
The Resulting Fallacy Ruins Decisions: An Interview with Annie Duke - acconrad
http://nautil.us/issue/55/trust/the-resulting-fallacy-is-ruining-your-decisions
======
Arbalest
Looks basically like black swan theory. Looking for explanations as if someone
could have seen this coming.

~~~
goialoq
No, it's simple misunderstanding of randomness. Black swans are unpredicatable
unmodelable events.

"Resulting" just means misjudging well-modeledrandom events. It's thinking
that if you win a small prize on a lottery ticket, that buying the ticket was
a good choice _because you won_. While in reality, it was more likely that
you'd lose.

------
autokad
"Think about the 2015 Super Bowl. The Seahawks are on the 1-yard line, they’re
down by four, there’s 26 seconds left in the game, Pete Carroll has Russell
Wilson throw and it’s intercepted. Do you remember what the headlines looked
like the next day? “Worst play in Super Bowl history,” “What was he thinking?”
“Idiot.” That kind of thing. But imagine it was caught—what do you think the
headlines would have looked like then? The outcome was irrelevant to the
decision quality."

no that was a pretty bad play choice.

~~~
mikeash
Would you be saying that if it had been caught?

~~~
ueushzvzis
Yes

~~~
mikeash
I’m skeptical.

~~~
autokad
The QB's completion percentage is ~57%, meanwhile seatle had one of the best
running backs in the league with 4.25 yards per carry in the game.

wilson doesnt throw many interceptions, but Lynch almost never fumbles, Wilson
was 4 times more likely to turn over the ball than Lynch was. write that down,
if they turn the ball over they loose the game. the play they choose increased
their risk of loosing over 400%.

wilson scores 28% of the time from the 10 (dont have 1 or 5 yard stats), lynch
scores 42% of the time from the 5. he even scores more than wilson from 10
yards out (37%), which is not even a valid comparison because they only need 1
yard.

There is just no way to cut it, it was a bad decision.

~~~
hkmurakami
How do the stats change when the opposing team knows what you know about these
stats? That's a very relevant dampening factor.

~~~
lazyasciiart
From memory, the explanation for the play was that everyone expected them to
go with Lynch, so they tried the pass for the surprise factor, and still had
the fourth down to go with Lynch if the pass failed. So yes, very much
affected by knowing that the opponent knows your stats.

------
cowpig
I couldn't read past the first, fawning paragraph about a figure in the poker
world who likely stole millions of dollars from online players[1] directly,
and at a minimum profited from turning a blind eye to her associates'
theft[2].

[1] [http://pokernewsboy.com/poker-player-news/secret-ub-tapes-
an...](http://pokernewsboy.com/poker-player-news/secret-ub-tapes-annie-duke-
used-version-of-god-mode/13939)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereus_Poker_Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereus_Poker_Network)

~~~
valuearb
Annie is well known as an awful person who hasn't been a top tier player for
over a decade. The best players in today's game would love to have her in
their games.

~~~
monitorman
But she has taken in over 4 million in lifetime earnings... from FTP players.

