In All Things, Balance

Posted by Dan Turkenkopf - 17/03/08 at 04:03:15 am

I’m currently reading Devices of the Soul by Steve Talbott. The book, subtitled Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines, is about balancing technology and humanity in all areas of life. I wasn’t expecting to find anything relating to baseball in it, but his opening passage struck me:

How is it, then, that we can so easily think of the computer as doing the same thing we do? Only because nearly the entire content of our own activity has fallen from view. It may seem trivial to forget ourselves in the matter of simple additions. But if we greatly increase the sophistication of the calculation, and if we continue to reduce it to the non-human terms of the machine, eventually we arrive at a computer’s-eye-view of the entire world of industry, commerce, and society at large. From this viewpoint it is wonderfully easy to assume, for example, that the financial spreadsheet of a business provides all the information required for making decisions. But where in the numbers do we find the aims and ideals of the founders, managers, and employees? Where do we read about the qualitative impact of the company’s operations upon the local community, consumers and the physical environment? And where do we find the passions and motivations, the intentions and moral impulses, through which we can infuse a business with the light of human consciousness and make of it a vocation, a worthy expression of our lives?

The computer’s automatic logic, necessary and valuable though it may be, sucks all these flesh-and-blood concerns into a vortex of wonderfully effective calculation - so wonderful and so effective that only what is calculable may survive in our awareness.

While I was reading this, I thought of the dichotomy many see in analyzing baseball; captured in the so-called “stats versus scouts” debate. A lot of long-time baseball men, whether they be players, managers, scouts or reporters, feel that their powers of observation outweigh any advanced statistical evidence. And there are analysts and “statheads” who believe that things that cannot be seen in the stat line like chemistry or even minor injuries, have no effect on how a player performs.

Obviously I’m guilty of hyperbole here - very few people are either entirely on one side or the other, but even fewer have achieved the balance that Talbott suggests. Luckily a fair number of them seem to be those in charge of MLB teams - people like Theo Epstein, Mark Shapiro, Josh Byrnes and Kevin Towers to name just a few - those GMs who appear to rely on synthesizing the complementary viewpoints that can only come from looking at a player and, more importantly, a team as the sum of their parts and not as mindless automatons, or the “heart and soul of the clubhouse” for whom projections are meaningless. That balance is something I need to remember and try to incorporate into all aspects of my life - from my job to my enjoyment of baseball.

March 17, 2008 | In Uncategorized |

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Dan,
I think that’s a great passage, and something important to remember. There also seems to be a practice in the realm of technology (probably others) where once the answer is “revealed” it seems to belittle the effort required. Effort to learn, to conceive and even to “do” (how often we get besieged by things which “shouldn’t” slow us down.

I’d guess in baseball there’s a similar habit. To say “oh yea that’s obvious”. Or even to judge players and teams solely by their successes and failures (1’s and 0’s) rather then by the myriad of “flesh and blood concerns”.

Comment by Jay — March 17, 2008 #

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