Guess Again

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily,
joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
clinical, intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the world's asleep,
the questions run too deep
for such a simple man.
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd
but please tell me who I am.

Supertramp 1979

  When I was young I had the luxury of making emotional and incorrect decisions at a fairly consistent rate.  Now that I’m older and responsible for other humans, I don’t have the option of getting things wrong.  The stakes are too high. That’s why over time I’ve embraced completely the idea of basing virtually everything on objective evidence.

  This idea began about 30 years ago when I started reading a baseball writer named Bill James.  He was the forefather of what is now called “analytics” in sports.  Basically, instead of guessing based on incomplete information (“Who’s better, Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds?”), it sought to answer definitively every conceivable question in baseball, using primarily math and logic.  We no longer had to guess what made a winning baseball team, we could simply look at every single team in history and see what factors the winning ones had that the losing ones did not.  Opinion was out, fact was in.  Unsurprisingly, the teams in all sports that have embraced analytics have greatly outperformed those that don’t.

That’s how I run my life.  In everything.  I have zero interest in alternative medicine based on anecdotes and opinions. I want double-blind controlled studies from an unbiased source to see what really works.  I want to see evidence for as much as I can in my life.  I watch less politics then I used to, because I have no interest in biased, prearranged sound bites.  Anyone with a basic level of math competence, and the desire to do so, could see that in the past presidential election neither the Romney budget plan nor the Obama plan had any chance of working.  I embrace the grind of figuring these things out.  Looking at the numbers, and not the ideology, gives you a huge advantage when it comes to things like investing, health, time management, etc.

I want to be Spock.  I want to be a Vulcan.  There’s enough time and opportunity in life to be emotional, let’s be logical and figure this stuff out.  The advent of computers and the internet has made the ability to lead an evidence based life pretty easy.  We can gather massive amounts of information in all the relevant areas we need, quickly and in any hour of the 24 we choose.

  I hated Obama’s campaign theme of “hope”, and it had nothing to do with the fact that a Democrat was saying it.  It had everything to do with the fact that I do not want to hope good things happen; I want to know good things will happen, because I looked at the evidence, acted based on it, and eliminated the risk.  

  I especially want to know everything about people, for various reasons.  I have no interest in hearing agenda based nonsense on how people of different races, cultures, religions, etc., should act.  I want to know the actual numbers on how they do act. 

  Everything in life can and will be figured out.  I won’t live to see it, but we’ll eventually learn how to stop cells from aging and be immortal. The math, evidence, and facts will solve everything eventually.  In the meantime, I’ll use what’s available as best as I can.

  Have a good night everyone.

          JR