Sunday, July 7, 2013

The Workings of a Zebra Mind

...and human minds in general.

In my cover identity as a student and teacher of the workings of the human body, I’ve made a study of how we see and make sense of the world.  The truth is:  Our brains lie to us.

It’s not their fault.  They do their best.  Our senses give them limited information and our anatomy limits their processing ability, and they have to instantly construct a complete world view anyway.  To do this, they’ve got to make some stuff up and take some shortcuts.  How they do this and what kinds of problems it can cause has been especially interesting to my zebra persona.  Here’s a “Big Three” of known flaws and how they show up in derby:

“All you see is all there is”:  We tend to make decisions based on the most available information, regardless of it’s the only necessary information. Yes coach, I did see that jammer’s toe tag outside and back in.  But it’s not a cut if the other foot was still straddling.  Neither one of us could see her second foot (that downed blocker is not transparent) but from where the leg is it might have been a straddle.  No call.

Effects of attention.  Watch this video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
Was that a high block?  Possibly.  But the jammer was trying to sneak by on the outside line on the curve, and I took the high probability problem spot and watched feet and hips.  I’ve had a somewhat harried head ref tell me “Remember to watch Everything!” and it’s a goal I’ll continue to work towards; but my brain doesn’t wanna.  

“We see what we want to see”:  Humans love to be right.  One of the best ways to feel you were right is to focus on information that supports our views and overlook information that challenges it.  So we do that.  I recently sat with an off-duty zebra who was watching his love’s team play.  Under his breath, he accurately reported every call he saw.  He identified the same calls as I did against his love’s opponents – and none of them that I saw against his love’s team.

Do I suffer from these flaws?  Of course.  I’m human, and I have a human brain (naysayers to the contrary).  What to do about them?

1)   Know they exist and undermine their power.  I’ve worked with the zeeb who saw
only his love’s opponents’ flaws; during a bout when he’s got his game face on he calls points and penalties with beautiful fairness.  That’s a triumph of forcing his
attention on the action, not on what he wants to see.

Intentional approaches – such as remembering to scan head to toe even if track cuts are the most likely problem right this second – can keep us out of mental traps.  I intentionally run through the phases (Did I see initiation, action, impact?)before the whistle’s blown.  It slows me down half a second, but helps assure I didn’t fall for ‘what you see is all there is’.

I avoid learning biasing information (what the score is, which player has a history     of free-roaming elbows) as much as possible.  If I don’t have expectations, my brain will have to rely on actual sensory information instead.

2)  Have ‘no skin in the game’.  One big advantage I have is that the team I really care
about most, I skate (not ref) for.  I almost always like both teams at bouts I ref, or am inclined to like them.  I really don’t care a fig who wins.   That takes the wind out of the ‘see what you want to see’ effect.  Too bad the people yelling at the refs
don’t have this advantage…

3)  Keep in mind that Everybody in this game has a human mind.  Therefore, each and every one of us is prone to these errors.  We know you’re awesome, we love you, you Are special, but this means you too.  So retain a healthy lack of complete confidence in your own perceptions, please.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

The Day I Saw a Dinosaur


Eighteen bouts this past month, in stripes.  Those tourneys will Really rack them up!  I've always loved that derby is a study in contrasts:  Demanding and accepting, competitive and friendly.  Nothing shows these contrasts more clearly than tournaments.

I've been reffing just over a year now, and I marvel at how much the game has changed in that time.  Both the zebra and the player in me very much approve of a lot of it!  No minors...I was on the fence on this one, liking the simplicity but a little worried the violence would get out of hand.  It didn't.  The rules changes that speeded up the game?  THANK YOU for those!  It's true that never until a month ago had I seen a jammer on her -1 pass, but that move doesn't Feel slow, so it doesn't count.

Some other changes, not as good.  I've always despised the rankings systems that discourage good sportsmanship (by rewarding Giant point differentials), and WFTDA's gone that way.  The ranking system also makes it hard for not-very-good WFTDA teams to find opponents, because it's better for the rankings for a weak team to lose to a good team than to beat an even weaker team.  Let's not shut people out from playing, k?  It's really not all about winning championships.

I love being part of such a vital sport; a movement in motion.

What brought this up?  This weekend, I saw a real live dinosaur.  Saw it with my own two eyes.  And a crafty dino it was too, finagling one of its opponents into a one-minute vacation in the scenic Sin Bin.

I saw a pivot line up ... (wait for it)... ON THE PIVOT LINE!  And then ... she leaned wayyyyy back so her hips were as far back from it as her leg could reach.  And one of the opposing blockers lined up with her hips ahead of the pivot's.  And failed to yield when warned.  Boom.

Yeah.  Seeing a move that was common less than a year ago felt like a complete Blast from the Past, and blind-sided a player who may have never even Seen a pivot on the line before.  Here's to Lack of Fossilization!