So . . .we like stories. Stories populate our lives and help us make sense of the world around us. As part of our natural inclination to ascribe causality to disparate events, we like to see events linked in stories. After all, if there is no narrative to drive events, then it’s all just random noise (not Lou Reed-like Metal Machine Music random noise, but just random events), and we can’t have that, can we?
Now, a while ago, back when I was blogging at my daily/breakneck pace, my cousin Rob mentioned the Bill Belichick 4th-and-two as a good example of the paradox of outcomes (which it is). I would like to use the same situation as an example of the narrative fallacy, which involves the power of stories. Because of our propensity to invent stories, we are also unduly affected by them – we remember events better in narrative form, they have a greater impact, and we often view them as instructional. That’s fine for Aesop and Joe Eszterhas, but reality often doesn’t have a moral. In invented stories (books, movies, folk-rock) there is a grand design, a plan, a beginning/middle/end; in reality, there is no grand design and therefore not cohesive tale.
Background: in a meaningful regular-season football game last November, Bill Belichick (head coach of the New England Patriots) made the somewhat rare move of, on their fourth down with two yards to go, going for a first down. Because New England only led by 6 points, they needed to run down the clock so that Indianapolis wouldn’t have another chance to score. The risk was huge – if they failed to get the first down, Indianapolis would get the ball in excellent field position, but if they succeeded, New England would almost certainly win the game. Conventional wisdom dictated that New England punt and leave it to their defence (and Indy’s subsequently poor field position) to hold the lead.
Belichick didn’t follow the conventional wisdom. He went for the first down, and failed, Indianapolis then scored and won the game. It makes an interesting probability example (most analyses had the move leading to victory 55% of the time, whether they got the first down or not) and illustrates the paradox of outcomes nicely. It also led to some boneheaded analysis (Bill Simmons claims that one reason it was dumb to go for it was that Indianapolis had already scored twice in that quarter, and it hardly ever happens that a time scores three times; I guess conditional probabilities don’t apply for some reason).
But what it really illustrates is the narrative fallacy. Belichick is a well-regarded coach and considered one of the game’s thinkers. If New England had been successful, it would have been just more evidence of the same – not an interesting story. If Belichick had not gone for the first down, then win or lose it would have just been status quo (and the story would have been Indy’s dominance more than New England’s gamble). Not an interesting story either.
But what was provided instead was a classic tale of hubris and knocking someone down to size. Belichick had over-thought; he had bucked the trend and the gods punished him. It is a morality tale: hero (or anti-hero) is too successful/arrogant/invulnerable, so he does himself in with a poor strategic decision. And that’s the story that gets reported and remembered.
And that’s a fallacy. Because it’s not a narrative, it’s just stuff that happens. It’s not informative, because he took a roughly 50/50 proposition and lost – it’s just as likely the opposite could have happened. It does not overshadow his success, but it might be more remembered than it (because it stands in contrast).
If he finds himself in a similar situation this year, do you think Belichick will go for it? Difficult to say - to punt would be seen as an admission of error, but to go for it again (and potentially fail again) would certainly provide another tale.
No comments:
Post a Comment