The common argument in favor of Mixed being a worse division than Open or Women's is something along the lines of this: There aren't enough elite players to go around and most elite players choose single gender ultimate, thus the players that populate the ranks of Mixed are inherently not as skilled.
I would like to try out some thought experiments and see if this argument holds up. I'll be using Nationals-level squads as my example since some people believe that this argument remains true even at the Nationals level.
Let's imagine a Fake City/Area where there are 20 Elite ultimate players and 40 High level players combined of each gender. To make the math even let's says it's a nice 50/50 split, 10 Elite men, 10 Elite women, 20 High level men, 20 High level women.
(We can argue about the difference between elite and high level but I don't think that really affects anything that much. I think one can agree there is a difference between the talent at the top of a roster and the bottom.)
The talent in our fake city could distribute itself a number of ways.
A. The Mixed Stereotype
This distribution says that all or most of the elite players will play single gender ultimate. Let's say 9 elite from each gender go play single gender leaving 2 to the mixed team. The distribution would look as follows.
Men: E9/H11 Mixed: E2/H18 Women: E9/H11
I think in this scenario it would be clear that the mixed team would be "worse" than the single gender teams simply as a byproduct of having a fewer number of elite players. (Obviously this discounts things like coaching and chemistry which we will not account for in this piece.)
B. The Stacked Mixed
This distribution says that the Fake City's players realize there are only 20 elite players and so decide to join forces in their quest for a National Championship. Let's say 18 of our elite players decide to join forces, the talent distribution would look like this:
Men: E1/H19 Mixed: E18/H2 Women:E1/H19
In this distribution we should say that the Mixed team is CLEARLY better than the single gender teams.
C. The "Even" Split
If our Fake City players all chose their teams randomly we would end up with a relatively even distribution.
Men: E7/H13 Mixed: E6/H14 Women: E7/H13
The numbers don't work out perfectly (and reflect some bias on my part), but none of these teams are clearly better than any of the others.
So let's look at some specific areas and teams going back 5 years to 2012
Denver is a clear example of distribution A. Johnny Bravo and Molly Brown have made nationals every year in that span, and been at the top of their division most years. Meanwhile no mixed team from Denver has made Nationals in that time span. Boulder Love Tractor did make Nationals starting in 2015 but without intimate knowledge of how much (if any) talent they draw from Denver it is hard for me to justify including them in the Denver playing pool.
Iowa (as far as I can find) have only sent 1 team to Nationals in the past 5 years, Chad Larson Experience in the mixed division. CLX was in the upper echelons of the divisions the years they made Nationals. I think it's fair to say Iowa is an obvious example of distribution B.
A true distribution C city seems hard to find but it appears Philadelphia is as close to a distribution C city as we get in real life. All three divisions have made Nationals at least twice in that span, with AMP leading the way qualifying in all 5 Nationals. AMP, along with Green Means Go and Patrol have all had drastically different results, with little consistency across their finishes from year to year.
Lastly, we have our Meccas. Cities with such massive amounts of talent that people move their to play. Cities like (you can probably guess them) Boston, San Fransisco, and Seattle. Our distribution model doesn't hold up well as it appears those areas have enough Elite players to field multiple teams in multiple divisions at Nationals.
With the variety of distributions certain cities and areas posses I think it is difficult to outright claim that Mixed is "worse" than single gender. The "best" way to quantitatively determine this that I can think of is by doing Nationals finish analysis comparing average finish in a city across division. (Which I don't have time for now.)
That being said for proponents of the Mixed division I have something to share. If you play in Mixed I totally understand that being told you are worse than another (rightly or wrongly) sucks. When discussing with someone who holds the belief that Mixed is worse than single gender consider their background. Does their background come from a distribution A area? Maybe illuminating the diversity of ultimate communities will help you in swinging them to your side.
Friday, July 14, 2017
Thursday, December 1, 2016
The Infinity Hypothesis
A little less than a year ago I was in search of finding a professional calling. That's not to say the search has ended, or that it's even possible to complete it, but nonetheless it was prescient at the time. I was in Boston for the Sloan Sports Analytics conference. My latest, and to date final, attempt to find a role within the soccer industry.
