The Gunn Show - 8.18.24
Thoughts on the dichotomy between art and science; why each needs the other; and why in an increasingly scientific world art will always have a role to play.
Hey Everyone,
Happy Sunday, and welcome back to The Gunn Show. Hope you all have had a fantastic week.
Even though the 100 degree Dallas summer has yet to subside, fall is coming quickly and with it so too is one of the best times of the year - football season. NFL pre-season games are underway, fantasy drafts are getting scheduled in droves, and we have officially passed one of the biggest hurdles of all - no more college football-less Saturdays until January.
With my excitement for the fall building, I spent some time over the last couple weeks watching HBO’s Hard Knocks - Offseason With the New York Giants. While I’ve loved the on-field focused seasons of Hard Knocks in the past, I found this style of series to be especially interesting as it peels back the curtain on both the why and how underlying decisions made to construct a team by the front office. And while football and baseball stand alone as separate sports, I was struck by the relative similarities that underly the processes of roster construction between the two - at least in the way the show represented it. From scouts on the road to analysts in the office and executives on the phone, the number of pieces that get layered into a decision never ceases to amaze me.
But as I thought about the show more, one thing stood out to me above all else - a truth that applies just as equally to baseball as it does any other sport: as ‘scientific’ and ‘objective’ as the sports industry has gotten, there will always be a critical art underpinning it that will determine the difference between the winners and losers. Because for all of the models and complex information that now go into the process of making decisions, it is ultimately the people behind it and how they apply that information that will ultimately make the difference.
So this week’s edition is a riff on this topic - on the dichotomy between science and art; why each needs the other; and why even in a world where science is ascending to the pantheon, art will always have a critical role to play.
I hope you enjoy, and as always, please share any thoughts that the discussion stimulates on your end.
Look forward to chatting again next week.
- CG
Thinking - On Art and Science
Back in an earlier phase of my life, I found myself spending a great deal of time in a laboratory setting running experiments and doing ‘science’.
Life as a pre-medical student demanded it. In order to understand the three main branches of science - biology, chemistry, and physics - you needed to gain an understanding of the underlying concept each of them has revolved around for centuries: how to uncover new knowledge via experimentation. Doing so meant becoming best friends with the crown jewel of science - the scientific method - learning it inside out until you knew it like the back of your hand. Make a hypothesis. Design a study. Perform the study. Observe the results and validate or invalidate your assumptions based on what you’ve seen.
Experiments were the vehicle through which science was meant to be pounded into your brain. It wasn’t enough to sit in a lecture hall for multiple hours a week learning about the infinite things humans have uncovered by simply doing things and watching what happened. To truly understand science, you had to move from the theory of the lecture hall to the practice of the lab. To truly understand science, you had to do it yourself.
As my fellow classmates and I learned quickly, it was one thing to design a study and something else entirely to conduct it. Frequently, one experiment was enough to show you how big the gap between theory and reality truly is. Just ask anyone that has bred fruit flies with the intent of studying Mendelian genetics if everything turned out exactly how they expected - they will almost certainly respond with a resounding “no” (as would I - since most of my flies wound up dead). More often than not at the start of your science journey, you were spending the aftermath of your study trying to figure out where it went wrong rather than where it went right.
But as you spent more time in the lab and the experiment counts began to mount, something interesting happened - your results started getting better. With each lab, study and hypothesis, your outcomes began to more closely resemble your expectations. The surprises and mix ups became fewer and further in-between.
Why? Well, on the surface it might seem quite clear: you are simply getting better at doing ‘science’. But if you step back and think about it more deeply, you’ll notice that there is actually something else happening behind the scenes. The science is getting better because you are slowly perfecting the art of the science.
And that, to me, is a critical point to recognize.
Often times we speak about art and science as two sides of a spectrum, as if we are capable of partaking in only one or the other at a given point in time. Science, from this broader perspective, is what we would describe as the ‘harder’ or more ‘technical’ skills - things like math, physics, or computer programming. Art, on the other hand, is the ‘softer’ or more ‘subjective’ side of things - creativity, language, philosophy, emotional intelligence, and the like. In general, society likes to draw a hard line between the two in order to create clear buckets that each of us can fit into based on our skills and inclinations. Into complex equations and fancy math? Science is likely your thing. Love expressing your creativity through design? Congratulations, you are artistically skilled.
But I think such a distinction misses the boat. Because from my perspective, art and science are not two concepts that reside at opposite poles, but rather two sides of the same coin. In the same way that tails needs heads, art and science need each other to make themselves whole. Science needs art to be science, in the same way that art needs science to be art.
What do I mean by this? Consider again the example of a laboratory study, the quintessential representation of what it means to be ‘scientific’. In this sense, good science means a well designed study - one that is rigorous in adherence to the scientific method and thus one from which high quality conclusions can be drawn. Good science = good conclusions, or at least we are led to believe. Yet there is something important to recognize here: execution of the study is as much of a determinant of the outcome as the design of the study itself. If the execution - or the art of performing the study - is off, the results will be unreliable. Science thus cannot be said to have occurred without a sufficient amount of art.
For many at the start of their scientific journeys it is frequently the art of doing science that causes more hiccups than the science itself. I can speak from experience here, because as an amateur chemist I was quite poor at the minutia of running an experiment. Portioning out the ingredients always seemed to be a taller task than I expected, as did mixing them in the appropriate manner. And because my execution of the details - the art - was frequently off, there was almost always a skewness in the results of the science as well.
Okay, but why does this distinction matter when it come to sports?
Because at some point, science and art need to be balanced in proportion with each other. And when it comes to sport, if there is one trend that has dominated the industry over the last few decades it is an unbalancing of these two concepts - a trend towards becoming more scientific in nearly every manner possible.
