<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image">REUTERS/Gleb GaranichUkrainian Dmitry Balandin poses with his wooden model Cylon in his flat in Zaporizhzhya August 6, 2013. It took Balandin, who works as a crane operator, six months to build the model from 500 parts. Balandin says he does not use blueprints and designs the parts as he works on them. He says he would love to build metal models but that is impossible to do so in his small apartment. He plays with Cylon as a child would play with a doll or Lego toy, and is now making a girlfriend for his model. He hopes to eventually build an entire model family and have them displayed at exhibitions and galleries. Picture taken August 6, 2013. </div></div></div>If robots become more cognitively capable than humans, then what happens to ... everything?
"In such a future -perhaps a mere fifty years from now - the planet will be completely filled with cognitive and intelligent systems, which will intervene in all aspects of biological life, and humans will be influenced every moment by the decisions these machines make automatically," Alexandre Pupo writes in a <a href="http://wfr.sagepub.com/">World Future Review</a> report titled <a href="http://wfr.sagepub.com/content/6/2/114.full.pdf+html">Cognitively Everywhere: The Omnipresence of Intelligent Machines and the Possible Social Impact</a>.
In the future, machines with brain-like capabilities will be able to know everything about everything using tools already in place, such as the internet, and then will be able to reason and put that knowledge to use like people.
Pupo lists a few of the ways that this will have a drastic impact on human civilization.
<h3>Instant Answers</h3>
When robots become able to reason and think like humans, we will only need to ask one a simple question without overly thinking about how to properly word to get the answer we are looking for, such as with search engines today. Machines will also operate in conjunction with each other to ensure they can produce the knowledge needed to get the answer a person is looking for.
Pupo uses the example of searching for a travel route through MapQuest. In the future, machines will be able to give you an entire plan for the event or meeting you're going to, rather than just giving the best possible route there. These machines will consider who else is going and what their preferences are, past experiences, and what to do after the event or meeting. In a sense, machines will be offering us advice.
The <a href="http://www.google.com/landing/now/#whatisit">Google Now service</a> already does some of the basics Pupo outlined in his paper. Google's somewhat futuristic time management service helps to find the best routes based on traffic, weather, and method of transportation while also providing a user with information based on their personal interests. The service is marketed as something that "learns how to help manage your day, letting you focus on what matters," <a href="http://www.google.com/landing/now/#whatisit">according to the site</a>.
Where Pupo's report gets even more surreal is when he claims robots will act as "digital bodyguards" for humans and be able to advise them on things they should and should not do based on the information they are able to collect.
<h3>How Our Interactions Will Change</h3>
So when robots become smart enough to give us advice about things such as our next trip to Rockaway Beach with some friends, people will start to rely on them for all sorts of interactions with others.
Pupo claims that the robots will make these interactions more peaceful, as they could quickly gather information about anyone, adding that it would be nearly impossible to hide criminal intent or ulterior motives from a machine.
Cultural barriers won't be important, and the machines will be able to process information in any language, making communication between someone speaking German and someone speaking English a non-issue.
This will cause "human interaction will be governed more by human desires than by knowledge of other cultures and languages," he writes.
Essentially, different customs and traditions that divide groups of people will no longer be relevant.
<h3>Is this good or bad?</h3>
With robots being able to reason about a much larger amount of information than any human could ever be able to dream about processing, people will look to the machines for answers and advice about everything.
And if people are trying to get advice from the machines about everything, he range of possibilities for an interaction will drastically shrink, as machines will be giving you the best possible answer for any dilemma. With this reliance comes a single answer solution for every problem, which will lead to society being guided by the machines, Pupo writes.
Questions such as "What should I say at this meeting?" or "How should I approach this girl at the bar?" will be answered by machines within a matter of seconds.
He goes on to write about how, at this future point, most interactions will be mediated by the robots.
"The possibility of getting to know a new person, explore a new place, or learn something simply because you want to may be drastically reduced because machine reasoning will direct people along calculated paths after having concluded that a given opportunity is not the best choice for a particular person," he writes.
But would people really just be okay with giving up all of this control to the machines, even if they have good answers? One would think many people would have enough foresight to possibly prevent this massive societal change. As a matter of fact, <a href="http://io9.com/these-are-the-jobs-that-robots-will-never-steal-from-us-1459020102">io9 lists</a> "Human Adviser" and "Descision Maker" as the first two future jobs robots will never be able to take.
Kathleen Richardson, a robot anthropologist, put it best <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/we-ask-the-experts-will-robots-take-over-the-world">when discussing the subject</a> of humans looking for robots to perform the most human of tasks, such as taking care of the elderly, with researchers at Cambridge University.
"Unfortunately, these roles are not best suited to machines, but to other people," she said. "So the question is: why would we prefer a machine to do them for us?"
