May 24, 2012
Should we enhance foodball referees?
The dignity of the referee - I blog on Practical Ethics about the suggestion that referees should be tested for doping.
My conclusion is that it is likely just pointless expansion of the anti-doping crusade, and that it might be possible to enhance the referee job (for example by improving cognition). But given the peculiarities of sport psychology, maybe it doesn't matter: it is more about the ritual and idea of sport than the actual performance. Which would be fine except for how anti-doping regulations get exported to the rest of society where the same ideas do not apply.
In a way, sport is all about forgetting that it is just a game: to temporarily take something arbitrary bloody seriously. Breaking that illusion is annoying. But extending the illusion across reality leads to moral mistakes.