It’s a curious thing, watching sport in the age of technology. Recently, in the fourth cricket Test between Australia and India at the MCG, a moment crystallised everything that’s fascinating and frustrating about our quest for perfect decisions.
Indian batter Yashasvi Jaiswal attempted to pull a short delivery from Pat Cummins. The keeper caught it. The on-field umpire said not out. Then came that modern pause – the review. Despite sophisticated technology (the snickometer) showing no evidence of contact, the third umpire, trusting his eyes over the tech, gave Jaiswal out. It was a pivotal moment that helped hand Australia victory.
The controversy that followed wasn’t just about cricket – it was about something deeper. When do we trust technology? When do we trust human judgment? And what happens when they disagree?
VAR Disrupts The Flow Of The Beautiful Game
This same tension played out in soccer when Australia made sporting history. In April 2017, the A-League became the world’s first top-flight professional competition to implement VAR (Video Assistant Referee) when Melbourne City faced Adelaide United. That first match passed without VAR being called upon – a simplicity we’d soon miss.
By January 2018, when VAR made its English debut in an FA Cup match between Brighton & Hove Albion and Crystal Palace, something profound was already becoming clear: in our quest for perfect decisions, we might be sacrificing something far more valuable.
As Daisy Christodoulou recently observed in a fascinating EconTalk discussion, “Before technology was introduced to football’s decision-making process, the thing you heard people say all the time is that we just want more right decisions… And they would say the livelihoods of players and managers depend on more right decisions.”
It’s hard to argue with that logic. Surely more accurate decisions are better? Yet here’s where it gets interesting. Christodoulou points out that “the game is very fluid, and I don’t think any of us pre-VAR appreciated how much the fluidity and the spontaneity really mattered.”
This insight cuts deeper than sport. When a referee pauses play for five or six minutes to scrutinise video footage, they’re not just interrupting a game – they’re fracturing a collective experience. The crowd’s emotional investment, that surge of joy when a goal is scored, now comes with an asterisk of uncertainty.
The Transparency Paradox
Even more fascinating is what Christodoulou calls the “transparency paradox.”
Sometimes, when we look too closely at something, we don’t get more clarity – we get more confusion. “You can erode trust,” she notes, “by engaging too much with uncertainty.” Just as in that cricket Test, where technology and human judgment collided, leaving us with more questions than answers.
This brings us to a profound observation from Randolph Nesse that Christodoulou quotes: “Everything could be better but only at a cost.” Just as our bones could be thicker for safety but would then restrict movement, our systems for ensuring accuracy often come with hidden costs to human experience.
The Intersection Between Technology, Precision, And Small Business Customers
I witnessed this recently at a trendy lunch spot. The server, focused intently on weighing each portion of pulled pork to the gram, never once looked up to engage with customers. The digital scale promised fairness, but it created a barrier where there used to be connection.
For business owners, this tension between precision and human connection presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
When major chains or any businesses implement rigid systems – their equivalent of VAR – they gain consistency but often lose something vital: those moments of genuine human judgement that create delight.
Remember when the person behind the counter would add that extra slice of meat with a knowing smile? Or when the barista would top up your coffee just a bit more because they knew you’d had a rough morning? These weren’t inefficiencies in the system – they were the system working exactly as human interaction should.
As Christodoulou puts it, “You can’t keep trading off limitlessly.” Sometimes, in our pursuit of perfect precision, we end up with “the worst of both worlds” – neither the accuracy we sought nor the human connection we sacrificed.
The lesson? Perhaps it’s time to recognise that not everything valuable can be measured, and not everything measurable is valuable.
In business, as in sport, the most meaningful moments often happen in those spaces between the rules – where human judgement, generosity, and connection create experiences that no technology can replicate.
After all, nobody ever fell in love with a spreadsheet.