<div style="position: absolute; top: -1999px; left: -1988px;" id="stcpDiv">Kathleen Richardson</div>
<div style="position: absolute; top: -1999px; left: -1988px;" id="stcpDiv">Unfortunately these roles are not best suited to machines, but to other people. So the question is: why would we prefer a machine do them for us? - See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/we-ask-the-experts-will-robots-take-over-the-world#sthash.qifB9pFc.dpuf</div>
<div style="position: absolute; top: -1999px; left: -1988px;" id="stcpDiv">Unfortunately these roles are not best suited to machines, but to other people. So the question is: why would we prefer a machine do them for us? - See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/we-ask-the-experts-will-robots-take-over-the-world#sthash.qifB9pFc.dpuf</div>
<div style="position: absolute; top: -1999px; left: -1988px;" id="stcpDiv">Unfortunately these roles are not best suited to machines, but to other people. So the question is: why would we prefer a machine do them for us? - See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/we-ask-the-experts-will-robots-take-over-the-world#sthash.qifB9pFc.dpuf</div>
<h3>Don't forget about revolution</h3>
While not everyone agrees with Pupo's ideas, they are important to consider, since they could lead to a very dangerous place. Machines could start to think of humans as just another species roaming the earth, and, when thinking about how to best preserve the planet, they could even humans are bad for Earth's long-term stability and could even seek to eliminate us.
Think of it as a leaky faucet, he writes. If someone has a leaky faucet, they fix it, "without regard for the millions of microorganisms that depends on the trickling water to survive."

Mankind Is Getting Ready To Turn Over Most Decisions To Robots

<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/creators"></a> <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">Mike Nudelman/Business Insider</div></div></div>Reid Hoffman was one of the first people to have the idea that the internet could be used to connect large numbers of like-minded people together, founding a short-lived social platform called SocialNet in 1997.After an executive stint at online payments innovator PayPal, Hoffman turned that insight into LinkedIn, which launched in 2002 and has since become the default online venue for job hunting and making professional connections, fetching <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-buys-linkedin-2016-6">a price tag of $26.2 billion</a> when it was bought by Microsoft this June.Hoffman is still the chairman of LinkedIn, and has also become one of the most prolific investors in Silicon Valley, with early bets on big winners like Facebook and Airbnb. He runs an early-stage startup fund for Greylock, a top Silicon Valley VC, serves on the boards of a number of nonprofits like <a href="https://www.dosomething.org/us/about/who-we-are">Do Something</a>, and he's recently been teaching a course at Stanford, "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/llinkedin-ceo-reveals-why-many-founders-struggle-to-scale-their-companies-2015-12">Blitzscaling</a>," that shows startups how to grow fast.Hoffman is featured in our inaugural edition of the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/creators">BI 100: The Creators</a>, which celebrates business leaders who create many types of value in society. We interviewed him via email prior to the Microsoft-LinkedIn deal to learn more about his view of entrepreneurship, capitalism, and the future:Matt Rosoff: I've seen you quoted as saying you wanted to make a big impact on the world. Explain what that meant to you when you graduated from Stanford, and how your position evolved to encompass entrepreneurship.Reid Hoffman: As a child, I wondered often: "Why are we? What is the meaning of life?" These questions made me realize that life is what has meaning - not just individual lives, but all of our lives. Coming out of Stanford, I hoped to contribute to these questions as an academic and a public intellectual: to write essays and books about who we are and who we should be, both as individuals and a society. Then, at Oxford, I realized that being an academic conflicted with being a public intellectual: writing books on scholarship for dozens of people vs. writing books for society. On reflection, I realized that I could focus on software instead of books, business instead of the academy, and products informed by theories instead of just theories. With the change of focus, I could move from writing scholarship that dozens might read, to books that thousands might read, to software that millions to billions might use. Thus, I could help enable better meaning of life for many people at scale. Rosoff: PayPal was outsized in its later influence in Silicon Valley - it spawned a lot of great entrepreneurs and operators. Why? What was special about it?Hoffman: Even by Silicon Valley standards, PayPal's vision was massively ambitious. We described PayPal on our company t-shirts as "the global payment operating system." We wanted to build a 21st century payments system that went beyond the credit cards, merchant terminals, and ATM infrastructure that the finance industry's established players had built. We wanted to create a service that would let people exchange money as easily as the internet was letting them exchange information. PayPal was disruptive, it was democratizing, and it had universal appeal. It gave power to millions and millions of individuals and reduced monopolist control from nations, banks, and other huge corporations. Our experience with PayPal showed us how to think big and how to keep massive ambition for impact. As the PayPal experience was very fast - about four years - we all graduated with experience, resources, ambition, and youth. Thus, a number of us went on to create Yelp, YouTube, Yammer, and LinkedIn. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Finance-amp-Business-Califor-/21ef8baf66e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">PAUL SAKUMA/AP</a>Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, two of the other top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to emerge from PayPal.</div></div></div>Rosoff: What did you personally learn at PayPal about impact that you've been able to carry forward?Hoffman: At PayPal, we had a window of opportunity - to scale up a new digital payments system on a global level before huge companies with far more resources and experience in the payments industry truly understood what was possible. So we learned to move boldly, decisively, and fast. At PayPal, we helped pioneer the idea that growth is the foundation for an internet company. The faster we got to scale, the stronger we created network effects, the more enduring business that we created.Another thing few people realize is that PayPal centrally depended on the power of networks. By 2001, we had a pretty big fraud problem, where international crime rings were using stolen credit card numbers to make payments to dummy accounts, and leaving us on the hook for these charges after withdrawing the money. But because all these transactions were happening on a single networked platform, we could map how all the different accounts were interacting with each other. So we were able to develop a fraud-monitoring system that identified the various patterns that were associated with fraud, and in time we got very good at