keep political posts focused less on beliefs themselves than on how they're perceived in the public sphere, which I think is an accurate description of this post. Besides, no one reads this blog anyway, so I don't really have anyone to offend.

So, abortion. I do consider myself pro-abortion, and I use that term rather than another one for reasons I'll get to. I do believe the government shouldn't step in to tell women they can't have abortions...but I'm not militant about that belief. That is to say (and if someone actually read this, they'd probably be offended), I'm not going to stand up and say, "How dare you take away the right to kill a fetus?!" It's really a judgment call on my part to be pro-abortion, and it's not something I can back up with rigorous documentation or appeal to facts; really, it's mostly a gut feeling. I'm wary about the intrusion of government power, and I feel banning abortion would go too far. Other people might feel it doesn't go too far, and I can respect that. I can't get all offended that someone feels that way.

But my views on abortion go beyond that. Not only can I not get militant about it, I don't even really care about it that much. I am far more interested in economic policy, foreign policy, hell, even gay marriage, than I am in abortion policy, because I feel that on the grand scale of things, it just isn't that important. (Perhaps that's why I feel the government shouldn't bother with it.)

This brings me to why I've decided to reject the labels "pro-choice" and "pro-life". First of all, needless to say both labels are just spin, and I don't like spin. I try to be a no-bullshit type of guy. People who are pro-abortion say they're "pro-choice" because being pro-abortion, well, first of all, just sounds sadistic, but second of all, "pro-choice" just sounds downright American. We should be able to choose for ourselves. And people who are pro-life could call themselves "anti-abortion", but you never want to identify yourself as "anti-" anything; you want to be for something! And what better to be for other than life? I mean, who's anti-life, other than serial killers?

But what I really don't like about the labels "pro-choice" and "pro-life" is that they try to be about more than they really are; they try to expand the issue. Being "pro-choice" means you're in favor of the choice to have (or not have) an abortion, but the implication is that you're in favor of choosing, in general, rather than being barred from making the choice. Well, that's all well and good, but does being in favor of the choice to have an abortion really say anything about how much you want to let people make their own choices? How many people think women should get to choose to have an abortion, but shouldn't get to choose whether they can smoke in a bar or restaurant? How many people believe in choice for abortion, but not for paying into Social Security? I submit there is no correlation between the two; being "pro-abortion" doesn't necessarily mean being "pro-choice".

And the same is true for "pro-life". People who are opposed to abortion regularly explain their opposition in terms of "protecting the sanctity of human life," and believing that "all life is sacred." Well, y'know, I think I'm a pretty "pro-life" guy, in a sense; I believe in respecting other people's lives, and enjoying my own life; I think life is worth living, and believe every day I wake up is a great one. In short, I don't think that being for abortion makes one any less "pro-life". Beliefs about abortion have a connection to beliefs about life, but it does not have to be a defining one; frankly, I think it's a rather tenuous one.

So I think we should abandon the terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life", and stop trying to pretend this whole thing is more than it is. It's really just about one thing, abortion, so let's say it's about abortion. You're either pro-abortion, or anti-abortion. Now, those who would call themselves "pro-choice" may object to the label pro-abortion because it implies being in favor of the act, when many pro-choice activists are opposed to the act, but think government shouldn't ban it. I understand this objection, and I would say "pro-allowing people to have abortions", but, sorry, it's just too damn long :-p. (I don't think the pro-life activists would really have a problem with the designation "anti-abortion".) At any rate, I'm trying to get away from the connotations of these words and just focus on the denotations. If someone says "pro-abortion", we all know what that means. It's not a good PR term, but frankly, I think we should all get away from the PR mentality; hell that's what I meant above, when I criticized "pro-choice" and "pro-life" as spin terms, and that I try to be no-bullshit. To me, no-bullshit pretty much means you're not going to try to sugarcoat what you think just to make it sound better to people. Let's call things what they are, and that's what I'm going to do: from now on, I'm done saying "pro-choice" and "pro-life", and I'm just going to stick to the accurate terms: "pro-abortion" and "anti-abortion".

Wall Street and calculating utility

Great article here by Michael Lewis (of Moneyball fame, as previously referenced on this blog) about the financial collapse.

The thing I find most interesting about it is how the heart of the matter is that assets were overvalued, and what that says about a market. Wall Street firms were selling assets that were ridiculously overvalued, and acting as though they had value. It is easy to try to blame the firms for inflating the value of their assets, except people were willing to buy these assets. It takes both a buyer and a seller to set a price, and buyers were just as irrationally overvaluing assets.

