There Are Four Teams

The Super Bowl is coming up, and while I'm not interested in sports, I know the basics: two teams vying for the supreme win of the year. This year will be the 60th, which tracks with how long I've been on this planet.

My dad is a big sports guy, and he hoped I would be as well. As things happen, I did not follow him down that particular path (though I memorized the names, cities, and logos of every NHL, NFL, and MLB team in the 70s. I still think they're the Minnesota North Stars.) I followed him down another path, though. The path of "truth" or "accuracy" or whatever word you'd like. We share the idea that, regardless of where your loyalties lie, it's the facts of the matter that are important, even if it hurts your "team."

As social primates, we're tribal by nature (see Dunbar's Number for a rabbit hole), and the idea of teams is just natural. Red vs. Blue, Us vs. Them, Girls vs. Boys, Skins vs. Shirts... it's the world we grow into. You can throw Right vs. Wrong in there too—that's perhaps our earliest lesson. But we're also taught that there is a definitive answer to these things, and that we have a shared reality.

And then the dress appeared.

You've probably heard of the Blue/Black vs. White/Gold dress controversy. Many have dismissed as just a "stupid Internet thing," but I see it as a profound moment in history where we had a prime example of how we may all "see" the same thing, but we don't "observe" in the same way (h/t to ACD.)

Briefly, an image of a dress invaded social media. Some people saw a white and gold dress; others saw a black and blue dress. As reality dictates, it's one or the other; folks who saw one thought those that saw the other were lying or playing a trick. This happened to my wife and me, which made for an interesting moment. We both knew we were acting in good faith, and yet our experiences were at odds with each other.

The phenomenon was caused by a poor image with ambiguous colors. Our eyes sent ambiguous signals to our brains, and our brains interpreted them. But those interpretations were based on a person's experience, in this case, the environments they learned to see in. Here's a full explanation for the curious.

The third team takes the field.

This team is wearing black and white. They're the referees. Their job is to support the truth, not any one side. And in time, they determined the truth of the matter: the dress was blue with black trim. The company that made the dress never made a white dress with gold trim in that style (many do now).

So, that should settle it. Team Blue Dress wins!

No, that doesn't even come close to settling it. After that was revealed, a good portion of people refused to believe it. They saw white/gold; therefore, it was white/gold. Seeing is believing, after all. The refs were lying, it was all an Internet trick, etc.

But how unbiased are referees? Are they people who don't care about sports? No, I'm sure they all have a favorite team. They have bias. But ideally, they've learned to overcome that bias to take what they've observed and apply an agreed-upon set of rules. A good ref will rule against their favorite team if the evidence supports that conclusion. And this goes against our tribal nature.

And then in Minneapolis, a woman is shot in her car.

What color dress was she wearing?

Don't bother answering that—it's not important. It's the blue/black vs. white/gold dress problem again: we're looking at the same images and seeing completely different things.

This time, it's less a matter of ambiguous data, though there is some of that. It's much more a matter of bias overwhelming objectivity. Most people have chosen a side at this point, and that colors their interpretation of the data. And yes, this is happening "on both sides," a collection of words I've come to despise.

One side sees a woman murdered in the street. Another sees an officer narrowly avoiding death while taking out a bad guy. Same video, same stills—the difference comes down to our bias and how the data is presented. FoxNews primes the viewer one way, MSNow primes them with the other. "You're about to see a blue dress - here it is." "Breaking news: white dress found in store." Some may find these images disturbing.

The two teams take the field of social media to do battle. They have one thing in common: they're completely certain that their interpretation is accurate. Both accuse the other of being blind or agents of evil. The officer in question is "a domestic terrorist (who) needs to be brought to justice," and the driver is a "vicious, disorderly, and a professional agitator.”

In this case, both could be true, but what's reality? The whistle's been blown, but where's the decision? We have the playback... where are the referees?

They're no longer on the sidelines. They're on the field, vying for the football. The referees have joined the teams.

Imagine if the Super Bowl referees didn't wear black and white, but sported blue or white instead? How would disagreements be settled?

The way it has since Moon-watcher picked up a bone that felt so good in his hand: with power that grows more raw every day.

We live in a world where the only thing that matters is power. What's real and what's not matters less than who wields the biggest stick. Might makes right.

And for my last movie reference of this piece, I'll point to The Hunt for Red October, a film about two teams with no referee:

"This business will get out of control, and we'll be lucky to live through it."

I've chosen a "team." I am Team Referee, not in the sense that I have authority, but in the sense that I want the data to drive my interpretation, while recognizing my bias. We're losing the game, presently, but we have a better track record over long periods of time. Truth is the daughter of time, after all.

Renee Good should still be alive to support her team.

Picard saw four lights when told there were five (TV, not a film reference). There WERE FOUR LIGHTS.

But who is the fourth team? They're the largest and strangest of all.

The fourth team are those who don't care. This is all just a sport they're not interested in.

They are legion.

And they'll be lucky to live through it.