preventing fraudulent transactions. And that was a key personal lesson to learn: a network of identities, communications, and transactions can be a platform for a number of applications. In PayPal, we had payment but also identity and anti-fraud. When you build a platform that creates all kinds of relationships and enables a huge number of interactions of one kind or another, the data that it generates ends up creating all kinds of strategic advantages. You see that in many of our post-PayPal businesses: Linkedin, Youtube, Yelp, Affirm, etc. Rosoff: You founded a social network, SocialNet, in the 1990s, well before Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster. Then again with LinkedIn. Why were you drawn to that kind of business? What's interesting about it?Hoffman: SocialNet emerged from those questions I mentioned earlier that have always compelled me. What is a meaningful life, and what kinds of social systems enable it?Broadly, the meaning of life comes from how we interact with each other. The internet can reconfigure space, so that the right people are always next to each other. The internet was this new medium where anyone could be a publisher, so what did that mean? What kinds of information would people want to publish about themselves? Traditionally, publishers had often built communities of interest around specific topics. But that didn't mean all the people who were subscribing to Golf Magazine could easily find each other. But the internet made that possible.The theory behind SocialNet was that the web wasn't just a place where traditional publishers could distribute content more efficiently, or where readers would just have more opportunities to comment on stories that professional writers had written. The web was a place where millions and millions of people would create their own media identities, share information about themselves, and look for opportunities to connect with each other in ways that could truly enhance their lives. Socialnet also started with a particular set of key relationships in human life: dating, work, social, and living (roommates). LinkedIn then focused on one deep aspect of life: work. Especially in its early days, a lot of people just thought of it as a place to post your resume when you were looking for a job. In reality, it was an identity platform for professionals, a place where you shared information about yourself so you could be found and find others, and thus develop connections and relationships that would enrich your professional life in all sorts of different ways. Your identity and network became the platform to amplify your professional life overall, to connect you with opportunity and success. Rosoff: Does LinkedIn have a larger mission than providing shareholder returns? What is it? And how does a company balance the need to provide profits and shareholder returns with larger missions?Hoffman: This question implies a tension between "a larger mission" and "shareholder returns." I disagree; instead, I see a synergy. First and foremost, our mission is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce, by building the world's best platform for sharing professional identity, finding job opportunities, learning more about specific companies and industries, and developing new skills. And because our larger mission has led to a product that brings hundreds of millions of users serious economic value, we're able to monetize it in ways that generate strong returns for our shareholders as well. Mission reinforces shareholder return; business model reinforces mission. Rosoff: How have you taken the lessons you learned at both PayPal and LinkedIn and applied them to your investment decisions?Hoffman: Because of my experiences with PayPal and LinkedIn, I look for ideas that can solve a need for hundreds of millions of people. While achieving scale fast was also a priority for both these companies, there were also strong long-term visions informing them from the very start. At LinkedIn, for example, you couldn't directly research companies or take online classes in the early years. But the founding vision of Linkedin did include these ideas and others not yet implemented. So I look for that too. Does the founder have both the bias to action that you need to get a product to market quickly, and also a persuasive vision for where the company and the market in general will be five years or even ten years out? Does success transform people's lives and industries at scale? <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://blogs.microsoft.com/firehose/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin/#sm.0001ka60rxqw9e2m102zxgrq4p23o">Microsoft</a>Hoffman (right) with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner (left) and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (middle).</div></div></div>Rosoff: One hundred years from now, will life be better for most people than it is today? How so? What could go wrong?Hoffman: We're still in the very early years of a massively transformative era, the beginning of what I call the Networked Age. The great news is that networks create compounding feedback loops that amplify the frequency, velocity, and reach of human communication and exchange. And that's the bad news too. The Arab Spring and ISIS are both products of the Networked Age.On the plus side, I believe that networks and the flows of capital, talent, and information they enable are going to make life more prosperous and more meaningful for billions of people. On the potential downside, we should ask what kinds of strain does that put on the planet and on society? As global standards of living rise because of increased interconnectivity, we're going to need more energy, more food, more global cooperation. Can we manage it? I'm optimistic. If you look at long-term trends, we're less violent than we were 100 years ago, more educated, and perhaps surprisingly, more tolerant of diversity.Of course, we're also going to be adding a lot of new elements into the mix, very quickly. Artificial Intelligence. Genome editing. If we think carefully about all the different pathways that are now emerging, I think we can ultimately navigate to a much better place. But the actual contours of that world are all but impossible to predict. If you think about how we went from the early web's "coffee cams" and dancing-baby animations to Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, Bitcoin, and countless other unforeseen services and technologies in less than 20 years, it seems impossible to predict specifics for 2116. Comparing the last 100 years to the next 100, however, it seems nearly certain that we will make a number of inventions and changes that will be magic and radically new. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-credits-refund-apple-settlement-ebooks-2016-6">You may have Amazon credits waiting for you - here's how to check</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="A3ajNiNDE6kJIZNKtHtgrteDfCJbVyXt" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

Reid Hoffman talks to us about the magic of PayPal, the dawn of the networked age, and the meaning of life

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c13491ecad04d55b9135d7-960/ford-mustang-gt-2015-1.jpg"></a><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/benjamin-zhang">Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider</a></div></div></div>
For 50 years, the Ford Mustang has been the iconic American car.
