You shouldn’t equate subjective judgment with mind reading.
You can observe the speed and path of a robot relative to other robots, so it’s possible to judge whether a robot is being driven recklessly enough to exceed a qualitative threshold for potential damage as described in a rule. Driver intent, by contrast, is outside the reach of a referee’s perceptions.
It’s okay to let referees use their judgment. They can judge high speed ramming, which is still in the rules, I noticed. However, that blue box specifies that a foul happens only if the referee infers that deliberate damage was being attempted. Therefore, it’s never going to get called due to the mind reading requirement. The rule would be smarter if it said you can’t repeatedly build up to full speed over a span of 15 feet and ram a robot. That’s something that is avoidable, unnecessary, and possible for the referees to identify pretty easily. There’s a gray area between bumping and ramming that referees would have to judge, and that is fine. Teams that want to ram faster and faster would risk getting fouls.
Zondag’s commentary/rant about FRC rules is more focused on having too many rules and penalties that are too harsh, but the last paragraph is relevant and includes this gem: “I think most teams would rather have chaotic good rules rather than lawful evil rules.”
G204 is one of those lawful evil rules, because it specifies that a foul always has to follow contact inside the frame perimeter (bumper gap excepted). Because of that rule, the referees are watching for any arm that so much as grazes another robot and automatically call a foul rather than being asked to exercise judgment as to whether the contact was problematic.
I’ll think on what sort of wording I’d want to propose for an improved G204/205. I fully recognize that this is a difficult rule to craft, but the current ones are bad enough that I’m certain they can be improved.