4 ms·

Why do we think football players are incapable of weighing the risks when choosing whether or not to play?

gknoy 8y ago
I don't think it's about pro football players -- we're pretty sure the players in the NFL know the risks (well, now they do). Rather, it's about educating FUTURE potential players so that they too can make an informed decision, or the parents of kids who might say, "you know, I don't want my kid to have a bunch of concussions, because that's been proven to have permanent significant damage".
EliRivers 8y ago
People in general are bad at judging risks, worse still at trying to judge the risk of head trauma decades down the road from now, especially with the number of people involved loudly pitching for their views to take sway. I've no doubt some of them have the training and understanding to examine the data (math majors in college - must be some, I'm sure), run the statistics and pick out noise from signal, which I expect wouldn't be an easy thing given the long stretches of time and the many confounding factors involved, but I expect few of those capable of it even try, so the majority are left with the same vox-pops and media segments everyone else has on the subject. Couple that with the macho attitudes and self-image in the sport, and that the entertainment needs to keep working for the sport to keep making money (nothing entertaining about permanent head trauma), and that the people having to judge these risks are young males being offered life-changing opportunities and sums of money, and it seems that the default position here should be that we consider football players incapable of weighing the risks (much as we should, by default, consider people bad at judging risks). Why would we think they are somehow especially capable of judging the risks?
- tengbretson 8y ago
  Making poor eating decisions can cause bodily harm much quicker and more severe than repeated concussions from playing football. Should the default position also be that we don't deem adults to be capable of weighing the risks when choosing what food to eat?
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    Yes, that does seem to be what the evidence indicates. People generally rate their diet and exercise as significantly better than it really is, leading them to significantly underestimate the risks to themselves.
  - asveikau 8y ago
    You brought this up as an "ah ha! I caught you in your absurdity!" kind of thing. However it is absolutely true that the US needs to better regulate food ingredients to shield consumers from their bad decisions. Right now the industry is set up to exploit how easy it is to make those poor decisions and become addicted to them, and most food ingredients for sale are consequently more calorific than they need to be. (Some personal context for me: I lost 100 lbs over 2017-2018. So I have some experience both unwittingly falling in the trap and successfully getting out of it, the latter part seems pretty rare from what I can tell.)
    - tengbretson 8y ago
      I don't think we share enough common ground to have any further useful conversation about this.
      - asveikau 8y ago
        OK. I will ask this of you though. I don't know if you are in the US to witness this or somewhere else. But next time you are in a crowded restaurant where all the portions are in the thousands of calories.. Look around you at all the people wolfing it down. And maybe ask: how many of these people do this regularly? How much exercise do they get to balance it out? How did these people get into this cycle, binging day after day? How irritated would they get if you took it away from them? Is it their fault, or are they stuck in some kind of bad loop? Was that cycle entered into well informed or something else? Losing 100 lbs caused me to think about this, and the answers are very depressing. Even for any given meal or ingredient, there has been a change. Look at videos of 70s and 80s America, the average person is way more fit. Or, to take a random example, I re-read the novel "Cannery Row" a few years ago. Now, it's fiction, though based on some real people. It takes place in the first half of the 20th century, and one character is said to drive regularly from Monterey to Los Angeles, a sedentary activity, stopping several times for burgers. Not once does it say he was overweight, nor do I think the real person he was based on was. Could it be that a 1940s burger was better for you than a burger today?
- wu-ikkyu 8y ago
  Are you claiming only math majors are capable of understanding statistics and therefore should be the only people legally entitled to make decisions?
maxxxxx 8y ago
Why do we think workers in a nuclear plant are incapable of weighing the risks when choosing whether or not to work there? Employers (in this case the NFL and the team owners) have had a long history of endangering the health of their employees if there was profit to be made.
cortesoft 8y ago
Well, for one, they start playing while they are still in their youth. You could make a better argument for free decision making if you don't allow tackle football under 18. Second, in order to weigh risks, you need to not have billion dollar companies spending millions of dollars to hide the effects of concussions. Third, do we let people take any risk they want? If a company wants to pay someone for a job that has a 95% fatality rate, do we let them do it? What if it was 100% fatality rate, but the person knows this and agrees to it? Can you pay someone to kill themselves? If we agree that a company shouldn't be allowed to pay someone to kill themselves, the rest is just deciding what level or risk we are comfortable with letting people trade for money. Football might be on the 'too risky to allow people to trade for money' side of the equation, once we know the actual risks.
- tengbretson 8y ago
  > Second, in order to weigh risks, you need to not have billion dollar companies spending millions of dollars to hide the effects of concussions. I just don't buy this. Forget whether they hid results of studies. Forget if the studies ever even existed. No one honestly thinks you can make a career out of lining up across from this [1] and still live a consequence free life. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Rh6KuuH6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Rh6KuuH6w
astura 8y ago
We don't, as evidenced by the fact American football and other contact sports both aren't banned and are extremely popular. We can still criticize the league for downplaying/covering up the risks of brain damage. After all, to make a proper cost/benefit analysis you'd need to know all the (known) costs.