Which is why I jumped at the opportunity to spend a weekend behind the wheel of an all-new 2015 Ford Mustang GT, outfitted in an eye-catching "triple yellow" paint job.
Honestly, Ford's new sixth generation Mustang GT is nothing short of a revelation. It drives like a world-class sports car - not, dare I day it, like a Mustang.
Sure, the fifth generation Stang, which first hit the market in 2004, was pretty good to drive. But this new one is so much better.
Over the past five decades, the car buying public has developed a certain mental image of the so-called "muscle car." That image is of rudimentary barnyard engineering, hulking engines capable extreme straight-line speed, and no ability to comprehend a corner.
No more. At least not with the new Mustang.
For 2015, Ford has replaced the Mustang's traditional "muscle car" live-axle rear suspension - essentially an metal pole with a wheel attached at each end - with a modern, fully independent unit. 
The difference is remarkable. In the corners, the Mustang remains steady and planted. It gives the driver a level of confidence that was simply not there in previous GT models. 
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider" title_caption="The fastback!" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c14d7deab8ea5c199135d1-960/2015-ford-mustang-gt-7.jpg"></a><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/benjamin-zhang">Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider</a>The fastback!</div></div></div>
It's a good thing that Ford gave the pony car a modern suspension. Because the new Stang needs it to harness the 435 horsepower that's under the hood. Power for the GT variant is courtesy of a 5.0 liter - that's 302 cubic inches in muscle car parlance - overhead-cam Coyote V8. It's the latest development of Ford's "modular" engine, and boy, is it a fantastic motor!
It revs with incredible freedom. As a result, the flow of power from the V8 seems virtually endless. In fact, the higher you rev the engine, the more willing and enthusiastic the power delivery became. 
Overall, the Mustang GT just feels like a classier car than its predecessors. More suit and tie than blue jeans. More Frank Sinatra than ... Frank Stallone. 
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Ford" title_caption="Classy" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c8f37a69bedd2c5a13dd96-960/ford-mustang-gt-2015-2.jpg"></a>FordClassy</div></div></div>
Just check out the cabin. For the first time in a while, the Mustang GT has a interior that looks like it should be part of a $40,000-plus sports car. The materials feel premium. The Sync with MyFord Touch infotainment system in the car worked flawlessly. And unlike some cars out there in this price point, the metallic switches are machined out of actual metal, unlike <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/lexus-is350-awd-review-2014-10" target="_blank">certain highbrow luxury brands</a> we've recently experienced.
The Mustang even had some electronic wizardry I wasn't expecting on a car of its ilk, such as adaptive cruise control, adjustable steering settings, and an electronic drive-mode selector (available modes are Normal, Sport, Track, and Snow). 
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>For the muscle-car aficionados, Ford has even included an <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/2015-ford-mustang-gt-line-lock-2014-9" target="_blank">electronic "line lock" feature </a>that locks up the car's front brakes, but allows the rear wheels to spin freely. Although the company's engineers say that it's to help driver heat up their rear tires, we all know what its true purpose is - burn outs!
The pony car is a survivor. The vast majority of its fellow muscle cars of the 1960s have gone the way of the dodo. Extinct.
Why has the Mustang endured? For better or for worse, the Stang has been able to adapt itself to meet the needs of the times. 
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider" title_caption="It's 5.0!" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54c14e8deab8ea1e209135d4-960/2015-ford-mustang-gt-8.jpg"></a><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/benjamin-zhang">Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider</a>It's 5.0!</div></div></div>Fortunately, this latest evolution hasn't lost that old school Mustang feel. It's good at everything its ancestors were good at. But now it can achieve more, much more.
The Mustang is still perfectly at home blasting down the drag strip. It's V8 rumble is still intoxicating. But now, when the straight roads become twisty, the Mustang tackles them with confidence. When it's time to putter around town, the Stang can coddle its occupants in relative luxury. 
In many ways, the 2015 Mustang may be a signal that the age of the pure muscle car may be coming to an end.
Ultimately, I believe consumers will end up with better cars that are still fun, stylish, immensely powerful, and unmistakably American. 
And that's fine by me.

