re: Most underrated player of the class

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agreed. He'll be a 3 year solid starter with All-SEC upside

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We are not nearly as certain about Emery as we were about Kardell. Pancake was definitely going to come right in as a freshman and road grade Alabama. Remember? Unless you know the recruit personally, and know him well, it’s impossible to say how he will do.

I’m not suggesting to stop the predictions, because that’s one of the things that make sports fun, but the certainty with which we predict needs reining in. I read something yesterday, by Matthew Yglesias that addressed this obliquely:

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I think the best impact making quantified predictions has had on me, personally, is that it’s helped me refrain from tossing off wildly overstated predictions. People who have strongly held prescriptive views about policy (people like me) often yoke those views to forecasts about the future that end up being overstated and unprincipled in fairly obvious ways. You see people professing absolute certainty as to how Taiwan will react to a Russian invasion of Ukraine or whether Mitch McConnell will eliminate the filibuster during the next Republican Party trifecta, when I think it’s actually really obvious that in both cases, you’re not only tackling a difficult question but one where the result hinges critically on details that have not yet been specified. If you imagine yourself fully specifying a bet and saying what odds you would give, it helps clarify how uncertain you really feel about these things. At least it does for me.

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