In recent years, the same forces of technology that have shaped the world at large have come for the sports industry as well. We are at a point in sports history where quantification is now the norm - from advanced on-field performance analytics, to live biometric monitoring, and even computer vision use for measuring first downs, we are increasingly able to attach a number to - and thus to be scientific about - anything we could possibly imagine. The result is a landscape in which data literacy has been both prioritized and rewarded above virtually all else - it is no stretch to say that executives, coaches, and even players now possess greater levels of technical understanding than at any point in the history of athletics. Put simply, sport has increasingly swung the pendulum towards rewarding those capable of doing good science - but in my opinion, perhaps at the expense of those capable of good art.
This is a problem, from my perspective, because as we’ve discussed good science can only come if good art is present at the same time. And when you prioritize one too much at the expense of the other, pieces are likely to be missing as a result.
This distinction is important in sport today, as the current landscape is one in which separation rarely lies in the form of the information advantages of old. More or less, teams competing against one another today all have similar levels of ‘knowledge’, with each possessing access to the same data, the same video, and more.
As such, what you do with the knowledge you have now tends to carry the majority of the weight, to demarcate the fine line between winning and losing. It is not enough to simply collect data and do research - you have to find a way to move from theory to practice - to get your insights onto the field - or else it is all for naught. In other words, victory in the modern era of sport is now dependent on who has the application advantage much more so than who has the information advantage.
And application, more frequently than not, tends to be the domain of the artist.
Because where scientists are great at dealing with theory, artists excel in dealing with reality. Rather than spending their time with models and equations, they are the ones in the field getting their hands dirty with the work, their smocks covered in paint. They are the ones focused on execution, putting their experiments to the test and watching them break to figure out how to put them back together again. See, where the scientist learns his lessons on paper, the artist learns his through experience. And unlike their close siblings, artists possess superpowers in that they are more fluid; more variable; more adaptable. They lack the rigidity that handicaps the scientists, granting them an inherent flexibility that allows them to adjust to whatever the environment in front of them presents. The see the way the world truly works, and are the ones that partake in the process of trial and error that takes theory and puts it into practice.
In the context of sport, there is a demographic of person that I think best represents both the necessity and the staying power of art: the people that are most directly responsible for getting the most out of players, coaches.
Certainly, the modern coach has to be much more of a scientist than in the past - data and technology are ubiquitous, and you cannot really say that you are turning over every stone to help your players without them. But at the end of the day, the job of the coach is take information that seems to work for a player in theory and ensure that it actually works in practice. Doing so requires an inherent give and take, a process of trial and error where you match what you think should work up with what actually does. To coach is thus much more similar to the running of the actual experiment than to the design of it. Said differently, a good coach must excel at the art of doing science rather than merely the science itself.
To borrow from Jeff Bezos in predicting the future, it is important to focus on the things that will never change. And at the top of that list is that reality will continue to be messy, that experiments will continue to offer us surprises, that science will always require art to give it its power.
It is for this reason that I think good coaching, good decision making, and thus good art, will never go out of style. Even if both the sporting industry and the world at large have strayed heavily towards science as of late. There will always be a place for the artist in sport - for the person with the softer skills, capable of dealing with the messiness of reality. The person that understands that at the end of the day this about humans, not numbers, and operates accordingly.
Because at the end of the day, science and art are not an either/or phenomenon. And I’m willing to bet that the champions of the future will be every bit as good at the art of science as they will be at the science itself
Reading
The Worst Technology of the 21st Century - George Mack (~1 min)
A great, short read in which George shares a helpful model for thinking about the value technology provides: the ability to do more with less. Through the lens of the QR code at a restaurant, he highlights an important understanding for our modern era - digital does not always mean better. For certain things - of which the restaurant menu is a perfect example - analog has served us well for many years. Sometimes, there is no need to reinvent the wheel when it already does exactly what is needed.
What and How to Read - Janan Ganesh (~3 min)
No, this isn’t a full list of things you can take with you into reading hibernation mode guaranteed to come out smarter on the other side. It’s much more important than that - a call to action in how you think about what you read, specifically through the lens of books. Janan makes a great point that I’ve found to be useful in selecting what gets added to your library: you should use the filtering effect of time to choose what is worth your time, with a specific emphasis to read as few contemporary books as possible.
77 Lessons at 77 - Arnold Schwarzenegger (~25 min)
A treasure trove of insight from a true polymath. 6 of my favorites:
“Everything starts with vision. You have to see it before you can achieve it. You will never regret the time you spend to develop a very clear vision. When I say clear, I mean so clear that it plays in your mind like a movie.”
“The joy is not in the victory or in standing at the top of the mountain. The joy is the work that gets you there.”
“Reps, reps, reps. You might think you only do reps in the gym, but repetitions are the key to life. Whether you want to improve at speaking in public or reading books or just eating better, you will need to do reps. Whatever you work at, it becomes easier and less uncomfortable with every rep you do.”
“If you can make discomfort your friend, you will find that most limits you’ve placed on yourself or others have placed on you are totally fake.”
“If you don’t love failure, how can you love success? It’s the failures and the struggles that give our success meaning. Why would you care about winning if you didn’t know what it felt like to lose?” (absolute banger)
“They have a rule on airplanes that applies to life. You’re supposed to put your oxygen mask on before you help anyone else. Even your kid. It sounds crazy. But I (naturally) asked about it. If you don’t put yours on first, you can pass out before you can help your kid, and then everybody’s screwed. When people tell me they feel selfish working on themselves, whether it’s mentally or physically, I remind them of this. The more you do for yourself, the more you can help others.”
