IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2021 - 6

Editorial
could surely make a case for offside on the basis
that " a player in an offside position is ... penalized
on becoming involved in active play by ... clearly
attempting to play a ball which is close when this
action impacts on an opponent " [1, pp. 99-100].
The second observation is that, as a consequence
of that complexity, the introduction of technology
and video assistant referee (VAR) has not done anything
to diminish the potential for controversy, all
too predictably [3]. While the use of technology in
sporting adjudication has been beneficial in binary
situations and for decision support, for example, all
that VAR has contributed (besides delays, expense,
and elitism) is an extremely literal and reductionist
identification of being in an offside position; and yet,
as the laws clearly state, being in an offside position
does not necessarily cause an offside offense. Finally,
it can be observed that because of this noncorrelation
of offside position and offside offense, and even
with VAR, judgments of offense are still be prone to
an element of human subjectivity and interpretation:
clearly different people have different game spirits.
If complexity is the root of the problem, then
what of the second question: how could the laws be
alternatively formulated to reduce complexity? In
answering, it is tempting to propose instead the minimal
possible definition. So, as a first go, how about:
an offside offense is caused by a player gaining an
advantage from being in an offside position. No need
to mention " becoming involved in active play, " who
touched the ball and when, deliberately or accidentally,
interfering with an opponent, having to define
a " save " or deal with " line of sight " issues: the referee
simply has to decide if, in her opinion, a player
was gaining an (implicitly unfair) advantage over an
opponent by being in an offside position.
This simplified definition could clearly resolve the
situation described above in favor of the defender;
but it would also allow the referee to use her skill
and judgment to decide all those marginal situations
where the attacking player has a toenail in an
offside position and, after an interminable delay, a
goal is ruled out by a narrative-denying VAR. One
problem with video recording and image processing
technology is that it is so much more sensitive
than the human eye can detect in real time: decisions
are being affected by the thickness of the lines
being drawn on the display, or which frame of the
video was being used (the laws even had to asterisk
" the moment the ball is played or touched " as " the
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first point of contact with the ball, " since in the duration
that a player's foot was in contact with the ball
while kicking it, the teammate could move from a
micro-onside position to a micro-offside one).
While this might go against the " spirit " of the fundamentalist
interpretation of the rules adherence
brigade, for whom an offside position is an offside
offense, no matter what the laws actually say, it is
consistent with the " spirit " of those for whom such
literal hair-splitting is not providing any sort of meaningful
advantage and makes no material difference
to the actual outcome of the players' actions. Recall
this is a socially constructed fact based on an arbitrary
line defined by a convenient point of reference-compare
the definition of equator separating
north and south (a line based on physical reality)
with the definition of the prime meridian (0° longitude)
separating east from west (a line based on conventional
agreement).
Therefore, the " spirit " of the " legal " offside definition
begs a question: how far can a player be in
an offside position before she is causing an offside
offense by gaining an advantage. And this question
is one of those questions encountered in philosophy
classes known as a Sorites Paradox [4]: the problem
of vague predicates being coerced into a binary classification
by applying an arbitrary metric.
The classic example of a Sorites Paradox is to suppose
that there is a pile of sand, which an observer
agrees is a pile of sand. The philosopher removes
one grain from the pile, and asks again: is this a pile
of sand? The observer affirms, and the philosopher
removes another grain; and the process is repeated
until the question becomes: how many grains must
be removed before there is not a pile of sand, or is
one grain of sand also a pile? The general problem
is caused by small changes which are individually
indistinguishable to the human eye and mind, while
the accumulation of these small changes is distinguishable
and brings about a " flip " in the binary-
from state X to not-X [5].
It has been argued that a Sorites Paradox involves
a question which is, in some part or sense, " unknowable "
(epistemologically [6]), yet at the same time,
the answer is, or can be, " known " (practically).
One way to determine whether a player is " gaining
an advantage by being in an offside position " is by
appealing to consensus, so that the truth of a vague
predicate is assigned by group usage. The use of
consensus suggests that " gaining an advantage by
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2021

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