This is, in a sense, almost frightening, because it suggests a way in which the market system is flawed. It is essential to a properly functioning market that buyers and sellers understand the utility of what they're selling or purchasing; indeed, that's how the price is set. Buyers only pay a price that's equal to or lower than what the good (or asset) is worth to them, and sellers only take a price equal to or higher what it's worth to them, and an equilibrium is found.

However, what if buyers and sellers aren't able to know what a good is worth to them? It's not implausible. When we discuss the myriad calculations that must be done to determine a good's value, it is unreasonable to think that everyone performs those calculations; surely people value and undervalue goods.

That, however, is the key: error in valuing goods should be random. What happened in the run-up to the Wall Street crash is that error in valuing goods was systematic, and all in the overvaluing direction. This sort of systematic error subverts the market.

Hopefully I'll be able to clean up this post and expand upon it, but these are my thoughts for now.

Observation vs. Statistics

Nothing very relevant or topical about this, but I had some thoughts about sabermetrics and its critics. A common criticism goes something along the lines of, "You can cite all the numbers you want, but I saw so-and-so play, and you can't tell me they weren't great."

Now, leaving to one side the fact that you can very easily be deceived by what you see, I'm very intrigued by this concept that seeing a player tells you more than their stats do. I think this is a curious concept in a game like baseball, which is much less about what you do on any given day than about how much you do over a long period of time. Case in point: take a player like Chad Moeller. On April 27, 2004, Chad Moeller hit for the cycle. If you saw him on that day, you'd think he's a great player. But Chad Moeller has a lifetime OPS+ of 61. He's terrible. The only way you'd know that is by watching him over a large number of games, and seeing how he tends to do.

And what exactly happens when you watch someone over a large number of games? What exactly do you see that lets you know if they're a good player or not? You certainly don't see them get on base every time they step up to the plate; the odds are overwhelming you see a player make an out more than half the time. You do, however, see them get on base sometimes, drive in runs sometimes, get big hits sometimes, etc. More importantly, you see how often they do this. Even the worst player will hit a home run sometimes, and even the very best player will strikeout sometimes, but what separates the best from the worst is how often they do each thing. So if you rate a player well, you remember seeing them succeed often. Well, what's better? Saying, "Yeah, I saw this guy, he always came up with the big hit," or going back and counting...and seeing just how often the guy came through? I mean, any time you're trying to figure out how often something happens, which is better: trying to remember how often it felt like happening, or going back and counting how many times it actually did happen? Clearly, counting, that is, figuring out what the actual facts are, rather than just what they seemed like, is the way to go.

Of course, even the most vehement saber-critic recognizes this, which is why they still use numbers like batting average and RBI. More often than not the argument is not about whether to use numbers, but about which numbers to use. It is quite clear we need to use numbers, contra any "I saw him play" argument.

This brings to mind another thought which I've had on a few occasions. I feel like even many non-sabermetrically inclined people recognize that batting average and RBI and so forth don't tell you everything, and that's why they're so quick to say, "The stats don't tell you everything; you have to watch them play." They're used to stats that can be very misleading, and so they insist the same about all stats, even though sabermetric stats are designed to avoid the pitfalls of more conventional stats. It's almost like a Catch-22.

PS3s at New Yankee Stadium?

Yankees strike deal with Sony

So, according the article linked above, the Yankees have struck a sponsorship deal with Sony which includes, in addition to all the usual signage and so forth, flat panel TVs set up around the stadium, including on the concourse, to broadcast the game for when you step away to take a leak or buy more nachos or whatever. Okay, so far, so good. I've always been in favor of sponsorship deals, because as far as I'm concerned, if a sponsor is paying money to someone producing a good I'm enjoying, that's less money I have to pay them. Furthermore, having TVs set up around a baseball park is actually pretty nice; when I went to see the Brewers in the playoffs at Citizens Bank Park in Philly they had TVs set up broadcasting the game, and it was cool.

What caught my eye, however, is this passage: "In addition, Sony PlayStation 3 entertainment systems and VAIO notebook computers will be available to fans in select locations throughout the Stadium."

Seriously? I mean, I know most people think baseball is boring, but seriously? People are going to spend hundreds of dollars to go to a baseball game...so they can go play GTA 4 between innings? (In fact, it's even worse than that, 'cause it's not like they'd ever put GTA 4 on one of those things, so you'll have to play, I dunno, Sonic or something like that). I dunno, I'm not at all an opponent of new sponsorships, and I'm not even much of an opponent of fancy new features at ballparks, but this one just seems a little ridiculous to me.

