“Cultural Moneyballism, in this light, sacrifices exuberance for the sake of formulaic symmetry. It sacrifices diversity for the sake of familiarity. It solves finite games at the expense of infinite games. Its genius dulls the rough edges of entertainment. I think that’s worth caring about. It is definitely worth asking the question: In a world that will only become more influenced by mathematical intelligence, can we ruin culture through our attempts to perfect it?” – Derek Thompson, What Moneyball-for-Everything Has Done to American Culture 

I disagree that quantitative analysis is the death of art. It’s when you marry yourself entirely to the numbers that you end up with a problem. I do believe baseball has gone too far in marrying itself to strikeouts and home runs. But that’s not a quantitative problem; it’s a qualitative one. The 1950’s were the SAME WAY. They used NUMBERS, too. Just not the right ones. When I first read this article, I had this take: “While the author isn’t exactly wrong, it’s only the effect of a causal loop. Trying to perfect things is not a new thing; we just have more tools to try and do it faster. It’s the same general thing.”

Although, the more I thought about it, I kind of missed the point of what he was saying… what he was getting at was something much worse… I actually now do agree that quantitative analysis could well be the death of CULTURE. I am right about the qualitative problem, but I missed the gist because I really didn’t grasp the depth of this argument.

But I mostly dismissed it at the time because I didn’t want to really think about what he was saying. This isn’t about baseball. It’s about our whole culture… doing anything possible to extract every little possible cent out of everything and everyone. Squeeze the rock entirely dry until it turns to dust. You can only optimize to a point until that point becomes destructive. It’s what Wendell Berry meant about a destructible infinity. I was just too naive back in November 2022 to recognize the real kernel here…

Think about it: America was built on exploitation of lands commandeered by expansionist colonials. Now thanks to the power of these super computer and machine learning algorithms, that exploitation is now global and entirely mechanical. Perhaps this data analysis really has gone too far… I’m now starting to see that it is, in fact, diluting the game. It’s become the basis for GAMBLING! This world has gotten really disgusting very quickly, and Thompson said something that I just wrote off for the most part at the time… I see it now.