Furthermore, the offer still stands.
No, it´s not about who ends up last, it´s for those people who claim they know which record eventually leads to the "best position to be in" (and in his second post, Fafnir explicitly said he does not). Noone does, and that´s precisely the point. There´s nothing crazy about stating that despite having a higher chance with a worse record, the actual outcome of this particular lottery could be anything from the worst record to the 14th worst record winning it.
The thing is, you´re not accounting for the transfer of theory to reality. Again, we´re talking about a one-off event here, anything could happen. If you want the Celtics to lose for a better chance at a higher pick, you´re ignoring what we just established: Nobody knows the best position to be in.
I think it is quite telling that almost everyone around here is rooting for the Celtics to go 0-82 (for the greater good, of course), yet nobody has taken me up on my offer. Apparently, Celtics fans can actively root for losses for a whole season, but are not willing to bet $200 for a good cause to back that up.
As I'm the one who dropped that "best position" line, I feel obligated to respond to this. To recap, the quoted line specifically went like this:
The best thing you can do is put yourself in the best position to succeed, because random things (like luck) will naturally play themselves out.
First off, I think you've misunderstood the statement, and given Faf's post (and everyone else after it), it seems you're the only one who did. Let me try clarify.
I take it that when I said "best position", you interpreted that as "having this record or rank in the lottery will yield us the best result, which is winning the lottery." That couldn't be further from the truth.
I get what you're saying in that the actual outcome of this particular lottery could be anything from the worst record to the 14th worst record winning it. Even in my original post, I acknowledge this when i say that there's nothing guaranteed in this league, and again when i said how "random things (like luck) will naturally play themselves out."
Given that there is that randomness, the only thing we can do is put ourselves in the best position to succeed. In this case, the best position means having the most number of lottery combinations. Why this? Because it's really the only variable we can control here.
Luck will happen, either to us or other teams, and no one can do anything about that. But we are more likely to get lucky if we have more chances of winning.
You seem to disagree with that though by saying:
I´m not denying probability per se, I´m denying it´s legitimacy in certain circumstances, like one-off events with random number generators, for example.
If so, then take up my offer, which is I bet you a TP that neither of the Suns/Mavs/Griz will end up with a top 3 pick. Another TP that the C's will end up picking higher than whoever of those 3 ends up 9th in the west.
The Suns/Mavs/Griz can win the lottery, and they may very well end up with a top 3 pick, but I'm playing the odds here. There's approx. a 1.8% chance that I lose 2 TP's, and a 98.2% chance that I win. But since this is one of those one-off events, do you really care about such odds?
Topic: 8 games left. I think we finish 5th worst with 29.2% chance of a top 3 pick. (Read 59687 times)