Author: Dan Newman
Date: 13:36:02 05/08/00
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Here's my take on this. When two people (or in this case a team of scientists + their program/machine and a man) sit down to play a chess match they are supposed to do so with a certain degree of mutual trust. They are supposed to consider each other honorable men, shake hands when they are done, and so forth. They would not even sit down together if it were otherwise. Any intimations or outright accusations of cheating or other misbehavior are only to be made in the light of strong evidence--otherwise we have a case of extremely poor sportsmanship... When Kasparov played DB in their first match and won, the DB team were no doubt rather disappointed. Notice that in this case there were no demands to see printout by Kasparov or accusations that Kasparov must have cheated with a concealed transceiver, etc. Now comes the 2nd match. Kasparov loses games he expected to win. (I think that in order to play games at the level Kasparov plays requires an enormous degree of confidence and desire to win.) The idea that he could be bested by a machine that he was convinced could never beat him was no doubt an extreme psychological blow. He couldn't accept this. The only thing that could save him was to uncover some evidence of cheating, so in desperation he made his accusations in the slim hope that he would be proven right. Well, maybe he really was convinced that he couldn't be beaten, ergo there must have been cheating... Asking to see printouts (in an attempt to prove/eliminate) cheating would be like asking to look inside Kasparov's ear for a hidden receiver or that he submit to a metal detector test or x-ray to look for hidden transmitters. This would certainly be deemed unacceptable by most peaple... -Dan.
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