Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Watching college football yesterday a friend was texting me about one of the better players being super quick. So the question I posed was would you trade your intelligence for getting to run like that? I have never wanted to be a pro sports player after I reached the age of like 7, but I do watch highlights of athletes getting to jump or basically fly and it looks like it would be a lot of fun. Most people here I assume do not have this skillset. To my question my friend replied depends how much money he gets.
So my question is would you trade your intelligence for getting to have that athletic ability. Basically you can do anything you want on a football field but the entire world outside the football field is complete confusion to you. I would say Antonio Brown is the leading brand of having no understanding of anything off the football field.
The reverse of AB I think would be someone like Leopold Aschenbrenner. Very high IQ. Like AB most of human society is something he does not get to be a part of. My gut says like 98% of humans would find him annoying but he’s fine when he stays in EA/AI type places. I am closer to this spectrum.
I’ve also been thinking of kinds of intelligence that I lack. I literally can not clean. And it’s not just laziness. My mind is just very bad at organizing things and I’m very messy. I feel like this is kind of common with people who are good at math. I remember in college math professors had the messiest offices. I noticed this when my cleaning ladies show up. My place can be a complete mess and in 2.5 hours the place is perfect after they arrive. To me this is absolute magic.
Thinking about different types of intelligence I feel it makes me more empathetic. I know I have some abilities that are absolute magic to other people. I know I have some weaknesses that no matter how hard I work I can’t do the tasks.
My answer to my original question is I would not give up intelligence for being a marvelous athlete. Getting to read Plato or the US Constitution and understand their arguments and reasoning is not something I would give up. But I would pay a lot of money to get to be a marvelous athlete for 1-day just to experience dunking over someone or being the best player in a college football game.
As for QOL being someone like Cam Heyward (I’m a Steelers fan) who seems like a functional human being is likely the highest QOL. He’s possibly too dumb to understand an index fund but smart enough to not get robbed by advisors and just pay a 1% tax to Goldman Sachs. Being someone like AB probably sucks because I am fairly certain everything off the field is magic to him.
If you read my rant I appreciate it.
This feels like such a clear monkey's paw situation.
You said trade for athletic ability, but then you get injured. Or you get drafted by the Jets.
And in a fair trade, my intelligence (top 1%, but by no means historic) wouldn't get me NFL starter money, maybe on a practice squad.
I also think that we probably underestimate how smart your average NFL athlete is, the theory that NFL athletes are idiots is mostly copium created by the mediocre. They seem stupid talking about the world outside football, but then some of the smartest men I know seem like complete morons the moment the topic of feeeeeeeemales comes up. I don't believe in types of intelligence, but I do believe in fields of intelligence and fields of interest.
Of course it’s a monkey paw situation because if I didn’t create a tension then there wouldn’t be something to debate. I 100% the average NFL player is average to above average intelligence. Judging by responses it seems like people really don’t like the idea of giving up intelligence.
Not sure what it is about NFL WR but a lot seem to have poor impulse. I can pick a less of a Catspaw than you get to be AB or Tyreek Hill. You can be someone like Jerome Bettis. I don’t think he’s stupid but I doubt he’s on the right tail of IQ. Hasn’t been to jail. Seems to have a likable personality. If we are being honest he probably has a better QOL but I would still hate to give up thinking skills. AB is broke and probably does end up in jail today so I’ve removed the super negative catspaw.
You know, I was having this debate in discord while raiding BT in World of Warcraft the other day. Does playing a class draw in people with a certain personality, or does playing the class impact your personality? When you play mage, the game teaches you that you can do anything with the right combination of spells, somewhere in your spellbook is the answer. When you play rogue, the game teaches you to sneak around, find ways to achieve by stealth what you can't by brute force, do as little as possible and leave. When you play warrior, the game teaches you to win by brute force. When you play hunter, the game teaches you that you don't really need other people, you can do it all yourself. When you play priest, the game teaches you to sacrifice your own fun for the team. Over the hundreds of hours people log leveling up, then even more in endgame, that kind of repetitive pattern matching has to impact how you act in game. Do the classes attract people who like to behave that way (you can't spend 100 hours on the Paladin daddy/martyr routine if you aren't already like that) or does playing like that impact how you play the game (spending 100 hours on the Paladin daddy/martyr routine makes you worry about other players more than yourself)?