BTW, when I was typing out "New Yankee Stadium", I realized I felt like there should be a nickname for the new park. I mean, "New Yankee Stadium" is a nickname to begin with, because it's officially just "Yankee Stadium", just like the old one, but we all know it's not the old one. I'm not a huge fan of David Chalk, Devil Rays blogger at Bugs and Cranks, but I do think his nickname for old Yankee Stadium was pretty apt: "That Old Dump in the Bronx". With this in mind, I think it'd be appropriate to nickname the new stadium "That New Dump in the Bronx". If that's too long, another one that occurs to me is "Yankee Stadium III", in recognition of the fact that the old stadium was really "Yankee Stadium II" ever since the mid-70s remodel.

The Pat Burrell signing

I'm a couple of days late on this one, but I was thinking earlier today that the Rays' signing of Pat Burrell for 2 years and $16 million makes the Phillies look even worse for the Raúl Ibáñez signing. The Phillies signed Ibáñez for 3 years and $30 million to replace Burrell, essentially, even though Ibáñez is 4 years older, isn't as good offensively, is even worse defensively (which is saying something), and, apparently, is more expensive than Pat the Bat. It's absolutely incredible how that worked out. The Phillies ended up paying more money and committing to more years for a player that's straight-up inferior. It suggests a few things:

-We've been seeing the effects of the depressed economy on free agent signings, but this seems to suggest that it's worse than people thought it would be even a few months ago when everyone knew it was bad. (Supporting this notion is the fact that the players' union encouraged free agents to turn down arbitration, even though this has come back to hurt several players [Jason Varitek, for one].)

-The Rays got a tremendous deal. I've heard it suggested that Burrell gave them a discount for some reason. I suppose this is possible, and it would somewhat excuse the Phillies for signing Ibáñez, but it's looking more and more like the market for all-hit no-glove guys just isn't there. I mean, even Manny bloody Ramirez can't get signed, let alone guys like Adam Dunn and Bobby Abreu. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they (Dunn and Abreu) get deals in the same ballpark.

-Perhaps the Phillies' front office has a real problem with Pat Burrell. I haven't really looked into that, but if there is a problem, it's certainly not a widely known one, because it's not the sort of thing that comes up every time he's mentioned. Furthermore, I also haven't heard any suggestions that he's a problem in the clubhouse. Clearly I don't work in the front office of an MLB team, and if I did, maybe I'd think differently, but I think if I were GM and I had a personality problem with a player, if he went out and performed well and didn't cause trouble in the clubhouse I'd keep paying him and try to re-sign him. But maybe there were bigger problems afoot in Philly.

"The Germans make great stuff, y'know"

So über-blogger Joe Posnanski had a piece mentioning infomercials, and of course ended up talking about the Shamwow. One of the things he highlighted is the fact that the Shamwow ad stresses the fact that it's made in Germany, and he wondered why. To wit:

"If it said: 'Made in USA,' OK, I’d get it, we’re trying to play the patriotic card. But what possible good could come out of people knowing that the ShamWow is made in Germany? Are there people out there thinking: 'Well, Germany is known for their shammy-type products. Who could forget the ShamCow, which was only a four inch square but could suck up an entire half-gallon carton of milk. And the ShamPlow. Those Germans are Shammerrific.'"


I think the idea is that it’s not made in China, Taiwan, Korea, Pakistan, etc. People have an idea that stuff made there is somehow inferior, because they don’t understand how exploiting comparative advantage reduces cost, and figure if it’s that much cheaper, there must be something wrong with it. The recent well-known problems with goods coming from China only reinforces this view. Products from Germany don’t have this same stigma because, if anything, they tend to be more expensive (just think about cars: Mercedes, Porsche, etc.).

This, of course, lends some credence to ideas of upward-sloping demand curves: people assume that if something is more expensive, it must be better. Clearly this phenomenon does not often dominate, but I wonder how pervasive it is.

"If it saves just one life, it's worth it."

A few years ago, the town I live in built a stoplight at an intersection where a high school girl had died in a car accident. While they were building it, I drove past there with a friend of mine and his mother. When he commented that there was really no need to build a street light there, his mother said, "If it saves just one life, it's worth it."

