Wins Over Replacement

For a long time in sport people made decisions essentially entirely upon what their perceptions were either from themselves, or from other people they trusted.  Experienced people brought up with the fundamentals of the game in question would make decisions based on their own thoughts, what they saw happening, and the traditional accepted view.

In the late seventies a man named Bill James started looking at baseball in a different way, he started evaluating the game objectively, through the methods of measurement and statistics, with the goal being to see what helped teams win rather than what people thought helped teams win.  It took about twenty years before this approach was taken on by a Major League team, the Oakland A's, as a useful addition to their method of running their business.  There was a noticeable improvement of the team in comparison to the resources the team had when this transition was made.  This has been made famous by the book, and now the film, Moneyball. 

Now, the majority of sports fans view this approach still as less useful than their own eyes and knowledge.  A minority of sports fans have embraced this approach and in discussions will provide objective evidence for their opinions, with usually a vast amount of scoffing.  However, in the enormously competitive world of professional sports almost every single team in the world now using statistics all the time when making decisions.  this doesn't mean that statistics make all the decisions, just that they are a vital part in informing those who make those decisions.

One of the new statistics was something called  Wins Over Replacement Player.  Essentially what this means is an evaluation of the contribution a player makes (with a combination of offensive statistics and defensive statistics plugged into a formula) towards the team winning.  it isn't a measure of whether the player hits the ball, or looks good, it is a measure of whether the team wins more or less, and roughly how much, when the player is playing compared to what you can get as a replacement.  The replacement concept is not an average player, it is what is freely available, what you can just pick up.

Why am I talking about this sports statistic for a group of people who probably don't care much about sports, and almost certainly not about sporting statistics?  It's because I want to bring across the concept of "Better Than Replacement Value" when making decisions.  I see people all the time saying that the USA is crap, a politician is crap, this corporation is crap, my coworkers are crap, management are crap, my bank is crap.  These are all value based judgments and so I think it useful to think crap compared with what?  If you work in a big company there are going to be people you think are bad at their jobs.  So, are they bad at their jobs?  It depends what you compare them to.  Are they more crap than Bill Gates or Paul Krugman, almost certainly.  are they crap compared to a member of the Taliban?  Almost certainly not.  Does Houston suck?  Yes compared with Tuscany, no when compared with Somalia.

So, how "good" something is depends on what it is compared against.  Are you disappointed with Barak Obama?  If so, you are probably disappointed because of the large difference between what he said he was going to do and what has happened.  I want to change the way you think about how to evaluate the job he is doing, not necessarily change your opinion but how you go about making that decision.   I want you to judge Obama against replacement value, that is evaluate his job against those who could have been President.  On the Democratic side everyone but Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama had dropped out of the race because they knew they had no chance of winning.  On the Republican side John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckerbee, Alan Keyes, and Ron Paul managed to get past January, but only Mitt Romney and Mike Huckerbee got enough delegates to really be considered viable candidates.

This means that the replacement values for Obama are Clinton, McCain, Huckerbee, and Mitt Romney.  This means that you can either value the job Barak Obama has done against the job these other candidates would have done, or you can evaluate him against something that is not possible in the real world.

When buying a car do you make your decision based upon how the car matches up to a car you have made up in your head that you would like to own?  Do you make a decision on whether you like your car or not based upon how it matches up with a Ferrari you cannot afford, or based upon how it does compared with a car you could actually buy.

When deciding whether you are disappointed or not with living in the USA under the present system it seems sensible to me to compare your conditions with other real possibilities.  Would you be wealthier, safer, more content and healthier elsewhere?  Would you be better off living under a theocracy like Saudi Arabia, a socialist country like Venezuela, a parliamentary system like the UK, or a different republic like Russia?  If the answer is "yes" I strongly suggest organizing things so that you can move.

This does not mean that people should not be thinking of different and new ways of living.  It doesn't mean that we can't strive to make the world a better place.  This way of thinking simply evaluates things against reality, against the alternative rather than a fantasy.  Work towards your best fantasy but only by acknowledging what is actually possible right now.  The best now can only be achieved by choosing between possible nows.