After yesterdays glaring blunders by the referees, linesmen and 4th referees, first when England were denied a goal which every TV viewer around the world could see had crossed the goal-line and second when Argentina were awarded a goal when every TV viewer could see that Tevez was off-side, it is now going to be difficult for FIFA to resist bringing in the use of technology to assist referees’ decisions. It occurred to me that even though the final results seemed justified by the rest of the play, we cannot know what the impact of the correct decisions would have been. If England had been awarded their goal they would have started the second half level and in a different frame of mind. If Argentina’s goal had been disallowed and Mexico had scored first the players’ attitudes and the play could have changed in a fundamental way.
FIFA’s attitude to the use of technology borders on faith in a bygone age which no longer exists.
Like the proverbial ostriches – they do not wish to know what they do not know.
Thinking about what might have been, I was reminded of Donald Rumsfeld’s press conference at NATO HQ, Brussels on June 6th, 2002., when as U.S. Secretary of Defence he said:
“The message is that there are no “knowns.” There are thing we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that’s basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns”.
There is actually a compelling music to the words but this quotation is often mocked especially by opponents of the US invasion of Iraq. I have quoted it disparagingly myself in discussions and presentations about the dangers of forecasting.
But of course what he said is rather profound.
Coincidentally there is a recent series of articles in the New York Times by Errol Morris about “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma” which is precisely about the “Unknown Unknowns”. He quotes David Dunning, a Cornell professor of social psychology:
“Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life. And unknown unknowns constitute a grand swath of everybody’s field of ignorance”.
The Dunning – Kruger effect states that “The incompetent are too incompetent to know that they are incompetent” (World Cup referees and EU bureaucrats for example?). “Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it”.
As Errol puts it: “To me, unknown unknowns enter at two different levels. The first is at the level of risk and problem. Many tasks in life contain uncertainties that are known — so-called “known unknowns.” These are potential problems for any venture, but they at least are problems that people can be vigilant about, prepare for, take insurance on, and often head off at the pass. Unknown unknown risks, on the other hand, are problems that people do not know they are vulnerable to. Unknown unknown solutions haunt the mediocre without their knowledge.”
Known unknowns are where a question can be posed and an answer sought. In the unknown unknown we cannot even pose the question.
It seems to me that many of the beliefs and faiths we suffer from – whether about religion or global warming or the fundamental particles of physics or the start of or the extent of the universe – start at the point of unknown unknowns. There is a school of thought which believes (it cannot know) that nothing is unknowable. Others believe that everything is eventually knowable. In my own mind I believe – but cannot know – that just as a two dimensional shadow cannot conceive of the 3rd physical dimension from which it is cast, we cannot even conceive of some of the unknowns around which therefore render them unknowable.
But we do not need to go there yet. The 3-dimensional physical world we inhabit has sufficient things we don’t know that we don’t know. We and the World Cup continue in ignorance of most of the areas of our incompetence.
Tags: Decision making, football, Imponderables, Thought
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