Author: Pete R.
Date: 11:21:33 06/26/00
Hello Hans, I resisted the temptation to put your name in quotation marks, but rest assured my views on your identity will not change. ;) With that said... >As it was mentioned your replies to my posts contained many most interesting >details that gave us new insight into the matter. Since you have given me >such a good communication I want to give you a _final_ answer to your (as > final declared) post. Well, I said that's all I had to say then, now I have another comment. ;) See, you do the same thing here: >Please give me your credits for my deleting of the parts in your >post that had nothing to do primarily with our main topic. I hope that we could >come back to this topic in case from either side something really _new_ would >be presented. In other words if I keep talking you will keep talking. ;) But this will be my last post to you on CCC on this thread. :) >If you want we could continue to talk in private emails about the other topics >you brought up. But this is only a friendly proposal. And in friendly fashion I will have to decline, and I will explain the reason at the end. >Let me give my view. M. Ashley worked for IBM in that event. That's a fact. Now >he didn't want to put words into Kasparov's mouth. >As I already explained on the base of certain explanations R. Hyatt gave about >possible cheating in computerchess, cheating could have happened from the >_outside_ of the DB team. Since Kasparov did never mention the DB team do you >see what M. Ashley did when he asked the way he did? First, because of the way Ashley phrased the sentence he must have been responding to an implication from Kasparov. He gave Kasparov the opportunity to clarify, and Kasparov said the hand of God line. Now if we distill this into mathematics, you are correct and Kasparov did not accuse IBM of cheating. Mathematically there is a difference between saying "yes they cheated", and "maybe they cheated". But in humans terms this shade of difference is meaningless. If I ask you "did you hit your wife?", and you hesitate, or you refuse to answer, or you do anything other than immediately say "no", you make yourself look guilty. Kasparov had the opportunity to clarify. He could have answered Ashley with something like "No, I am not saying they cheated or the computer had human help, but at times the computer played better than I was prepared for.". Instead, he deliberately let the question linger. In the minds of any right-thinking people this is equivalent to *casting doubt* on the IBM team's integrity. In human terms the difference between this and an outright declaration of cheating is not meaningful. It makes Kasparov look like a temperamental person and thus a poor sportman to further doubts about the integrity of IBM's conduct in the match. Period. And this is a dissection of his comments at the time. To this day he has not changed this behavior. Here is an excerpt from a recent speech before a university in St. Petersberg: "Emcee. I‘d like to explain to the students that there is the possibility of a person‘s interfering in a game, the possibility of human «help» to the computer. The system is set up so that even a comparatively weak grandmaster might abort the typical mistakes that the machine might make in the course of the game, thereby considerably improving its play. There is a suspicion that this precise method was used by the concern (IBM). G.K. Let‘s just say this: IBM categorically refuses to submit any proof that this did not occur. No one can really prove this, but the information we have at hand (concerning the crucial moments of the second game) is unexplainable from the standpoint of our present day concepts of computer programs. " This is simply not true. Kasparov himself admitted DB could not be considered to be similar to any other chess computer, the logs have been available for a long time, and this is no further proof possible. But these technicalities are not the issue. The issue is that Kasparov *continues to leave open the question of IBM's integrity*. The fact that he doesn't make a direct, plain accusation is *meaningless*. Saying in effect "maybe they cheated" is just as wrong, it is underhanded, and it is unsportsmanlike. End of story. >But I see a serious contradiction in his own process of reasoning. It doesn't >make sense to me. As others have said he was not prepared at all. You give the >reason why. It was just a show. My question then: why does he feel obliged to >talk about (serious) preparation, when it is clear that he did not even ask for >the possibility to have some training games. Others said that if he had insisted >the DB side could not but have fulfilled his wishes. So, for me, all this is >very strange. He did try to prepare, but it was ineffective, and his strategy to play "anti-computer" openings was bad. The contradiction is easy to explain. He lost his temper when things started to go badly, and so started to blame this and that for his failure. It doesn't make sense because a temper tantrum never makes sense, and you always come out looking bad for it. >But to come back to the main question of DB's strength, let me speak about some >things. I think there is a different interpretation as yours for the seemingly >contradicting reasoning of Kasparov. >Kasparov is possibly right with his assumption that only some few top players >are able to survive DB's play. Why? Because weaker players than the few would >be outplayed by DB's superior "understanding" of chess? Of course not, but >because the overall required ply depth move by move to not oversee something, >that is very tiring. You are trying to hard to defend him, and grasping at straws here. He also made a comment about some other GM losing to a PC, so to say that that is ridiculous and cannot be compared to his loss against DB. He did not specify that other GMs would be "too tired" to play well against DB, you are adding something he did not say, in an effort to defend him. The implication is clearly that DB is far superior to the micros in his eyes, and he was surprised by the strength of the machine, did not have meaningful preparation, used a bad strategy, and got tired and psyched out. Nothing wrong with any of those excuses, but they do not excuse the hand of God nonsense and the continuing implications that "maybe" things were not honest, as if adding the word "maybe" makes it OK. It doesn't. I think that covers our main point of disagreement, you argue a technicality that Kasparov never directly made the accusation of cheating, and I agree with you technically, but like the rest of the world I believe there is no significant difference in sportsmanship and character between this and always saying "maybe" there was cheating. With that I will end my participation in this current thread. I don't wish to engage in private discussion, there is little more to cover since I think the main point has been distilled here. There is nothing to be gained by making the same points in different ways until everyone is fatigued, since I think the essence will always come down to what I have already written here, and in general comes down to what you consider to be good sportsmanship. Tschuess. :)
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