Discussion»Questions»Sports» Do you believe that umpires, referees and other officiating staff members can truly be 100% unbiased in doing their jobs? Why or why not?
So you think that every judge (since judges are human beings) only rule according to personal preferences or their confirmation biases rather than the law that they have sworn to uphold?
This post was edited by tom jackson at October 9, 2019 11:50 AM MDT
That's not what I said. I said everyone has biases, but that people do a better job of overcoming their biases when they acknowledge they have them and take steps to eliminate them. Few people are willing to admit they have biases, which means it's pretty rare for someone to take steps to minimize the impact their biases have on their decisions.
As judges are people, they're prone to the same biases everyone else is. We see this in court decisions. It's why wealthy white suspects get away their crimes more than impoverished minority suspects. It's why fathers are statistically less likely to get custody of their children. There are judges who are self-aware and have trained themselves to overcome their personal biases, but certainly, many have not or we wouldn't have the stats we do.
Humans can learn rules rules and apply them accurately without bias---I would hope that you could look at your own life and see where you have done exactly that.
This post was edited by tom jackson at October 9, 2019 12:08 PM MDT
Umm... nope. I understood your point and countered that you were wrong. I even cited specific courtroom examples and gave links that explained the science behind it. If you disagree, that's fine.
If one makes a statement that applies to the whole of a group of something, then if I know of multiple exceptions to that statement, I have the right to ask if that person would continue to assert the universality of that statement when there is ample evidence that it is not true.
---Which is again an example of why I don't understand why if opinions are erroneous, they must still be respected.
Making mistakes, especially honest ones, is not a mutually inclusive aspect of being bias or unbiased. The bias I’m referring to in the question is when someone intentionally applies bias in decision-making, which is quite different than merely making a mistake. ~
I've seen bad calls. Maybe bias was at play, but I usually just think that his view was not the same as mine. Now with every play reviewable and many many automatically reviewed I think it's pretty fair...in college football. That's my sports focus right now.
I try to be. I make a point of NOT knowing where teams rank with regard to the playoffs, so that doesn't influence my decision making. In one situation where a club's officials were attempting to browbeat and intimidate me, I made an official request to not be assigned to any more matches involving that club for that season. I've made mistakes. Bad calls. I can honestly say that bias wasn't involved, I just f**ked up.
The speed of sport and the fact that a human never has a 360 view of all angles of the action means that some incidents simply can't be objectively evaluated. The umpire has to make his best guess based on probabilities and outcomes. I would guess most umpires try to be unbiased and base their sense of pride in their work on their integrity.
Of course, there will always be some people who are biased, and we will often not know what kind of bias until a pattern of decisions becomes evident in the records.
Which is why it's a good thing we have cameras and committees to review.
This post was edited by inky at October 12, 2019 3:54 AM MDT
Just Asking 