Another phrase for Theoretical Evidence or Instincts is No Evidence At All. What you’re describing is an under-specified rationalization made in an attempt to disregard which way the evidence is pointing and let one cling to beliefs for which they don’t have sufficient support. Zvi’s response wrt masks in light of the evidence that they aren’t effective butting up against his intuition that they are has no evidentiary weight. He was not acting as a curious inquirer, he was a clever arguer.
The point of Sabermetrics is that the “analysis” that baseball scouts used to do (and still do for the losing teams) is worthless when put up against hard statistics taken from actual games. As to your example, even the most expert basketball player’s opinion can’t hold a candle to the massive computational power required to test these different techniques in actual basketball games.
Another phrase for Theoretical Evidence or Instincts is No Evidence At All. What you’re describing is an under-specified rationalization made in an attempt to disregard which way the evidence is pointing and let one cling to beliefs for which they don’t have sufficient support. Zvi’s response wrt masks in light of the evidence that they aren’t effective butting up against his intuition that they are has no evidentiary weight. He was not acting as a curious inquirer, he was a clever arguer.
The point of Sabermetrics is that the “analysis” that baseball scouts used to do (and still do for the losing teams) is worthless when put up against hard statistics taken from actual games. As to your example, even the most expert basketball player’s opinion can’t hold a candle to the massive computational power required to test these different techniques in actual basketball games.
Theoretical evidence can be used that way, but it can also be used appropriately.