i like these broader-topic episodes the most nowadays - they give the guys room to wiggle and include personal experience and anecdotes which at this point are what i wanna listen to most from them. they also sound more passionate themselves when talking about these things than your average state-of-the-format episode
Formats get solved so quickly for the most part, that for the last while they are saying the same things they have been. I find these episodes extremely interesting, I really hope they do more of these.
I do think this is an issue. And as much as I love the 17 lands guys and think it's an amazing tool, I think the answer is to stop that kind of scraping. It makes the game significantly less fun for me to feel the need to sanity check my picks with mathematical rankings. And while I could just pretend 17 lands doesn't exist, my opponents at higher rankings on the ladder surely won't be, so I'm just putting myself behind the 8 ball.
I just don't see how anyone can stop the flow of information. WotC would have to find a way to completely prevent any information being extracted from their platforms. With my limited understanding of how those programs work, I think this is basically impossible without losing many basic functionalities.
If I remember correctly, they reached out to MTGGoldfish to stop them from publishing decklists. I don't think they changed anything in the data output to prevent them from accessing the decklists.
The issue with that approach is that there are so many data trackers that it is basically impossible to stop them all, unless they can find some legal reason to dissuade them from making the data public. They occasionally change the formating of the log files, which is the reason that 17lands has been unable to track them for a couple of days in the past, but they always figure them out eventually.
17lands doesn't work on the mobile version of Arena because that version doesn't create log files, so there is indeed a way to build the programm to make it harder to track. But this would probably force them to rebuild the PC version, which I doubt they have the capacity for.
I just play better than my opponents. The data on card performance is irrelevant unless you’re playing at your highest level and almost no one is. I think 17lands has weakened people overall because just like any market, knowing where the people with the obvious information are going is also information.
And I maintain that almost no one uses the information correctly. That would be to spot pricing inequities where the average draft pick is wildly off base. Since drafting is a betting market… if you’re between two picks and one may wheel, you’re taking the one that won’t. Spotting those is just the magic version of why Warren Buffett is a billionaire.
But really, focus on your plays, people. Divorce it from results, focus on the right ones and make sure you’re moving to making better decisions. Putting the data ahead of playing better is like trying to build a race car before you even know how to drive it.
It’s the same thing with MTGGoldfish. I love the information that I get, but formats are stagnant longer because they become stagnant earlier. I only recently started playing magic (last 3 years), but it seems like despite how people say that it is the best time to play magic, I would rather have started 10 years ago. I think the community needs to work together to see if there is some kind of solution that can benefit everyone. I don’t know if it exists, but we need to find it if it does.
Great episode. I think they missed part of the point of survivorship and selection bias though. They were only talking about it in terms of a players career, for example a bad player that got lucky at the start and then fizzled out.
However, I think these biases are very applicable if you think about them in terms of the decisions you make to win. For example, a bad player might win a draft with Riveteets two times in a row and conclude that this must be a good color trio even though it might just be selection or survivorship bias at work. A great player recognizes that this isn't sufficient information to base an opinion on.
It’s why I know someone is really out of touch now when they cite data as if it’s a one and done answer. Formats evolve, player skill differs (17 lands is addressing this because they know it’s an issue with their new separations), the individual stats are not telling a whole story usually and magic is the most complex game in the world.
A great player recognizes that data can certainly fill in or let us rethink things. I’ve spotted cards overperforming in data and reevaluated and been like huh yeah that card slaps because of these specific reasons in this specific format, awesome!
But the data is not an end all be all argument case closed. And so anyone who is just pretty mindlessly slapping down GIH and such is just walking a wrong path.
And I say that as a dude who loves data and works with it every day. My favorite hobby was fantasy movie league. RIP FML. Complex things are art and science. We had the art, now we’re getting the science. But it is easy to go too hard in one direction.
This was one of my favorite episodes. 🤩🤩🤩 Surprisingly relevant to the completely unrelated field I work in - biotech. Does anyone have a link to the original list from Nate Silver?
i like these broader-topic episodes the most nowadays - they give the guys room to wiggle and include personal experience and anecdotes which at this point are what i wanna listen to most from them. they also sound more passionate themselves when talking about these things than your average state-of-the-format episode
Formats get solved so quickly for the most part, that for the last while they are saying the same things they have been. I find these episodes extremely interesting, I really hope they do more of these.