I don't think it's about pro football players -- we're pretty sure the players in the NFL know the risks (well, now they do). Rather, it's about educating FUTURE potential players so that they too can make an informed decision, or the parents of kids who might say, "you know, I don't want my kid to have a bunch of concussions, because that's been proven to have permanent significant damage".

EliRivers 8y ago

People in general are bad at judging risks, worse still at trying to judge the risk of head trauma decades down the road from now, especially with the number of people involved loudly pitching for their views to take sway. I've no doubt some of them have the training and understanding to examine the data (math majors in college - must be some, I'm sure), run the statistics and pick out noise from signal, which I expect wouldn't be an easy thing given the long stretches of time and the many confounding factors involved, but I expect few of those capable of it even try, so the majority are left with the same vox-pops and media segments everyone else has on the subject. Couple that with the macho attitudes and self-image in the sport, and that the entertainment needs to keep working for the sport to keep making money (nothing entertaining about permanent head trauma), and that the people having to judge these risks are young males being offered life-changing opportunities and sums of money, and it seems that the default position here should be that we consider football players incapable of weighing the risks (much as we should, by default, consider people bad at judging risks). Why would we think they are somehow especially capable of judging the risks?

tengbretson 8y ago
Making poor eating decisions can cause bodily harm much quicker and more severe than repeated concussions from playing football. Should the default position also be that we don't deem adults to be capable of weighing the risks when choosing what food to eat?
- EliRivers 8y ago
  Yes, that does seem to be what the evidence indicates. People generally rate their diet and exercise as significantly better than it really is, leading them to significantly underestimate the risks to themselves.
- asveikau 8y ago
  You brought this up as an "ah ha! I caught you in your absurdity!" kind of thing. However it is absolutely true that the US needs to better regulate food ingredients to shield consumers from their bad decisions. Right now the industry is set up to exploit how easy it is to make those poor decisions and become addicted to them, and most food ingredients for sale are consequently more calorific than they need to be. (Some personal context for me: I lost 100 lbs over 2017-2018. So I have some experience both unwittingly falling in the trap and successfully getting out of it, the latter part seems pretty rare from what I can tell.)
  - tengbretson 8y ago
    I don't think we share enough common ground to have any further useful conversation about this.
    - asveikau 8y ago
      OK. I will ask this of you though. I don't know if you are in the US to witness this or somewhere else. But next time you are in a crowded restaurant where all the portions are in the thousands of calories.. Look around you at all the people wolfing it down. And maybe ask: how many of these people do this regularly? How much exercise do they get to balance it out? How did these people get into this cycle, binging day after day? How irritated would they get if you took it away from them? Is it their fault, or are they stuck in some kind of bad loop? Was that cycle entered into well informed or something else? Losing 100 lbs caused me to think about this, and the answers are very depressing. Even for any given meal or ingredient, there has been a change. Look at videos of 70s and 80s America, the average person is way more fit. Or, to take a random example, I re-read the novel "Cannery Row" a few years ago. Now, it's fiction, though based on some real people. It takes place in the first half of the 20th century, and one character is said to drive regularly from Monterey to Los Angeles, a sedentary activity, stopping several times for burgers. Not once does it say he was overweight, nor do I think the real person he was based on was. Could it be that a 1940s burger was better for you than a burger today?
wu-ikkyu 8y ago
Are you claiming only math majors are capable of understanding statistics and therefore should be the only people legally entitled to make decisions?

maxxxxx 8y ago

Why do we think workers in a nuclear plant are incapable of weighing the risks when choosing whether or not to work there? Employers (in this case the NFL and the team owners) have had a long history of endangering the health of their employees if there was profit to be made.

cortesoft 8y ago

Well, for one, they start playing while they are still in their youth. You could make a better argument for free decision making if you don't allow tackle football under 18. Second, in order to weigh risks, you need to not have billion dollar companies spending millions of dollars to hide the effects of concussions. Third, do we let people take any risk they want? If a company wants to pay someone for a job that has a 95% fatality rate, do we let them do it? What if it was 100% fatality rate, but the person knows this and agrees to it? Can you pay someone to kill themselves? If we agree that a company shouldn't be allowed to pay someone to kill themselves, the rest is just deciding what level or risk we are comfortable with letting people trade for money. Football might be on the 'too risky to allow people to trade for money' side of the equation, once we know the actual risks.

tengbretson 8y ago
> Second, in order to weigh risks, you need to not have billion dollar companies spending millions of dollars to hide the effects of concussions. I just don't buy this. Forget whether they hid results of studies. Forget if the studies ever even existed. No one honestly thinks you can make a career out of lining up across from this [1] and still live a consequence free life. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Rh6KuuH6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Rh6KuuH6w

astura 8y ago

We don't, as evidenced by the fact American football and other contact sports both aren't banned and are extremely popular. We can still criticize the league for downplaying/covering up the risks of brain damage. After all, to make a proper cost/benefit analysis you'd need to know all the (known) costs.