Now I can see how you could cheat at chess in a one-on-one match where your opponent had been drinking and wasn't paying very close attention to the board. Otherwise, and especially in a tournament with all eyes on the board, I think it's a game that is robustly resistant to cheating. Are you going to slip pieces onto or off of the board while no one is watching? You are not. Are you going to peer into your opponent's brain to see what they're planning? You are not.
The speculation -- which is where the obscenity comes from -- is that maybe someone else is secretly watching the game and cuing him in on how to move. You still need someone who is better at chess than the reigning grandmaster to accomplish this, and if that person exists why wouldn't they just come win the game themselves?
Games where cheating is possible are more likely to feature cheating, and the more you make cheating possible and convenient the more cheating you are likely to get. On which subject:
An independent panel of experts on computer systems and election security issues has concluded a lengthy investigation into the voting systems currently in place in the state of Georgia and sent recommendations to the State Election Board and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The current system primarily relies on touchscreen voting machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems. The audit must not have gone very well because they advise that the state discontinue the use of the Dominion machines and move immediately to hand-marked paper ballots. They are also recommending a much broader series of mandatory audits of the results after the initial count is concluded. These changes, they say, will not only afford greater accuracy but increased public confidence in the outcome. But at least initially, it doesn’t sound as if Raffensperger and the rest of the board are warming up to the idea.
You don't say.
If you want public confidence in elections, you should do the things that make cheating harder -- or impossible, insofar as you are able. The more you make it easy to cheat, such as putting control of the elections on machines with invisible processes which machines are in the control of partisans to the election, the more likely it is that there will be cheating and the less confidence people will have in the election anyway. It is first nature for human beings to cheat their way to power, especially if it is easy to do and there are protections against being caught. Only a few develop their second natures -- trained Aristotelian virtues -- so highly as to overcome the first-nature tendency.
Politicians are not generally among these people. Chess grandmasters might hopefully be.
8 comments:
It's at least a two part problem.
Not only have our fearless leaders completely pulled down one or more of the "Chesterton's Fence" voting restrictions here and there, (erected for good reasons whether we remember them or not) we have continued to rely on, pretend the existence of, fences that have rotten away. (identification by Signature Matching? What other 21st identification process relies on eyeballs-on review of ink on paper, especially to identify millennials who can barely read, let alone write, any form of cursive.
I use the term restrictions advisedly. The Democrat party claims to regard any process seeking to realize ideals such as "one person, one vote" as SUPRESSION. I'd rather accept the lesser negative notion of "restriction", and fight hard against "suppression", rather than tie myself in knots explaining why the processes enable everybody's rights.
When I first glanced at the headline and opening paragraph, I could have sworn that it read "How Does One Cheat at Cheese?" and that it would be about a scandal at a state fair or something.
I think it is time to update my glasses. :)
LittleRed1
Well, the other person might be a friend telling one how an AI chess program moves, I suppose.
they advise that the state discontinue the use of the Dominion machines and move immediately to hand-marked paper ballots.
The touchscreens on the Dominion machines wouldn't even need to be altered to cheat in order to give misleading results. Shortly after I got a car with a touchscreen display--a 2015 model car--the screen malfunctioned: it would respond to touches only in certain parts of the screen, not it others, and the result produced had nothing to do with what had been touched. Easy enough to fix; the technician simply touched a combination of places which did, essentially, a factory reset and then reprogrammed the screen. Last spring, the touchscreen failed altogether: it turned out the screen itself had simply gotten stuck in a constant contact condition that froze the display, stuck from all those years of being touched by moi. Imagine the likelihood of such a failure from constant, heavy use over a few days by folks not necessarily being gentle in their touchings. Failures could occur in much more subtle forms, too, than in my car's case.
As to cheating at chess, the game, at least as played by the Grand Masters, is heavily memorization-dependent or at least -used. Sequences of plays get memorized, both successful sequences and unsuccessful, along with the conditions under which either occurred, recognition keys get memorized that indicate when one sequence is being changed over to another, and so on. Think Perenyi Attack. (That's from Wikipedia; I'm no Grand Master.)
I can envision one method by which cheating could occur: a crony and the chess player are in radio contact, the crony is using a computer (a Deep Blue, or something more likely not as good, but more portable and good enough), and the crony and computer identify the move sequence in use by the opponent, when he changes sequences, and so on, and feeds the cheating player the counters to those sequences.
Cheating a cheese? Cheese is almost as highbrow as wine, and that gets cheated at a lot. Not so far off, LR.
Eric Hines
Well, the other person might be a friend telling one how an AI chess program moves, I suppose.
Tom beat me to it.
Eric Hines
Now cheating at cheese is an old specialty of mine. Always blame the dog.
I belatedly feel obligated to comment on cheating AT CHESS rather than in US elections.
Bobby Fischer made a number of "cheating" allegations during his career. He accused Russians of pre-arranging draws among themselves during tournaments, so as to put him up against particularly chosen opponents. He accused opponents and by-standers of distracting behaviors. Fisher -- and some Russian players during the era -- accused psychics and "yogis" of attending matches to target players with telepathic attacks. (Like voodoo and placebos, I suppose such attacks work if you believe they work.) Fischer claimed he was cheated of the status associated with his legitimate world championship when the former champion, Spassky, PHONED IN a resignation rather than show up for a game, on a public stage, where Fisher expected to beat him handily.
And I find myself coming back to US elections, after all. Fischer, like Trump, made so many and such a variety of allegations that it is simultaneously likely that (1) no layman could possibly determine which particular and peculiar claims might be true and (2) such scatter shot claims might include a few that were justified.
I think the status of the chess accusation at the moment is that Magnus's prep was leaked, so that Hans was able to prepare the night before, including possible assistance with AI, for what was going to come at him. The second part of this is that Carlsen suspected this and intentionally prepped and played a very uncommon line, one that he has used only twice in his career. When Hans seemed prepared to deal with this unusual attack, Magnus decided that he had unfairly prepared based on this wrongly-acquired knowledge, because he is not that outstanding a player. (At that level, I mean. Clearly better than anyone I have ever known.)
Chess players can be paranoid head-cases, sure, but Carlsen has not been, and has not made even implied accusations in the past, even when beaten soundly. This is a good illustration of the conflict between "what is the most likely explanation" and "what can you prove?" As an observer I am free to conclude that Magnus Carlsen is right on the basis of his history and the plausibility of the explanation. But were I a chess official I would have to hew very strictly to the standard of what can be proven.
Post a Comment