Are You the Biggest Critic?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

There's an interesting philosophy of science questioned here because I know great physicists who will articulate the idea that it is their job to be their theories biggest advocates. And there are other people who think it's their job to being their theories biggest critics, right? Because you know, they want their theory to be true and they want to be as harsh on it. So I think that it's just good that we have different people coming from different attitudes because there's no right answer there.

You might think that human beings, exhausted by competing for resources and rewards in the real world, would take it easy and stick to cooperation in their spare time. But no; we are fascinated by competition, and invent games and sports to create artificial competition just for fun. These competitions turn out to be wonderful laboratories for exploring concepts like optimization, resource allocation, strategy, and human psychology. Today’s guest, Daryl Morey, is a world leader in thinking analytically about sports, as well as the relationship between impersonal data and the vagaries of human behavior. He’s currently an executive in charge of the Philadelphia 76ers, but I promise you don’t need to be a fan of the Sixers or of basketball or of sports in general to enjoy this wide-ranging conversation.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Daryl Morey received a bachelor’s in computer science from Northwestern University, and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He served as general manager for the Houston Rockets from 2007 to 2020, and since November 2020 has been the President for Basketball Operations for the Philadelphia 76ers. He is founder and co-chair of the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. He was voted NBA Executive of the Year in 2018.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.