Author: Hans Gerber
Date: 19:15:30 05/08/00
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On May 08, 2000 at 16:36:02, Dan Newman wrote: >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... Kasparov certainly knows that he can lose a game on a bad day, but when he had his suspicions during the second game he was one point ahead in the match. And the second game was a draw when K. stopped playing and resigned. The psychological blow as you call it was the _ambiguous behavior_ of Hsu who at first agreed and then said no to show Kasparov the logfile of game two. > >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. Also this is more complicated. Who could "sit" in Kasparov's ears to give him advice? But I could imagine a rule in chess that would include such examinations . But where is the control of the machine?
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