A WR, not just in the NFL but in their entire formative years leading up to it in high school and college, has to have irrational confidence or he can't play. An average NFL game features about 70 snaps of offense, a top tier clear #1 option might get 10-12 targets out of those plays, while a second or third banana will only get 3-5, and a lot of players run a ton cardio routes and get 0-2 a game. To make it as a WR, a guy has to be willing to run those routes and have confidence he can make it happen, even when for long periods he never gets targeted and nothing he does matters. A wide receiver has to stay motivated to keep running his routes perfectly with high effort, even though he'll only get targeted on a handful of them, and he'll only convert about 60% of those targets into catches. The WR who lacks that kind of irrational confidence will fail, in the NFL if not earlier, because he won't be able to commit to running those routes expecting to make a big play. It both attracts players with poor impulse control and irrational confidence, and teaches them poor impulse control and irrational confidence.
Compare the Center. My third grade teacher had this Ogden Nash poem on the wall and I memorized it sitting in class:
You'll note the life of Dick Szymanski
Is not all roses and romanski.
He centers the ball, he hears a roar-
Is it a fumble or a score?
He performs amazing feats.
And what gets photographed? His cleats.
A center is trained to never be the center of attention. Even the best center in the game, his name is most commonly called out in the commentary when he screws up a snap or a block and the QB gets hit. He builds his life around teamwork with the rest of the line, doing his job, and team success rather than personal recognition. This attitude, along with the caucasity of O-linemen relative to skill players, is why the stereotypical Delco dad wears a Kelce or a Jon Runyan jersey to the Linc, not a QB or a WR. Now is it that the Center has been trained over a decade of football to behave that way, or is it his natural tendency which leads him to become a center?
But anyway...
The original question was
Presumably in this hypothetical you're starting at like 14 years old at the latest, early enough to take full advantage of the athletic ability throughout a career. At 35, the trade off is clear: even if I were an NFL quality athlete I'd be eyeing retirement at my age. And my point is that athletic ability is strictly inferior to intellectual ability for that reason. Sports fans who have followed up and comers, an MLB team's farm system or a national soccer team in particular, have experienced seeing massively talented youngsters come into the game only to suffer injuries, some of them from pure bad luck, and wash out of the game. An NFL player might have all the talent in the world and take a bad hit or fall wrong and never be the same. That is unlikely to happen to my IQ, while I could imagine a bad-luck scenario where my degrees or licenses or jobs could be lost to me, I could start all over with my IQ in another field altogether. While speed is one snapped ACL from being lost to me forever.
Like, yeah it would be cool as hell to be Tom Brady. But Carson Wentz was, circa 2017, every bit as athletically talented as Tom Brady or anyone you want to throw out there, but injuries (some from pure bad luck rather than anything you can attribute to personal traits) derailed his career and now he's a career backup. Jalen Hurts has played six years in the NFL, and made the Super Bowl in two of them, he got cleated three weeks ago and formed a blood clot in his leg that might derail his whole career. The incidents that could cause a drop off like that are pretty rare for promising young physicists or doctors, and the ones I can think of are equally a risk for NFL players. All it takes is one hit to change your life in the NFL. That doesn't really happen to IQ.
To make it a good trade we'd have to specify that my NFL star level talent won't end with me hauled off the field on a cart in a meaningless conference game in college followed by decades spent talking about my high school career at the Enterprise rental counter. THAT is a clearly inferior outcome, which mere athletic ability doesn't protect against.
Most future NFL WRs did not have to work that hard in high school. They were stars who could effortlessly dominate and get away with taking plays off if they wanted to. Starting in college and then in the pros they begin to be selected strongly for work ethic, relative to their talent level, with the most talented being able to get away with doing less.
It seems like you are conflating confidence and grit. Running your routes hard when you know you are not that likely to be targeted seems like a discipline and work ethic question rather than a confidence question, irrational or otherwise. To make it in the NFL you need to combine elite talent with exceptional grit (or just have hyper-elite talent, like Randy Moss). The GOAT, Jerry Rice, had an incredible work ethic that allowed him to maintain an elite level of fitness and play into his 40s. I'm sure he had confidence in his ability to run hard all game, but it was a rational confidence that came from proving it to himself all offseason.