The Ford Mustang Is No Longer A Muscle Car

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty ImagesFormer Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow.</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>A <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/the-nfl-draft-is-still-a-crapshoot/256464/">consensus</a> is <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/draft2016/story/_/id/15159462/successful-drafting-all-volume-nfl">emerging</a> among some analysts that the NFL draft is mostly a crapshoot and that whether a given player becomes successful is a result of factors that cannot be observed before the draft.</li><li>But some NFL teams appear to be making an obvious mistake by taking quarterbacks who have good physical traits - like size, speed, and arm strength - but who struggle in college with mental and mechanical skills - like accuracy, reading defenses, and making sound decisions about where to throw the football.</li><li>The tendency stems from inflexible thought patterns and the inherent difficulties in evaluating quarterbacks, according to economists, football analysts, former NFL scouts, and former NFL general managers who spoke with Business Insider.</li><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories</a>.</li></ul>Quarterback is the most important position in a modern NFL dominated by passing, but teams struggle to draft the right one. Of the 64 quarterbacks selected in the first or second rounds of the NFL draft between 2000 (the year Tom Brady, today's longest-tenured quarterback, was drafted) and 2016, 28 rank among the top-32 quarterbacks in <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/index37a8.html">approximate value</a> (AV) - a statistic created by the website Pro Football Reference to measure a player's impact on his team - since their rookie years. The NFL has 32 teams, so a quarterback who ranks among the top 32 in AV during his career will provide enough value to make him worthy of being the starter for at least one team. That could be considered the minimum level of performance required for a highly-drafted quarterback to avoid becoming a bust.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nfl-draft-quarterback-class-prospects-2019-3">The top 14 quarterbacks in the 2019 NFL draft class</a>A <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/the-nfl-draft-is-still-a-crapshoot/256464/">consensus</a> is <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/draft2016/story/_/id/15159462/successful-drafting-all-volume-nfl">emerging</a> among some analysts that the draft is mostly a crapshoot and that whether a given player becomes successful is a result of factors that cannot be observed before the draft. But some NFL teams appear to be making an obvious mistake by taking quarterbacks who have good physical traits - like size, speed, and arm strength - but who struggle in college with mental and mechanical skills - like accuracy, reading defenses, and making sound decisions about where to throw the football.This tendency is apparent when comparing pre-draft scouting reports with NFL performance for three groups of quarterbacks: <ul><li>Those who were drafted in the first or second rounds and rank among the top-16 in AV since their rookie years</li><li>Those who were not drafted in the first two rounds but rank among the top-32 in AV since their rookie years</li><li>Those who were drafted in the first or second rounds but rank outside the top-32 in AV since their rookie years</li></ul>I designated quarterbacks in the first two categories as successful, and those in the third category as unsuccessful since quarterbacks drafted in the first two rounds are generally expected to become starters, while teams often view those selected after the second round or in free agency as likely backups with the potential to develop into starters. Among quarterbacks drafted between 2000-2016 who fell into one of the three categories above, I found the following from pre-draft scouting reports written by publications like ESPN, NFL.com, CBS Sports, and Bleacher Report. (For each trait, I only included quarterbacks for whom a majority of media scouting reports made a decisive, positive or negative evaluation.)<ul><li>83% of successful quarterbacks received favorable evaluations for their accuracy in college, while 55% of unsuccessful quarterbacks received negative evaluations for their accuracy in college.</li><li>50% of successful quarterbacks received favorable evaluations for their decision-making abilities, while 67% of unsuccessful quarterbacks received negative evaluations for their decision-making abilities.</li><li>73% of successful quarterbacks received favorable evaluations for their ability to read defenses, while 63% of unsuccessful quarterbacks received negative evaluations for their ability to read defenses.</li></ul>The disparities between successful and unsuccessful quarterbacks were smaller for arm strength, size, and speed:<ul><li>87% of successful quarterbacks received favorable evaluations for their arm strength, while 85% of unsuccessful quarterbacks received favorable evaluations for their arm strength.</li><li>63% of successful quarterbacks received favorable evaluations for their size, while 74% of unsuccessful quarterbacks received favorable evaluations for their size.</li><li>91% of successful quarterbacks received favorable evaluations for their speed, while 80% of unsuccessful quarterbacks received favorable evaluations for their speed.</li></ul>Of course, not every quarterback had detailed, pre-draft scouting reports available online. And scouting is an inexact science; sometimes, experts disagree on the seemingly simple question of whether or not a quarterback is accurate.But these somewhat crude results show that the gap between successful and unsuccessful quarterbacks is more significant for mental and mechanical skills than for attributes based more on innate physical abilities, which suggests teams are less likely to draft a successful quarterback when they emphasize the latter at the expense of the former. So if physically-gifted quarterbacks who struggle in college with some combination of accuracy, decision-making, and reading defenses are less likely to be successful than quarterbacks who excel in those areas, why do teams keep drafting them? The tendency stems from inflexible thought patterns and the inherent difficulties in evaluating quarterbacks, according to economists, football analysts, former NFL scouts, and former NFL general managers who spoke with Business Insider.<h2>Misplaced priorities</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Wade Payne/Associated PressFormer Tennessee Titans quarterback Jake Locker.