The Ubiquitous Non Sequitur

I find it so irritating when football managers bemoan a poor result which they see as having stemmed from a bad refereeing decision. It happens so often these days. For a start, it’s immature. As the incomparable Bill McLaren was constantly reminding us: “The referee is the sole arbiter of fact.” More importantly, it’s illogical. The argument usually runs

‘The referee awarded them a penalty which they shouldn’t have had. The final score was 1-1 so, if they hadn’t scored from that penalty, we would have won.’

It doesn’t follow. If the penalty hadn’t been awarded, the game would have followed a different road from that point on. It would have been a different game, and there is no way of predicting what the final score would have been.

Would it be too much to ask that schools teach kids the logic of basic determinism? It might help reduce the number of people going bitterly through life, pointlessly bemoaning the fact that ‘if so-and-so hadn’t done such-and-such, my life would be better now.’ There’s no way anybody can know that.