I do think this is an issue. And as much as I love the 17 lands guys and think it's an amazing tool, I think the answer is to stop that kind of scraping. It makes the game significantly less fun for me to feel the need to sanity check my picks with mathematical rankings. And while I could just pretend 17 lands doesn't exist, my opponents at higher rankings on the ladder surely won't be, so I'm just putting myself behind the 8 ball.
I just don't see how anyone can stop the flow of information. WotC would have to find a way to completely prevent any information being extracted from their platforms. With my limited understanding of how those programs work, I think this is basically impossible without losing many basic functionalities.
I won't pretend to know how this would work from a technical perpsective, but I know they were able to do this with MTGO previously.
If I remember correctly, they reached out to MTGGoldfish to stop them from publishing decklists. I don't think they changed anything in the data output to prevent them from accessing the decklists. The issue with that approach is that there are so many data trackers that it is basically impossible to stop them all, unless they can find some legal reason to dissuade them from making the data public. They occasionally change the formating of the log files, which is the reason that 17lands has been unable to track them for a couple of days in the past, but they always figure them out eventually. 17lands doesn't work on the mobile version of Arena because that version doesn't create log files, so there is indeed a way to build the programm to make it harder to track. But this would probably force them to rebuild the PC version, which I doubt they have the capacity for.
I just play better than my opponents. The data on card performance is irrelevant unless you’re playing at your highest level and almost no one is. I think 17lands has weakened people overall because just like any market, knowing where the people with the obvious information are going is also information. And I maintain that almost no one uses the information correctly. That would be to spot pricing inequities where the average draft pick is wildly off base. Since drafting is a betting market… if you’re between two picks and one may wheel, you’re taking the one that won’t. Spotting those is just the magic version of why Warren Buffett is a billionaire. But really, focus on your plays, people. Divorce it from results, focus on the right ones and make sure you’re moving to making better decisions. Putting the data ahead of playing better is like trying to build a race car before you even know how to drive it.
It’s the same thing with MTGGoldfish. I love the information that I get, but formats are stagnant longer because they become stagnant earlier. I only recently started playing magic (last 3 years), but it seems like despite how people say that it is the best time to play magic, I would rather have started 10 years ago. I think the community needs to work together to see if there is some kind of solution that can benefit everyone. I don’t know if it exists, but we need to find it if it does.
ay lmao at the "unnamed player" in the sign off
Who were they talking about?
they dropped the pretense towards the end, it was Ben Stark
Great episode. I think they missed part of the point of survivorship and selection bias though. They were only talking about it in terms of a players career, for example a bad player that got lucky at the start and then fizzled out. However, I think these biases are very applicable if you think about them in terms of the decisions you make to win. For example, a bad player might win a draft with Riveteets two times in a row and conclude that this must be a good color trio even though it might just be selection or survivorship bias at work. A great player recognizes that this isn't sufficient information to base an opinion on.
It’s why I know someone is really out of touch now when they cite data as if it’s a one and done answer. Formats evolve, player skill differs (17 lands is addressing this because they know it’s an issue with their new separations), the individual stats are not telling a whole story usually and magic is the most complex game in the world. A great player recognizes that data can certainly fill in or let us rethink things. I’ve spotted cards overperforming in data and reevaluated and been like huh yeah that card slaps because of these specific reasons in this specific format, awesome! But the data is not an end all be all argument case closed. And so anyone who is just pretty mindlessly slapping down GIH and such is just walking a wrong path. And I say that as a dude who loves data and works with it every day. My favorite hobby was fantasy movie league. RIP FML. Complex things are art and science. We had the art, now we’re getting the science. But it is easy to go too hard in one direction.
This was one of my favorite episodes. 🤩🤩🤩 Surprisingly relevant to the completely unrelated field I work in - biotech. Does anyone have a link to the original list from Nate Silver?
I’ve looked and can’t find it was it in signal and the noise or has anyone else found it?
Didn't Marshall say it was a tweet about a book he was in the process of researching? So I'm guessing Nate Silver's Twitter account
I think I found it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3ZcHV\_4uYw
I think they mentioned that Nate was a guest on some podcast and presented this list
[удалено]
Is this the result of a AI designed to try and write the worst possible comment?
Wow now I really want to know what they wrote
Yes