Clearly Rosenborg Ballklub’s women’s team is the greatest team in the history of soccer. They’ve never lost a match.
Also, history is brewing near Dingwall. Ross County’s next transfer will break the club’s record for summer transfer sessions. The club is poised to join the top ten spenders in Scottish soccer.
Oh, and it’s terrible to ask about black people being shot by the police because more white people are victims of police shootings. How dare you make this about race.
Those are three very stupid hot takes. But they’re all stupid for the same reason.
Context is king.
Dear Boys,
You may hear people saying that you can’t argue with facts. Which is true. The encyclopedia has never changed itself while I yell at it.
But while you can’t argue with facts you can and should argue with people who use facts out of context. Facts out of context aren’t sacrosanct, their tools of persuasion: tools that can be wielded subtly or with all the careful grace of a hippo in a tutu.
You don’t have to let them use those tools any more than you have to let your dentist use a compound mitre saw to floss your teeth.
Each of those hot takes is based on facts, each of which I italicized. Those facts superficially support my claim, but include context and both the fact and my argument fall apart.
(Vavel.com)
Yes, the Rosenborg Kvinner are undefeated under that name. But the sample size is ludicrously small. They’ve only played two games as Rosenborg, and under the club’s old mantle (Trondheims Ørn) they certainly lost their share. They’ve had a great two games with a new names, that doesn’t make them the greatest team ever.
Yes, the next signing by Ross County will break records and put them into the top ten spenders in Scotland. But you have to know both the team’s history and the state of Scottish soccer to see how irrelevant that is.
(From The Scotsman)
Since joining the top league Ross County have never paid for a transfer, so even one cent would break a record. Moreover, with only twenty teams in the top league, being in the top ten could mean you spend like crazed Glaswegians (Rangers/Celtic) or that you are right on average for the top league.
So a transfer fee would be historic, it also wouldn’t make a lot of difference. It would be as historic as the punctuation I put at the end of this specific sentence¡
Which brings us to the last out of context fact which both distorts sample size and skews away from cultural/historical context.
Yes, over 2,000 white people have been killed by police and yes that is two times more than other racial groups. Also, there are four times more white people in the US than black ones. So, black (and Hispanic) people are killed more than twice as often as white folks. Totals are facts, so are percentages and rates, using one while ignoring the context of others is stupid and biased.
That bias, that damned systemic racism, is the other part. Throughout the country’s history, we’ve undervalued people of color to over-inflate the importance of white people. Sometimes it’s as crass as proclaiming “reverse racism” over any racial discussion. Sometimes it’s as subtle as celebrating the white teacher before acknowledging the brown-skinned students. This time it’s pretty blatant, stupid, and divorced from the history of oppression that underpins the United States.
However you look at it, facts are indisputable. But the conclusions we draw from them are, always and forever, debatable. Much as we cheer Julie Blakstad and company, much as we hope for Steven Ferguson’s side, we have to know that our arguments are less about the facts and more about our feelings. Just as we know the dismissal of uncomfortable claims of racism is less about the facts, and more about our feeling uncomfortable with the truth.
Silly sports opinions can carry this natural bias as part of their very nature. We’re fans, not fact machines. But the same issues that cloud judgments about teams or players apply to other arguments. So keep asking questions, wonder why people say what they do, and remember: context is king.
MacKenzie's Boot Room 