</div></div></div>The decision to draft any player begins with the decision to have a scout evaluate that player in college. But the methods used for quarterbacks haven't changed much in the past thirty to forty years, even as the NFL has changed drastically, said Ted Sundquist, a former general manager for the Denver Broncos.The templates teams use to evaluate quarterbacks have been shaped by the national scouting organizations Blesto and National Football Scouting, which have tended to emphasize height, weight, and speed, said Sundquist, a former member of National Football Scouting. The <a href="https://www.profootballweekly.com/2016/10/17/greg-gabriel-a-look-at-the-nfl-scouting-process-in-the-fall/aq6vs8w/">organizations create lists</a> of the college players they consider possible NFL prospects, and NFL teams use those lists to guide their internal scouting departments. This means the scouting philosophies of Blesto and National Football Scouting influence which players teams send their scouts to observe, Sundquist said.Sometimes, teams prioritize physical traits in quarterbacks because they're more easily measured than mental characteristics, said Russ Lande, who has worked in the scouting departments of the Cleveland Browns and St. Louis Rams and currently serves as the director of college scouting for the Canadian Football League's Montreal Alouettes. But the mental traits are more important."The success and failure of quarterbacks - 90% of it is above the shoulders," Lande said. Teams also get hung up on physical traits that are at least partly genetic, like size and strength, because they assume they can fix mental attributes and throwing mechanics to a greater extent than is possible."At the heart of it, coaches are teachers. And teachers inherently believe they can make their students better," Lande said. "The love of being a teacher sometimes gets you to be blind to things that are very difficult to fix."Throwing mechanics, in particular, are difficult to correct well before a quarterback has reached the NFL, said Steve Palazzolo, a senior analyst for Pro Football Focus, a website that evaluates professional and college football players by grading their performance on each play."Your throwing patterns, if you've been doing it a lot, are pretty much ingrained between the ages of, like, eight and fourteen," he said.<h2>Irrational behavior</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Jed Jacobsohn/GettyImagesFormer Oakland Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell.</div></div></div>You might think the NFL - which features intense competition for a relatively small number of jobs for coaches, executives, and players - would be a hotbed of innovation and critical thinking since everyone has significant incentives to get an edge on their opponents.But that isn't always true. Even more than other professional sports leagues, like the MLB and the NBA, the NFL can be resistant to new ways of thinking. "Football teams are very stuck in their ways," said Aaron Schatz, who founded the football analytics site Football Outsiders and has consulted for NFL teams.The economist David Romer found in <a href="https://eml.berkeley.edu/~dromer/papers/JPE_April06.pdf">a 2006 paper</a> that NFL teams attempted to convert fourth downs into first downs far less often than would maximize their odds of winning. They have <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2017/11/nfl-coaches-are-making-better-fourth-down-decisions.html">increased their rate of fourth-down attempts</a> since, but the fact that by 2000, 80 years after the NFL's first season (and the most recent year included in Romer's data), teams had not come close to maximizing their offensive opportunities reveals a tendency toward tradition over a ruthless pursuit of competitive advantages.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nick-foles-jaguars-kyler-murray-cardinals-nfl-draft-implications-2019-3">The 2 biggest QB mysteries in the NFL appear to be solved, and there could be huge implications for the rest of the draft</a>Teams can be similarly stubborn and misguided when evaluating quarterbacks. Rather than thinking critically about a quarterback's strengths and weaknesses, teams are sometimes so eager to believe the prospect will solve their problems that they fall prey to confirmation bias and interpret the information they've gathered on him in a way that supports their optimism, said Michael Lombardi, a former general manager for the Cleveland Browns."Sometimes, you want the player to be better than he is," he said. It doesn't help that some teams involve too many people in draft decisions, which encourages adherence to old ways of thinking and discourages new ideas."Whenever you're involved in groupthink, there's a really good chance for a mistake," Lombardi said.But general managers who make big mistakes don't get many chances to learn from them. Since the end of the 2014 season, teams have fired 15 general managers, executives, or coaches responsible for personnel decisions."Most of the time, when you make a mistake, you get fired. And then there's a new group of people in there that didn't know about your mistake, "Lombardi said. <h2>Failing to learn from mistakes</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Paul Sancya/APFormer New York Jets quarterback Christian Hackenberg.</div></div></div>While results from the past 20 years indicate that teams should steer clear of quarterbacks who struggle with some combination of accuracy, reading defenses, and decision-making, there aren't any measurable traits or statistics that can predict which quarterbacks are going to be successful in the NFL, according to <a href="http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/45327/1/10.pdf">a 2009 paper</a> written by the economists David Berri and Rob Simmons.The paper found a weak correlation between a quarterback's draft position and his per-play performance in the NFL. Quarterbacks selected with one of the top-10 picks between 1970 and 2007 performed worse per play than those drafted with the 11th through 90th picks. The paper also found that some of the criteria that influenced a quarterback's draft position - like height, speed, and performance on the Wonderlic, the NFL's pre-draft intelligence test - didn't predict NFL performance. That leaves NFL teams in a difficult position, but one they can make easier by learning from other teams' mistakes. Recent drafts suggest some have not done so.In 2016, the New York Jets took Penn State quarterback Christian Hackenberg in the second round. Before the draft, Pro Football Focus said Hackenberg <a