Add new comment

Well said G,
The quantitative approach is, without a doubt, a highly effective means of extracing meaningful data that can be used to gain insight and plan. As an engineer by training, I find myself often reminding those close to me to not rely on their intuition or common sense in their decision making. Intuition can be easily tricked and often is, and the mind can create its own realities that can be proven false with simple data to the contrary. HOWEVER, 1's and 0's cannot and do not tell the whole story. If the entire universe could be quantified in discrete, quantifiable chunks of data, you might be able to make the argument that we need to rely solely on our data. But the magnitude of that information would be impossible to sift through with the current capabilities of the human brain, and regardless, we aren't even CLOSE to having that much of the universe quantified. IMO, we never will.
I've heard Alan Watts talk about "Prickles and Goo". Prickly people think that the world is composed of discrete, quantifiable chunks, while gooey folks insist that the universe and all of its components are continuous, holistic, and inseparable from one another. Engineers would be a pricklier sort, while artists would relate easily to the gooey mindset. Prickly folks will get frustrated when the can't fit the universe into nice, quantifiable boxes.
Both don't have the whole picture and never will, because the universe is made of gooey prickles and prickly goo.
Those well versed in the scientific method can mistakenly carry the process to its logical conclusion and insist "if I can't measure it, it either doesn't
exist or it is useless to my experiment". The scientific process in and of itself biased toward the attempt to places previously unquantifiable things into
nice, little boxes that can be easily controlled and understood. It is a triumph of the human mind. But it only tells half the story. What about aesthetics, feelings, pleasure? The analysis of the mechanics of these processes miss the meaning behind them. Because I can't quantify how much I love my mother, does that make it an illusion useless to my quality of life? I feel that it's a good thing that some things aren't quantifiable. I embrace unpredictability.
Take the skin on the back of your hand. The artist will admire its aesthetics, its function. The biologist will say,
"look closer, it's made of individual cells". Zoom in further you'll see the cell is made of individual components. Zoom in further you'll see the components are made of molecules. The molecules are composed of atoms. But then it gets weird. Weird because the atom then just becomes an unquantifiable cloud of probabilities. AT THE PHYSICAL BOTTOM OF MATTER THINGS ARE NOT QUANTIFIABLE.
Insisting on having all things be quantifiable (being able to "show your work") before you acknowledge their value is an endless road. You will never reach the point of absolute, quantifiable knowledge. You will never be satisfied. At some point, intuition and experience, FEEL, has to fill the gap.
Besides, when intuition is well trained it can actually be quite powerful and reliable. When a master guitarist is ripping an improvised guitar solo in real time, he is not thinking in 3rds, 5ths, keys, or vibrations per second. He likely practiced thinking this way while learning, but when it comes time to play that way of thinking is simply too slow. Besides, in that form of music, it entirely misses the point. I'm not dismissing the value of technically planned music, I quite enjoy it sometimes. Just saying that in music, as in most things, practice is a prickly process, while performance is a gooey one. But music is prickly goo. Practice is prickly, performance is goo.
Likewise, I myself enjoy the statistical nature of baseball. I love pouring through stats and analyzing the newest SABR-endorsed statistic. I like knowing that knowledge of the line drive rate of a certain batter can give me insight into a player that a competitor in my fantasy league may not have. But the stats don't tell the whole story and I doubt they ever will.
Finally, these comments are not meant as a diss against the analytical thinkers like Logan at all. On the contrary, I learn very much from them on a daily basis and I'll probably never reach their level of analytical prowess. I simply think that it's very important to remember to avoid any hubris that would lead us to think that we have "solved" the problem of baseball players in any particular way. We need to respect the value of aspects of baseball players that will never be quantified.