One night I saw some old alums from Dickinson. All three very intelligent men. The first a beer lover, with intimate knowledge of the science and history of beer. The second a physicist, or studying to be one, spends lots of times in labs and in nerdy discussions with friends. The third a historian, or studying to be one. Something to do with Sicilian pirates during the Roman era. We had some quality discussion, and eventually things turned to methodology in each of our disciplines. I was ripped apart for my field. Not because philosophy has an inherently bad methodology but because of how I described it. We get hunches, and then try to see if they are correct via logic and thought experiments. Not very accurate or well described. But fast forward 9 months and I've achieved some clarity. Now coincidentally while reading a Chautauqua, I now see the need to employ some of it's mechanism (that is if I understand it properly).
.
To get around to The Infinity Hypothesis I need to jump to another story. This time I'm in the kitchen with my father, an untrained but highly logical and intense intellectual adversary (I don't like this word because it has a negative connotation. Sparring partner might be more appropriate but wouldn't reflect the intensity with which we discuss.) We are discussing the Philosophy profession and he says that there aren't really new ideas. Everything is just regurgitation and re-framing of the old. An argument I've heard before. I had an inkling he was both right and wrong at the same time. (Those who know me well will say "not this again Joel".) Is something a new idea if it's 90% old, with 10% new? however that newness may occur whether it's an additional specificity, an original use of the analytical knife, a re-contextualizing of the idea? Is that new? I say yes because of The Infinity Hypothesis.
The Infinity Hypothesis is something I had been thinking about before reading this newest text. In fact, it something I've discussed with friends. I'm sure many others have thought about it as well. Yet the crystallization of it became clear for me upon reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Zen takes the time to spell out what I will encapsulate here. That those "hunches" Philosophers start of with are baby hypotheses that need time to be fleshed into fully grown hypotheses before being put up against tools and tests and analysis. And despite what Phaedrus thinks, we do gain knowledge from every hypothesis tested. Even when that knowledge is that the hypothesis is wrong. This is why Liam Kofi Bright's instinct that good philosophers are often "interestingly wrong" begins to hold up.
When it comes to knowledge, picture a planet. Call it Illevaihcam. Or Rides. Or Ossab. Whatever you like the name to be. On this planet there is a single bush with roots extending far across the planets surface. Currently, philosophy and science are obsessed with finding the bush and once grabbing a hold of a leaf on the bush trying to determine the rest of the bush and following the roots around the surface of the planet. But it's not a disservice to miss the leaf, or the bush, or the roots. In fact it's a service to miss. For if we were only repeating the same ideas, we would grab on to the same leaf or two. But this planet is vast and wide, and we want to get an accurate picture of the entire bush. So that person who you think is crazy is off digging nowhere near the bush trying to get at a root. If they miss that's OK. In fact, it's good for we now know not to look there again. But maybe they strike gold, or root, or whatever helps you make sense of this situation.
Now the analogy fails us. Because a planet is finite, but the search for knowledge is not. Even if we believe to have solved all of the riddles of existence, and facts of matter we will never be content. We will always be arriving at new ideas, just in case we missed something. Just in case we are missing an important root that shapes our fundamental view of the bush. This is The Infinity Hypothesis. The hypothesis that we will never run out of hypotheses, for we will always find new ways of combining, rearranging, looking at the world that will make us wonder. We will wonder if we missed something. And we will continue to search.
One night I saw some old alums from Dickinson. All three very intelligent men. The first a beer lover, with intimate knowledge of the science and history of beer. The second a physicist, or studying to be one, spends lots of times in labs and in nerdy discussions with friends. The third a historian, or studying to be one. Something to do with Sicilian pirates during the Roman era. We had some quality discussion, and eventually things turned to methodology in each of our disciplines. I was ripped apart for my field. Not because philosophy has an inherently bad methodology but because of how I described it. We get hunches, and then try to see if they are correct via logic and thought experiments. Not very accurate or well described. But fast forward 9 months and I've achieved some clarity. Now coincidentally while reading a Chautauqua, I now see the need to employ some of it's mechanism (that is if I understand it properly).
.
To get around to The Infinity Hypothesis I need to jump to another story. This time I'm in the kitchen with my father, an untrained but highly logical and intense intellectual adversary (I don't like this word because it has a negative connotation. Sparring partner might be more appropriate but wouldn't reflect the intensity with which we discuss.) We are discussing the Philosophy profession and he says that there aren't really new ideas. Everything is just regurgitation and re-framing of the old. An argument I've heard before. I had an inkling he was both right and wrong at the same time. (Those who know me well will say "not this again Joel".) Is something a new idea if it's 90% old, with 10% new? however that newness may occur whether it's an additional specificity, an original use of the analytical knife, a re-contextualizing of the idea? Is that new? I say yes because of The Infinity Hypothesis.