Now, it's possible that his mother knew how much it cost to build and maintain a streetlight there, and decided one life would be worth it, but it's far more likely that she meant that any expense is justified if it saves "just one life"; i.e., lives have an infinite value. This, of course, is absurd, because it would imply we should devote all of our resources towards saving lives. This, in turn, becomes even more absurd, because there are various places towards which resources must be directed to save lives (food, shelter, healthcare, etc.), but if lives have an infinite value, it becomes impossible to efficiently determine just how these resources should be allocated towards saving lives. Infinite values do not work well in a market.

In short, it's clear that lives do not have an infinite value, and there must be some finite value we could place on a life. There must be some dollar value that it's not worth spending, even "if it saves just one life". However, as a society we're extremely uncomfortable placing a finite value on a life, and try to treat all lives as having infinite value, even though this is an untenable position. It is, I think, not difficult to see how many political disagreements can and do stem from this dilemma.

The invisibility of luck

I got this passage off of Curt Schilling's blog; he's the one responding to the question:

"Bradford: When referencing this potential move, some have cited the Yankees decision to go with high-priced talent in the early 2000’s instead of the “heart and soul” guys that were on the championship teams. Is that kind of chemistry/clubhouse influence overstated?

Me: No, no and a million more times no. The easiest way to figure that out is to play fantasy baseball right? Take the 2004 Yankees on paper, play them against ANY other 2004 team and play a 5×5 league. How do they fare? I’d expect REAL well and pretty dominating? There is so much that happens outside the 3-4 hours of games each day
that impact and influence teams in a way no statistician or ‘expert’ can ever hope to define or quantify. It affects wins and losses, it affects clubs state of mind, it affects everything."

Let me preface this by saying I don't dislike Curt Schilling like a lot of people do; sure, he's loud and opinionated, but isn't that what we want from athletes? Don't we get tired of them not giving real answers to questions?

Anyway, with that out of the way, his answer is quite fascinating for how it illustrates the average person's complete unawareness of luck, randomness, and small sample size. He points out the fact that the 2004 Yankees would dominate any other 2004 team in fantasy baseball as evidence of the effect of intangibles on baseball performance. It's hard to see how that's evidence because, in real life, the 2004 Yankees damn near made it to the World Series. Schilling clearly believes it was intangibles and clubhouse vibe that made them miss it, but, let's face it: they lost their ticket to the big show over the course of 4 games. That's an extremely small sample size, it could have easily gone the other way, and the Red Sox had luck on their side. Now, granted, this isn't to say the 2004 Red Sox weren't a good team, because they were a great team, and got to the World Series in part through excellent performances. However, it's not enough just to be good; sometimes you need luck on your side, too.

What's fascinating about this is that Schilling, of course, was right in the middle of that Red Sox performance. He, clearly, believes that luck played no role in his team's victory, but rather it must have been entirely their performances. Although he has benefited from luck, he is blind to it. I suspect this happens quite often to people. When remarkable things happen to them, they are blind to the extent to which it was just dumb luck, and must find reasons to ascribe to them.

The Moneyball Fallacy

There's a common fallacy that I see people make; I don't think it has a technical Latin name like most good fallacies, so I like to call it the Moneyball fallacy. Moneyball is a book from 2003 chronicling the Oakland A's front office, led by their general manager Billy Beane, who have applied new statistical principles to find baseball players undervalued by the market, allowing them to remain competitive as a low-revenue, small-market team. Probably the most famous statistical principle from the book is the idea of on-base percentage, which, unlike batting average, looks at how often a baseball player gets on base in any way, including walks, which are ignored in batting average. Beane and the A's front office found that on-base percentage was both extremely valuable and widely ignored, and therefore cheap.

The lesson of the book is that new knowledge can and should be used to exploit inefficiencies in a market, particularly when traditional impulses cause the new knowledge to be widely ignored. The lesson that everyone got from the book, however, is that on-base percentage is important, and now it is, in fact, overvalued in the market. That's the Moneyball fallacy. It's the fallacy of ignoring the real, more general, underlying lesson from a situation or experience and instead focusing on and taking away the simpler, more contextual, less valuable lesson. This fallacy can be seen all the time in all sorts of fields. For example, during coverage of the 2004 election, broadcast networks waited until late in the night to announce the results from the Florida election, but announced the results from the Ohio election relatively early even though it ended up being closer than the Florida election. This is because the the lesson they got from the 2000 election debacle was "Call Florida correctly", not "Don't call any states until you're certain of their outcome."

I brought this up because I had a very current and topical example of the Moneyball fallacy in action, but now I can't remember what it was. Hopefully I will.

If someone had asked me...

“On a lighter note, do you wish your daughter would have married a better defensive coordinator?”

I would've replied, "Does your wife wish she hadn't married a total twat?"