Soccer Shenanigans: How a Supercomputer Can Make Decisions More Baffling Than a Coin Flip

The Machine That Makes Stupid Decisions Faster Than Humans

Arsenal and Chelsea played to a feisty draw that was decided partially by VAR, that wonderful technology designed to make soccer more fair that actually just makes it worse by automating bad decisions instead of having humans make them. Moises Caicedo got a red card via video review, which means a computer looked at something, a human decided it needed review, and then another human looked at it again and somehow made a worse decision than if they’d just trusted instinct.

This is what VAR has accomplished in soccer: it’s taken the human element out of refereeing and replaced it with the ability to spend five minutes reviewing a thirty-second clip to reach the wrong conclusion with supreme confidence. It’s like automation but specifically designed to be worse. The original referee made a decision. VAR looked at it and said ‘Actually, here’s an even worse decision, but with more certainty.’

Technology as Confidence Amplifier for Bad Judgment — Arsenal vs Chelsea

Here’s what VAR actually does: it lets people commit to bad decisions with absolute certainty. A human referee might hesitate. They might second-guess. They might think ‘maybe that wasn’t a red card.’ VAR removes doubt. A computer says ‘this is a red card,’ and suddenly everyone’s committing to it as objective fact, even when the original incident was borderline at best.

Bill Burr said something about how people get confident about stupid things, and VAR proves that point every single match. The technology doesn’t improve judgment. It just removes hesitation from judgment, so bad calls get made with more confidence and absolute certainty. That’s worse. A hesitant bad call is still bad. A confident bad call is worse because nobody questions it.

The Caicedo red card was probably marginal at best. Forty years ago it would’ve just been a yellow card and everyone would’ve moved on. Now it’s a ‘VAR review’ situation where the confidence amplifier kicks in and suddenly everybody’s certain it was the right decision, even though the evidence for that decision is questionable at best. Technology isn’t making soccer more fair. It’s making bad decisions seem more legitimate.

When the Machine Agrees With Bad Judgment

Soccer’s fundamental problem is that VAR was designed by people who didn’t understand that technology can’t fix judgment problems. It can only make judgment problems seem more scientific. A human referee makes a call. VAR looks at it and says ‘that call is correct,’ and suddenly it seems like objective fact because a machine confirmed it. But the machine isn’t providing objectivity. It’s just providing certainty.

Jerry Seinfeld said something about observation and truth, and the truth about VAR is this: it’s just another way for people to make confidently wrong calls. The technology itself is fine. The decision-making is still human. And humans are terrible at reviewing things objectively. We’re better at commitment. VAR removes the hesitation but not the bias. So you get very confident bias.

Amy Schumer talks about how frustration becomes humor when you think about it long enough, and watching VAR reviews is genuinely infuriating. Soccer’s a game decided by human judgment. That’s part of the sport. VAR tried to remove human element and somehow made human element worse by automating it.

The Future of Automated Stupid Decisions — Arsenal vs Chelsea

Arsenal probably should’ve won. Chelsea played with ten men and still got a draw, which suggests either Arsenal’s offense is bad or Chelsea’s defense is exceptional, or both. The red card might’ve changed the game outcome, or it might not have. Nobody will ever know because VAR made the question irrelevant. The card was issued. The game was changed. The certainty was absolute.

Ron White said something about how certainty doesn’t equal correctness, and VAR is certainty without correctness. It’s confidence without wisdom. It’s technology making judgment worse by removing doubt without removing error. Soccer fans have stopped complaining about VAR decisions because you can’t complain about objective fact, even when that objective fact is probably wrong.

The real scandal isn’t the specific Caicedo decision. The real scandal is that we’ve convinced ourselves that automating bad judgment improves judgment. It doesn’t. It just makes the bad judgment feel more certain, which somehow seems like progress to people who value confidence more than accuracy. VAR is technology failing the specific thing it was designed to accomplish while making the experience worse overall.

Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.