The Infinity Hypothesis is something I had been thinking about before reading this newest text. In fact, it something I've discussed with friends. I'm sure many others have thought about it as well. Yet the crystallization of it became clear for me upon reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Zen takes the time to spell out what I will encapsulate here. That those "hunches" Philosophers start of with are baby hypotheses that need time to be fleshed into fully grown hypotheses before being put up against tools and tests and analysis. And despite what Phaedrus thinks, we do gain knowledge from every hypothesis tested. Even when that knowledge is that the hypothesis is wrong. This is why Liam Kofi Bright's instinct that good philosophers are often "interestingly wrong" begins to hold up.
When it comes to knowledge, picture a planet. Call it Illevaihcam. Or Rides. Or Ossab. Whatever you like the name to be. On this planet there is a single bush with roots extending far across the planets surface. Currently, philosophy and science are obsessed with finding the bush and once grabbing a hold of a leaf on the bush trying to determine the rest of the bush and following the roots around the surface of the planet. But it's not a disservice to miss the leaf, or the bush, or the roots. In fact it's a service to miss. For if we were only repeating the same ideas, we would grab on to the same leaf or two. But this planet is vast and wide, and we want to get an accurate picture of the entire bush. So that person who you think is crazy is off digging nowhere near the bush trying to get at a root. If they miss that's OK. In fact, it's good for we now know not to look there again. But maybe they strike gold, or root, or whatever helps you make sense of this situation.
Now the analogy fails us. Because a planet is finite, but the search for knowledge is not. Even if we believe to have solved all of the riddles of existence, and facts of matter we will never be content. We will always be arriving at new ideas, just in case we missed something. Just in case we are missing an important root that shapes our fundamental view of the bush. This is The Infinity Hypothesis. The hypothesis that we will never run out of hypotheses, for we will always find new ways of combining, rearranging, looking at the world that will make us wonder. We will wonder if we missed something. And we will continue to search.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Liberalism v. Conservatism
I've been pondering some things recently about political correctness, and more specifically politics in general. In discussion of things such as the Black Lives Matters movement, the push for Gender Neutral bathrooms at Dickinson college, and many of the topics discussed this presidential election cycle.
I've never studied Political Political philosophy from the perspective of movements. Rather the one Political Philosophy I have taken focused on the philosophies of political structures. Those of Locke, Hobbes, Mill, and Marx to name a few. This is all to say, that very likely someone much smarter than me has already thought of this and provided much more detail.
Liberalism and Conservatism. Oft understood as Democrat and Republican in American society today. They argue over such this as gun control, abortion, tax policy, plus military spending and intention. The end results of this argument end up all over the map. As Jon Stewart has said
but that seems to miss the mark. There must be one common thread that causes this massive divide between liberals and conservatives. For example, libertarians simply say, less government is better government. A minimalist government is the the thread that connects the arguments.
So what is the thread that connects the liberals? What about the conservatives? They seem to be so at odds with one another that the essentials thread of each group must oppose one another. This is my attempt at discovering picking out the thread.
In life, who ought I to look out for? Who should I seek to protect, both physically and their interests?
The two answers? Either ME or WE.
Perhaps this is an oversimplification but let's take a handful of examples.
Abortion
ME: I believe in MY religion. MY religion says all murder is a sin. Abortion is murder. Therefore we should not allow it.
WE: I believe OTHERS should make the choice that is correct for THEM.
Gun Control
ME: I want to own a gun for MY OWN PERSONAL use, so I can go hunting.
WE: I want to keep OTHERS safe, as guns can kill PEOPLE.
Gender Neutral Bathrooms
ME: Seeing someone who does not conform to MY gender makes ME uncomfortable.
WE: WE need to make sure EVERYONE has a safe space to use the bathroom.
These are obviously incredibly oversimplified arguments, but are rather meant to highlight the common thread in the more actual, real, and complex arguments.
In life, who ought I to look out for? Who should I seek to protect, both physically and their interests?
Is it ME? Is it WE?
This is not intended to come to any sort of conclusion. But rather to open discussion about something that I believe answering could be of vital importance to this country's political health.
Is there a right answer to these question? Is it merely opinion? Ought the grounds of justification be morally-based or pragmatically-based? Some combination of the two? An alternative grounds not yet offered?
I've never studied Political Political philosophy from the perspective of movements. Rather the one Political Philosophy I have taken focused on the philosophies of political structures. Those of Locke, Hobbes, Mill, and Marx to name a few. This is all to say, that very likely someone much smarter than me has already thought of this and provided much more detail.
