The new and improved Teeblahg is only 2 Short days away! Here is something to chew on. I was thinking in terms of Fantasy Football. Instead of making the inferences (I have two minutes left here at work) I will just post the quote and have you do the work in your melon.
by John Kenneth Galbraith Professor of Economics Emeritus at Harvard University:
"For some seventy years my working life has been concerned with economics, along with not infrequent departures to public and political service that had an economic aspect and one tour in journalism. During that time I have learned that to be right and useful, one must accept a continuing divergence between approved belief—what I have elsewhere called
conventional wisdom —and the reality. And in the end, not surprisingly, it is the reality that counts.
...it is my conclusion that reality is more obscured by social or habitual preference and personal or group pecuniary advantage in economics and politics than in any other subject.
More to be told is of the longer and larger departure from reality of approved and conditioned belief in the economic world. …out of the pecuniary and political pressures and fashions of the time, economics and larger economic and
political systems cultivate their own version of truth. This last has no necessary relation to reality. No one is especially at fault; what it is convenient to believe is greatly preferred. This is something of which all who have studied economics, all who are now students and all who have some interest in economic and political life should be aware. It is what serves, or is not adverse to, influential economic, political and social interest.
Most progenitors of what I here intend to identify as innocent fraud are not deliberately in its service. They are unaware of how their views are shaped, how they are had. No clear legal question is involved. Response comes not from violation of law but from personal and social belief. There is no serious sense of guilt; more likely, there is self-approval.”
by John Kenneth Galbraith Professor of Economics Emeritus at Harvard University:
"For some seventy years my working life has been concerned with economics, along with not infrequent departures to public and political service that had an economic aspect and one tour in journalism. During that time I have learned that to be right and useful, one must accept a continuing divergence between approved belief—what I have elsewhere called
conventional wisdom —and the reality. And in the end, not surprisingly, it is the reality that counts.
...it is my conclusion that reality is more obscured by social or habitual preference and personal or group pecuniary advantage in economics and politics than in any other subject.
More to be told is of the longer and larger departure from reality of approved and conditioned belief in the economic world. …out of the pecuniary and political pressures and fashions of the time, economics and larger economic and
political systems cultivate their own version of truth. This last has no necessary relation to reality. No one is especially at fault; what it is convenient to believe is greatly preferred. This is something of which all who have studied economics, all who are now students and all who have some interest in economic and political life should be aware. It is what serves, or is not adverse to, influential economic, political and social interest.
Most progenitors of what I here intend to identify as innocent fraud are not deliberately in its service. They are unaware of how their views are shaped, how they are had. No clear legal question is involved. Response comes not from violation of law but from personal and social belief. There is no serious sense of guilt; more likely, there is self-approval.”
posted by teeblah at 7:01 PM
2 Comments:
So do "conventional wisdom" and "reality" differ in fantasy football?? You're damn right they do. I guess the tricky part of it all is that 95% of fantasy football is predicated on the past and the future, with little use for what is actually happening in the present.
I'm still wrapping my feeble mind around this, I'm sure you can change this into a discussion on whatever; about the media, politics, religion and all manner of important things, and we ("the royal I") obviously flipped it to fantasy football.
Conventional wisdom seems to say that RB's are the way to go in Fantasy Football. I'm looking at defenses, recievers and even some kickers that routinely put up more points than most running-backs. Are they the way to go because they are the point producers, or because there are so few legit options?? I think the reality in the current state of the NFL is that the current system of fantasy football, at least the version most people play, may be rendered useless in 7-12 years. The running back by committee, ridiculous attention to schemes and personnel, giant coaching egos, injuries and the continuation of defenders becoming freakishly strong, fast and well coached may make the days of "go-to running backs" a thing of the past.
I'm watching the MNF game, and it's a joke, the offenses can do nothing. And if any of you have watched a SEC conference college game in the last few years, you can see where I'm pointing at too.
So that seems like it's the reality for now, that defense, injuries and coaching are taking some of the fun out of the old game. Maybe the future holds some new things in store though, maybe team running-backs, or more leagues going to IDP, or contract style leagues, whatever. Either way, I didn't give myself enough time to think about this before I started typing. How else were you thinking that the two sides differ-in relation to fantasy football that is?
Dircks touches on something important point here that I think relates to Tom's point. Conventional wisdom is that running backs are so crucial that you must draft them early and have a robust RB corps. This probably stems from the fact that good RBs will comprise a disproportionately large share of your team's overall points.
But from an economic standpoint, the reality of fantasy value isn't what relative share of your team's points a certain position will provide, but the value of each individual player over an average replacement player (VORP for baseball statistic fans). When you analyze players' value based on anticipated VORP, you see that while some RBs are indeed among the most valuable fantasy players (this year's anticipated top-three VORP leaders were LJ, LT, and Alexander), beyond those elite few RBs, the remaining RBs are all less valuable on a VORP basis than a host of WRs and QBs and TEs (in leagues with WRs and TEs, the vast disparity between top TEs and the average TEs increase their VORP value to such a degree that multiple TEs are in the top 20 players overall). The value of players are generally dependent on the relative depth of the category they are in. It appears on this basis that a fixation on RBs beyond the top three or four RBs was potentially a mistake.
Of course, any VORP analysis for fantasy drafting is entirely dependent on subjective judgements of to the projected production of each individual player, which are just as subject to the kind of errors in judgement that Gallbraith is talking about in terms of conventional wisdom versus reality, so in the end I have no real point, especially since I'm a bad fantasy player.
But ultimately I think any analysis of fantasy value would be incomplete without inclusion of a VORP-style measurement.
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