href="https://www.profootballfocus.com/news/draft-why-pff-doesnt-have-a-draftable-grade-on-christian-hackenberg">wasn't worth drafting at all</a> in part because of his inaccuracy and poor decision-making, but Sports Illustrated reported that the Jets thought Hackenberg had a <a href="https://www.si.com/mmqb/2016/05/06/themmqb-christian-hackenberg-new-york-jets-quarterback-private-workout-nfl-draft-2016">high amount of upside</a>. Hackenberg was the <a href="http://www.footballperspective.com/happy-valentines-day-to-the-quarterback-in-your-life-2/">first quarterback in over 30 years</a> to be drafted in the first two rounds and not throw a single pass in a regular season game during his first two seasons.It's difficult to find successful NFL quarterbacks over the past two decades who, like Hackenberg, had great physical gifts but faced significant pre-draft concerns about their accuracy, decision-making, or ability to read defenses (Cam Newton is the rare exception). But plenty flamed out despite high draft positions, like Jake Locker, Tim Tebow, and JaMarcus Russell.This suggests that teams can gain an edge on their competition by merely avoiding decisions that, historically, have low odds of success while letting their opponents fall prey to misplaced priorities and irrational optimism.<ul class="read-more-links"><li>Read more:</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2019-nfl-mock-draft-consensus-first-round-2019-2" data-e2e-name="read-more-link" data-read-more-link="">2019 NFL Mock Draft: What the experts are predicting for every pick of the first round</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2019-nfl-draft-order-when-networks-team-needs-2019-2" data-e2e-name="read-more-link" data-read-more-link="">2019 NFL DRAFT: What every team needs heading into the first round</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nfl-mock-draft-todd-mcshay-kyler-murray-2019-3" data-e2e-name="read-more-link" data-read-more-link="">NFL draft experts now project Oklahoma QB Kyler Murray to be the No. 1 pick, but there is a catch</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-tall-is-kyler-murray-official-nfl-combine-draft-height-2019-2" data-e2e-name="read-more-link" data-read-more-link="">The NFL world says the biggest debate of the NFL Draft is over after learning how tall star quarterback Kyler Murray actually is</a></li></ul> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/billionaire-wwe-vince-mcmahon-wrestling-shahid-tony-khan-aew-2019-4">This billionaire NFL owner and his son are taking on Vince McMahon and WWE</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Evidence shows NFL teams are better off drafting quarterbacks with strong mental skills and mechanics over QBs who are just physically gifted

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">EastVillage Images/Shutterstock</div></div></div>WASHINGTON (AP) - Campers in national parks are to pull up stakes and leave, some veterans waiting to have disability benefits approved will have to cool their heels even longer, many routine food inspections will be suspended and panda-cams will go dark at the shuttered National Zoo.
Those are among the immediate effects when parts of the government shut down Tuesday because of the budget impasse in Congress.
In this time of argument and political gridlock, a blueprint to manage federal dysfunction is one function that appears to have gone smoothly. Throughout government, plans are ready to roll out to keep essential services running and numb the impact for the public. The longer a shutdown goes on, the more it will be felt in day-to-day lives and in the economy as a whole.
A look at what is bound to happen, and what probably won't:
___
THIS: Washington's paralysis will be felt early on in distant lands as well as in the capital - namely, at national parks. All park services will close. Campers have 48 hours to leave their sites. Many parks, such as Yellowstone, will close to traffic, and some will become completely inaccessible. Smithsonian museums in Washington will close and so will the zoo, where panda cams record every twitch and cuddle of the panda cub born Aug. 23 but are to be turned off in the first day of a shutdown.
The Statue of Liberty in New York, the loop road at Acadia National Park in Maine, Skyline Drive in Virginia, and Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park, home of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, will be off limits. At Grand Canyon National Park, people will be turned back from entrance gates and overlooks will be cordoned off along a state road inside the park that will remain open.
"People who waited a year to get a reservation to go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon all of a sudden will find themselves without an opportunity to take that trip," said Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service.
BUT NOT THIS: At some parks, where access is not controlled by gates or entrance stations, people can continue to drive, bike and hike. People won't be shooed off the Appalachian Trail, for example, and parks with highways running through them, like the Great Smoky Mountains, also are likely to be accessible. Officials won't scour the entire 1.2 million-acre Grand Canyon park looking for people; those already hiking or camping in the backcountry and on rafting trips on the Colorado River will be able to complete their trips. The care and feeding of the National Zoo's animals will all go on as usual.
The shutdown won't affect Ellis Island or the Washington Monument because they are already closed for repairs.
___
THIS: The Board of Veterans Appeals will stop issuing rulings, meaning decisions about some disability claims by veterans will wait even longer than usual. Interments at national cemeteries will slow. If a shutdown drags on for weeks, disability and pension payments may be interrupted.
BUT NOT THIS: Most Department of Veterans Affairs services will continue; 95 percent of staff are either exempted from a shutdown or have the budget to keep paying them already in place. The department's health programs get their money a year in advance, so veterans can still see their doctor, get prescriptions filled and visit fully operational VA hospitals and outpatient clinics. Claims workers can process benefit payments until late in October, when that money starts to run out.
___
THIS: New patients won't be accepted into clinical research at the National Institutes of Health, including 255 trials for cancer patients; care will continue for current patients. Federal medical research will be curtailed and the government's ability to detect and investigate disease outbreaks will be harmed. Grant applications will be accepted but not dealt with.