Liberalism and Conservatism. Oft understood as Democrat and Republican in American society today. They argue over such this as gun control, abortion, tax policy, plus military spending and intention. The end results of this argument end up all over the map. As Jon Stewart has said
but that seems to miss the mark. There must be one common thread that causes this massive divide between liberals and conservatives. For example, libertarians simply say, less government is better government. A minimalist government is the the thread that connects the arguments.
So what is the thread that connects the liberals? What about the conservatives? They seem to be so at odds with one another that the essentials thread of each group must oppose one another. This is my attempt at discovering picking out the thread.
In life, who ought I to look out for? Who should I seek to protect, both physically and their interests?
The two answers? Either ME or WE.
Perhaps this is an oversimplification but let's take a handful of examples.
Abortion
ME: I believe in MY religion. MY religion says all murder is a sin. Abortion is murder. Therefore we should not allow it.
WE: I believe OTHERS should make the choice that is correct for THEM.
Gun Control
ME: I want to own a gun for MY OWN PERSONAL use, so I can go hunting.
WE: I want to keep OTHERS safe, as guns can kill PEOPLE.
Gender Neutral Bathrooms
ME: Seeing someone who does not conform to MY gender makes ME uncomfortable.
WE: WE need to make sure EVERYONE has a safe space to use the bathroom.
These are obviously incredibly oversimplified arguments, but are rather meant to highlight the common thread in the more actual, real, and complex arguments.
In life, who ought I to look out for? Who should I seek to protect, both physically and their interests?
Is it ME? Is it WE?
This is not intended to come to any sort of conclusion. But rather to open discussion about something that I believe answering could be of vital importance to this country's political health.
Is there a right answer to these question? Is it merely opinion? Ought the grounds of justification be morally-based or pragmatically-based? Some combination of the two? An alternative grounds not yet offered?
Monday, March 7, 2016
On Joint Carving
Sider seems to imply that there are theories that better outline the nature of reality by carving it at it's "joints". Yet isn't the purpose of metaphysics not to try to get "close" to outlining the nature of reality but rather create a full and vivid picture? Of course that's a metametaphyical question but one I need to ask. And now back to Ontological Realism. Yay.
Alternative Theory of Time
What if time is not analogous to space as philosophers and physicists suggest? What if we have a serious misunderstanding of time?
Time is not a road that we travel upon, but rather the library of all events ever. Every possible universe has a library of events not in sequential order but rather as a famous British scientist suggest wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff that is interconnected.
This would create an easier understanding for why Lewis (and I believe he is correct) one could not kill one's grandfather if they were to travel back in time. This would mean that as far as time is concerned there is no "past" or "future" rather all of time is the present. We merely believe that we are at a specific moment in time. When in fact all of time is occurring at once. The experience of being in the library of time, and understanding what time is are fundamentally different.
Going to flesh this out more but was distracted from Sider's Ontological Realism and had to write this out to continue my work.
Time is not a road that we travel upon, but rather the library of all events ever. Every possible universe has a library of events not in sequential order but rather as a famous British scientist suggest wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff that is interconnected.
This would create an easier understanding for why Lewis (and I believe he is correct) one could not kill one's grandfather if they were to travel back in time. This would mean that as far as time is concerned there is no "past" or "future" rather all of time is the present. We merely believe that we are at a specific moment in time. When in fact all of time is occurring at once. The experience of being in the library of time, and understanding what time is are fundamentally different.
Going to flesh this out more but was distracted from Sider's Ontological Realism and had to write this out to continue my work.
Friday, March 4, 2016
Elevation
Recently I've been considering pursuing a PHD in Philosophy...I'm think about elevating the 'seriousness' of this space and publishing essays I've written, ideally only the good ones...of which there are at least a handful
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Nature vs?
We often consider Nature to be separate in some ways from human existence. Even such things as architecture or social ties. Yet this seems to be a fallacy. For every "thing" we like to separate out about humans from the rest of nature, we can find a parallel in nature. If we could accurately do this, then it would definitely prove that humans are not special.
We study badger dams as part of nature.
We study populations of elephants as part of nature.
We study forms of communication between dolphins as part of nature.
Why don't we consider the things we study about humans as part of nature?
We study badger dams as part of nature.
We study populations of elephants as part of nature.
We study forms of communication between dolphins as part of nature.
Why don't we consider the things we study about humans as part of nature?
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