Risks and Rewards

Of course, we do dangerous things everyday.  I can hear the specious analogies already:

“Yeah, but thousands of people die in car accidents every year!  So why don’t you just ban cars while you’re at it!”

It’s true that we do things with risk every day.  The CDC estimates that a hundred and thirty people are killed each year by falling out of bed; even sleeping in a bed entails some risk.  The real issue is whether an activity can be justified with a risk-reward analysis.

A risk-reward analysis is an incredibly useful framework for helping to make decisions; in its simplest form, it’s remembering to ask yourself, “Is it worth it?”  Do the risks outweigh the rewards, or vice versa?

Intelligent, rational, common-sense decision making is so closely related to risk-reward analysis that it’s practically defined by it.  A smart decision is one with more expected reward than risk.  A stupid decision is one that entails more expected risk than reward.

Going to bed obviously entails more reward than risk.  If you do, you take an infintessimally small risk of dying, or having your cat attack you in your sleep, or any of the other myriad of unlikely events that might befall you.  If you don’t go to bed, you run a nearly certain chance of going insane and dying.  Ergo, smart people go to bed.

Driving is a little more complicated.  It is certainly more risky than going to bed:  Approximately 20,000 people will die while driving this year.  It certainly offers less reward; after all, for most of human history, people survived just fine without cars.

Of course, they didn’t survive nearly as well as they do now.  Driving is an incredibly important component to modern civilization; without it, we would likely live in a far less advanced society with far shorter life spans. 

Furthermore—and this is an incredibly important point—there are very few alternatives to driving.  Biking and horseback riding are certainly healthy, viable ways to get around, but they can only take civilization so far.  In order for us to get the world we live in, with the marvels of modern medicine and agriculture, we need a quicker method of transportation.

Smart people, then, drive.

But how does football stack up in a risk-reward analysis?  Any reasonable person would agree that it entails significant risk.  Perhaps the risk is less than that of driving, but it is certainly far more than the risk of going to bed.  What is the reward?

Essentially, the reward is knowing with some degree of certainty which group of young men is more capable of manipulating an oddly-shaped inflated bladder in such a way that the sum of six times the number of times in which they were able to hold the ball on a colorful patch of grass, the number of times they were able to kick the ball though two posts after holding the ball on the colorful patch of grass, and three times the number of times they were able to kick the ball through the posts without first holding it on a colorful patch of grass (as well as twice the number of times they were able to cause the other team to fall on another colorful patch of grass, a hundred yards distant) is greater than the identical sum for another group of young men—providing, of course, that the manipulation of the bladder causes possession of the bladder to move forward by ten yards with no more than three incidents where a player is holding the ball while a knee is touching the ground, or while crossing over two lines perpendicular to the colorful patches of grass, and that following each such incident the team line up in such a fashion that…

Essentially, the reward is knowing who is better at the most convoluted and arcane set of objectives outside of “Calvinball”.  Essentially, football proves nothing.