Contra the second half of the above, I think that the game teaches WRs impulse control and forces them to work harder and be more disciplined. For the majority, who will not be WR1s in the pros, making it in the NFL requires losing some of their ego and toning down their "irrational confidence". At the NFL level, you are not that guy and you need to block and run hard or you will be out of the league.
If I had to choose an irrational confidence position it would be cornerback. You have to be able to shake off getting beaten and get right back to it on the next play. Dealing with constant failure and the risk that on any given passing play you might be embarrassed takes a mentality that could be described as "irrationally confident". Tirelessly doing your job as a WR3 who used to be the man in high school and college takes humility and discipline.
Being that he’s replying with “impulse control” and “irrational confidence” and using words I also used to describe we it seems like we both in the vibes see a WR personality. Deion Sanders has it too. Terrell Owens/Michael Irvin. It’s not all receivers but a lot of them to seem to have loud personalities and/or impulse control issues at a higher rate than other positions.
I do agree grit (a positive trait) can I explain continuously working and not getting the ball. Running backs seem quieter.
I am familiar with the stereotype of the diva WR. But I'm not sure that being a diva or having irrational confidence helps you run hard on all your routes. In fact, NFL WR divas are known for not making much of an effort if they aren't happy with how much they're getting the ball. My point was that in general the game of football imposes discipline on players who may have been able to get away with diva behavior at lower levels of play where their raw talent allowed them to dominate. The game does not teach poor impulse control and irrational confidence. The players you cited could get away with a lot because they were all time greats. Most NFL WRs cannot be distractions or they will not be long for the league.
If I was going to create a synthesis between myself and FiveHour, I would say we agree that the WR position attracts great athletes in the WR/DB mold who want to score and get attention. I would say that as the level of competition improves, though, the game tends to select for disciplined players who give great effort and do their job. Only the rarest talents can get away with poor impulse control and irrational confidence at the highest levels.
I agree with your grit and discipline. No one ever accused AB of not putting in the work.
But something does seem to be or creating the diva personality. Not sure what that is.
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I too have toyed with this idea on whether the position you play affects your personality or your personality chooses your position. It’s interesting in football because you largely do not get to pick your position because positions require very specific athletic traits. I can think of only like 2 guys who really played a position not meant for their body type - Jerome Bettis (300lb running back) and Levon Kirkland (essentially 300 lb middle linebacker). With how the game has evolved I am not sure either of them could do that today. They would be sent straight to IDL.
I can’t exactly quantify it, but WR just sticks out to me as a position with what can best be described as impulse control. Just off the top of my head George Pickens, Antonio Brown, Rashee Rice, Josh Gordon, Henry Ruggs , Randy Moss and Tyreek Hill jump out to me for having issues. Athletically they are similar to DB’s and RB’s but their personalities and legal issues seem different.
So it does seem to be an interesting question on whether innate personality helps them as a WR or if playing the position nudged their personality in that direction.
Sure, but the athletic traits are just table stakes. Enduring the extended process of becoming an NFL player requires matching your personality to your position for years.
Contrast: NBA stars have vastly varying personalities, including those who don't seem to like the sport of basketball all that much at all, because the athletic traits are so dominantly important that a guy can make it as an NBA star despite actively disliking the game.
I will not accept this Jokić slander! (Assuming that's what you are talking about).
Jokic, Ben Simmons (burned out mentally and physically but was a legit star for several years), even somebody like Joel Embiid I think has a more complicated relationship with basketball than the pure passion for the game you see in professional baseball players. MLB players are students of the game, love the game. NFL players would give their lives for the game or they wouldn't play. NBA players often seem trapped by the game by comparison.
On the subreddit you'll see the take that Jokic loves basketball and it's just a meme because of his separate sporting loves. It seems to be a good take but I'm not enough of a Nuggets fan to be 100% sure. Ben Simmons this applies to but that's a complicated topic involving mental health.
Embiid is a counterexample I think, in the sense that he is clearly putting his body through it and is going to be miserable for the rest of his life and has made over 300 million. He has to be clear eyed about the costs of continuing and does so anyway. That suggests a love of ball.
I do agree with your thesis to some extent for football, a lot of positions involve constant nagging injuries and the passion has to be there to keep going, but plenty of people have short careers, and get a contract then leave. O-Line has to love the game, but it's pretty clear that some QBs dont (even starters!) and still do well enough. Rumor is Kyler is one of those.
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