“The Ultimatum Fallacy” is not a formal fallacy, but it’s a common mistake that people make. Infomercials that encourage you to “buy now, before all supplies are gone,” exploit the tendency that people have to sacrifice their future potential for the sake of the present moment. This fallacy encourages a recklessness born from the perspective that time is running out, that only one last chance remains to “take advantage of an opportunity” and so that opportunity must be leveraged to the fullest extent possible. In common parlance, engaging in this fallacy is often referred to as “pressing.”
This is the ninth installment of The Labyrinthian, a series dedicated to exploring random fields of knowledge in order to give you unordinary theoretical, philosophical, strategic, and/or often rambling guidance on daily fantasy sports. Consult the introductory piece to the series for further explanation on what you are reading. Just think of this as the DFS version of The Neverending Story.
“If You Had Only One Day to Live, What Would You Do?”
In a college setting, that question is the equivalent of “Verbal Viagra.” That’s the type of question that one person asks another when (s)he wants sexual tension to transform into sexual chemistry. That question is intended to put someone in a mental state that facilitates the ultimatum fallacy through this seven-step process:
- One hears the question and immediately imagines a scenario in which one has limited time to enjoy the world’s expansive pleasures.
- One thinks about the particular pleasures one would want to experience most in that scenario.
- One invariably starts to think about the delights of sexual intercourse.
- One becomes aroused.
- One allows the fantasy of “Only One Day to Live” to take hold of the mind and to influence the decision-making process.
- One takes a final sip of alcohol.
- One has rabid sexual relations with the deep-minded Lothario who posed the question.
Basically, that question is the modern-day version of some Princeton man reciting a few lines of 17th-century carpe diem Cavalier poetry to a Bryn Mawr woman late on a Friday night in the 1950s. “Had we but world enough, and time”: That is a direct appeal to the part in all of us that indulgently commits the ultimatum fallacy. Andrew Marvell knew what he was doing. We are all coy mistresses waiting to be “uncoyed.”
Or as Jim Morrison put it in The Doors classic “Five to One”: “Get together, one more time.”
“That’s My Family, Kay — That’s not Me”
Specifically, the ultimatum fallacy can be thought of as a particular instance of the “False Dilemma,” in which two options are presented as the only options available and any other possibilities are ignored.
For instance, in The Godfather, when Michael Corleone tells the story of how his father helped his godson Johnny Fontane get out of a personal service contract with a big band leader, Michael frames his father’s unrefusable offer in the form of a binary dilemma: “My father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.” In theory, other possibilities could exist — unlikely possibilities, perhaps — but it would be possible that, in this instance, the band leader would perhaps be allowed to live.
For example, maybe Luca Brasi would merely pistol whip the band leader or shoot out his knee caps. Maybe Brasi would only shoot off the man’s ear. Or maybe in fact the Don was bluffing altogether and would order Brasi to holster his gun. Regardless, the Don appealed to the part of the band leader’s intellect prone to the ultimatum fallacy. He encouraged the band leader to consider only two options.
In general, the ultimatum fallacy is a mental error rooted in binary thinking: Either one takes advantage of this special, final opportunity . . . or one fails to do so and thus lives with regret — or, in the case of the band leader, dies with regret. In committing the ultimatum fallacy, people often think that because an opportunity is the last one of its kind that they will see for a while, perhaps ever, that they should treat it differently than all the other similar opportunities that have preceded it.
If we were to pick a (cheesy) song from the 1980s to be the theme song for the ultimatum fallacy, it would definitely be Europe’s “The Final Countdown.”
Another Two-Game Slate: What Are Thursdays Good For?
For the second Thursday in a row (I’m writing this on Feb. 11, 2016), we have a two-game slate. Last week, I encouraged you to play the slate so that you could accrue more hours in your quest to become a DFS outlier. I was clear that small slates are more for practicing than for actual playing — I said that you should “probably put less of your bankroll into play than you normally would” — but it’s possible that perhaps in your desire to Horcrux your tournament lineups you took some of the message and ignored the rest.
As a result, I’m telling you once again that you do not need to overplay a two-game slate. Even if you ordinarily scale back on two-game slates, this week you might be prone to falling victim to the ultimatum fallacy, because this slate is the last regular action slate for about a week. Just remember: You do not need to press.
Experimentation is the Key: Stacking the Pelicans-Thunder Game
The key in two-game slates is to experiment judiciously, not to expose yourself unreasonably. In such a small slate, you need to think outside of the box by exploring improbable probabilities. For instance, last week I broached the idea of playing three shooting guards in a small slate. This week, I want to explore the process of creating unique tournament lineups via game stacking.
Applying the idea of improbable probabilities, I think that a host of unique lineups for guaranteed prize pools could be created by this simple process:
- Stack Pelicans. They are 11.5-point underdogs. They have the lowest implied team total on the slate. They are on the road playing the second game of a back-to-back. You would have to be crazy to stack this team — but if the improbable happens and the Pelicans keep up with the Thunder, then your lineups will be significantly advantaged.
- Stack the Thunder. Even if the Pelicans do well, the Thunder are unlikely to be blown out. They are playing at home and have the slate’s highest implied team total. Playing the Thunder could a chalky strategy, but the Pelican stacks will still give any lineups with the Thunder a good chance of being unique.
- Go to the Phan Player Model and give yourself 50 percent exposure to Anthony Davis, Norris Cole, Ryan Anderson, Jrue Holiday, Dante Cunningham, and Omer Asik for the Pelicans and Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, Serge Ibaka, Steven Adams, and Dion Waiters. These 11 players have the highest-projected ceilings on their teams. If the Pelicans and Thunder score a lot of points, it will likely be because some combination of six of these 11 players did well.
- And then shotgun multiple lineups via the Lineups Generator. Adjust settings in the generator to your liking, feel free to tinker a little with individual lineups, and then save the lineups to the new Lineup Tool so that you can export them to DraftKings and FanDuel later.
- Smoke a cigar?
Setting the exposure to 50 percent for the six Pelicans and five Thunder might seem extreme, but it actually does an excellent job of locking in three players from each team into each lineup generated:
This strategy may be crazy, but that’s kind of the point. It’s a small slate. You should be experimenting with it. Practicing with it. You should be analyzing and playing it (with a reduced bankroll).
But you shouldn’t be overplaying it.
How Not to Seize the Day
If you are in the habit of playing slates every day, the truth is that you might be dreading somewhat the prospect of not playing regular NBA slates for the next week. You might even think something like this:
I don’t like small slates, but this is my last chance to play actual NBA DFS for a week. If I don’t put real money in now then I will have foregone my last chance to make money till after the All-Star Break. And it would be good for me to make more money now to make up for all the money I won’t be able to make while the NBA is on hiatus.
That is all sorts of ultimatum fallacy.
If you approach this slate as one that you should treat seriously, then you might be at a greater risk of overplaying it. This is not the kind of slate that you take home to meet your parents. Don’t think of this as more than it is. This is the kind of slate that you fool around and experiment with — nothing more.
Seize the day with this slate. In the words of Marvell, “Now let us sport us while we may.”
Just don’t do so fallaciously.
———
The Labyrinthian: 2016, 9
If you have suggestions on material I should know about or even write about in a future Labyrinthian, please contact me via email, [email protected], or Twitter @MattFtheOracle.