BUT NOT THIS: The show goes on for President Barack Obama's health care law. Tuesday heralds the debut of health insurance markets across the country, which begin accepting customers for coverage that begins in January. Core elements of the law are an entitlement, like Social Security, so their flow of money does not depend on congressional appropriations. That's why Republicans have been trying explicitly to starve the law of money. An impasse in approving a federal budget has little effect on Obamacare. As for NIH operations, reduced hospital staff at the NIH Clinical Center will care for current patients, and research animals will get their usual care.
___
THIS: Most routine food inspections by the Food and Drug Administration will be suspended.
BUT NOT THIS: Meat inspection, done by the Agriculture Department, continues. The FDA will still handle high-risk recalls.
___
THIS: Complaints from airline passengers to the government will fall on deaf ears. The government won't be able to do new car safety testing and ratings or handle automobile recall information. Internal Transportation Department investigations of waste and fraud will be put on ice, and progress will be slowed on replacing the country's radar-based air traffic system with GPS-based navigation. Most accident investigators who respond to air crashes, train collisions, pipeline explosions and other accidents will be furloughed but could be called back if needed.
Kristie Greco, speaking for the Federal Aviation Administration, said nearly 2,500 safety office personnel will be furloughed but may be called back incrementally over the next two weeks. The union representing aviation safety inspectors said it was told by FAA Administrator Michael Huerta that nearly 3,000 inspectors will be off work. Greco did not confirm that.
BUT NOT THIS: Air traffic controllers and many of the technicians who keep air traffic equipment working will remain on the job. Amtrak says it can continue normal operations for a while, relying on ticket revenue, but will suffer without federal subsidies over the longer term. FAA employees who make grants to airports, most Federal Highway Administration workers and federal bus and truck safety inspectors will also stay on the job because they are paid with user fees. Railroad and pipeline safety inspectors will also remain at work.
___
THIS: About half the Defense Department's civilian employees will be furloughed.
BUT NOT THIS: The 1.4 million active-duty military personnel stay on duty and under a last-minute bill, they should keep getting paychecks on time. Most Homeland Security agents and border officers, as well as other law enforcement agents and officers, keep working.
___
THIS: The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, could shut down. It provides supplemental food, health care referrals and nutrition education for pregnant women, mothers and their children.
BUT NOT THIS: School lunches and breakfasts will continue to be served, and food stamps, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will still be distributed.
___
THIS: A shutdown that lasts two weeks or more would probably start to slow an already sluggish economy, analysts say. Closures of national parks would hurt hotels, restaurants and other tourism-related businesses. And federal workers who lost pay would spend less, thereby curbing economic growth. A three-week shutdown would slow the economy's annual growth rate in the October-December quarter by up to 0.9 of a percentage point, Goldman Sachs has estimated. If so, that could mean a growth rate of 1.6 percent, compared with the 2.5 percent that many economists now forecast.
BUT NOT THIS: Little impact on the economy if the shutdown only lasts a few days.
___
THIS: Economic data will be interrupted as the Bureau of Labor Statistics ceases almost all operations. This will leave the stock market without some of the benchmark economic indicators that drive the market up or down. The key September jobs report, due Friday, could still be released on time if the White House authorizes that, but that's not been determined. Statistical gathering also is being interrupted at the Commerce Department and Census Bureau. This means the government won't come out on time with its monthly report on construction spending Tuesday or a factory orders report Thursday.
BUT NOT THIS: The weekly report on applications for unemployment benefits is still expected Thursday. The Treasury Department's daily report on government finances will be released normally and government debt auctions are to proceed as scheduled. And at Commerce, these functions continue, among others: weather and climate observation, fisheries law enforcement and patent and trademark application processing.
___
THIS: Some passport services located in federal buildings might be disrupted - only if those buildings are forced to close because of a disruption in building support services.
BUT NOT THIS: Except in those instances, passport and visas will be handled as usual, both at home and abroad. These activities of the Bureau of Consular Affairs are fully supported by user fees instead of appropriated money, so are not affected. As well, the government will keep handling green card applications.
___
THIS: The Federal Housing Administration, which insures about 15 percent of new loans for home purchases, will approve fewer loans for its client base - borrowers with low to moderate income - because of reduced staff. Only 67 of 349 employees will keep working. The agency will focus on single-family homes during a shutdown, setting aside loan applications for multi-family dwellings. The Housing and Urban Development Department won't make additional payments to the nation's 3,300 public housing authorities, but the agency estimates that most of them have enough money to keep giving people rental assistance until the end of October.
BUT NOT THIS: It will be business as usual for borrowers seeking loans guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together own or guarantee nearly half of all U.S. mortgages and 90 percent of new ones.
___
THIS: Possible delays in processing new disability applications.
BUT NOT THIS: Social Security and Medicare benefits still keep coming.
__
Associated Press writers Sam Hananel, Matthew Daly, Joan Lowy, Kevin Freking, Hope Yen, Lauran Neergaard, Andrew Miga, Deb Riechmann, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Lolita C. Baldor, Jesse Holland, Mary Clare Jalonick and Alicia Caldwell in Washington; and Felicia Fonseca at Grand Canyon National Park, contributed to this report.
<div class="nc_footer">
Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
</div>

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