[Dalewyn]

>The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me.

Not to me. When the stakes of winning are so damn valuable, sometimes literally so, it would be patently stupid to not cheat and increase your odds of winning.

Remember: Cheating is only a problem if you're caught. If you're never caught, cheating is completely legitimate.

These aren't games of pleasure, played for the sake of playing chess. These are games played for the sake of winning. Prize money, ELO, fame and renown, etc. When the only thing that matters is winning, you gain nothing by playing honestly.

[fsckboy]

If your attitude about chess competition was applied toward you in all of your routine irl activities, you would be extremely unhappy.

The cop does better in his job by meeting his quota of speeding tickets, so it objectively makes sense that he would issue you a speeding ticket every day with no evidence and over your strenuous objections... except you wouldn't object because the cop is working the system rationally. Yeah, right. Anyway, the lawyer you hired to work through this issue in court would of course inflate the number of hours he worked on your case, because why wouldn't he, he'd be an idiot not to!

Can't wait for you to apply for you YC investment, you make a great business partner, so rational and all.

[lelanthran]

He didn't say it's a good thing, nor that he approves, just that it is unsurprising that people (attempt to, and sometimes) cheat because cheating is a rational response.

It's just a different way of saying that when the measure of something becomes the target, then that measurement is gamed.

Would you also assume that Goodhart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law) prefers cops who issue illegitimate tickets, or lawyers who pad their hours?

[Dalewyn]

The sad fact of reality is honest people finish dead last in the race known as life. Anyone who succeeds in life has cheated in some form or another, unless their life was a miraculous chain of stars aligning one after another.

Human society and life isn't one of cooperation and harmony, it's a competition and we're all striving to one up each other to varying degrees. If that involves literally kicking another guy off the ladder, so be it. If a cop is feeling particularly irate and/or is hard pressed to satisfy a quota with frivolous speeding tickets, so be it. Contractors inflating their hours is par for the course.

Life ain't all sunshine and flowers, it's also dirty and ruthless. Nobody's a saint in this plane of existence.

[rfrey]

> Anyone who succeeds in life has cheated in some form or another

Totally unfair. Some of us succeed by being dealt unreasonably good hands at birth.

[sriram_malhar]

I'm just happy to say that most people that I call my friends don't share your vision of what it means to have a life well-lived, or how they define success, or have lived with this attitude of dirt and ruthlessness being necessary.

[ndespres]

This is sociopathic rationalization for poor behavior. It isn’t true. If you are a compulsive liar and cheater, perhaps you will justify your immoral behavior by deluding yourself into believing that everyone else is doing it too- but it is not so. We are not all behaving this way.

[Dalewyn]

You can claim "Well, we are/I am honest!" all you want, but the reality is nobody is a saint. Nobody. Full stop. If someone says they're a saint, they are lying out their ass. We have all cheated at something at some point in our lives, whether we got caught or not.

You also fail to understand I'm not passing judgment on such behaviour. Rather, I'm saying we need to take into account the ruthless nature of reality if we don't want to get screwed over ourselves.

Calling evidence of Neiman cheating a surprise is an honest and naive understanding of reality, one which leaves you wide open to cheating thrown your way that you will never realize because you never expect it.

Nobody is a saint, much less when achieving victory is so heavily incentivized as in professional games.

[lmm]

> You can claim "Well, we are/I am honest!" all you want, but the reality is nobody is a saint. Nobody. Full stop. If someone says they're a saint, they are lying out their ass. We have all cheated at something at some point in our lives, whether we got caught or not.

That's a total non-sequitur. Perhaps no-one is perfect (though frankly I doubt it), but that doesn't mean that cheating more means more success than cheating less.

Cheats definitely exist. But many of them end up doing worse than people who live more honestly, as we see here.

[lvass]

It's also the sophist Thrasymachus' central point in Plato's republic: "Justice is serving the interest of the stronger".

[nurettin]

Cheating might work if you have nothing to lose. Example: you are supposed to be present in an online lecture as a formality, there is no interaction and nothing to gain by being in it. Sure, people are likely to join, mute and do other things.

However, for serious real life situations where stakes are high, risk of ruin is too high. This is not rational. In fact, those stars have to align for the cheater, not the honest ones.

(I still don't think Hans cheated OTB and chess.com is being ridiculous)

[moron4hire]

A game is defined by its very specific set of rules. This can easily be seen in chess, which has a huge variety of variants. Or how one, minor rule change in baseball and you've got people wondering if the Hall of Fame even make sense anymore.

Once a set of rules are defined, competitions and tournaments within those rules are meant to determine the best people in that game.

When a player cheats, and rationalizes it as "only matters if you get caught", that means the cheater is playing by different sets of rules from his opponent. They are playing literally different games. If the two opponents are playing different games, it completely undermines the purpose of the competition.

[Dalewyn]

Here's the thing though: How do you know a player cheated? Because you caught him. So what about all the cheaters who are never caught? You can't say they're cheaters.

Therefore, if a player cheats but is never caught, he isn't a cheater. If a player isn't a cheater, whatever he did is legitimate and it isn't a problem.

Therefore: Cheating is only a problem if you're caught.

Put another way, the rules only tell you there will be consequences if you are caught breaking them. The rules do not and cannot police the act of cheating itself, only the results of such actions and only if the act of cheating becomes known.

So the optimal way to play a game to win is always to play skillfully /and also/ cheat without getting caught. Not cheating is not optimal to winning. It is absolutely a high risk, high return course of action, but that's the nature of optimizing.

[samatman]

You seem to think, and I don't agree, that "cheater" is like "felon", a label which is applied after some process.

I consider it like "thief". A thief is a thief when they thieve. A cheater is a cheat when they cheat.

[moron4hire]

If all you care about is the prize money, then there are easier ways to rob people, e.g. at gunpoint on their way out of the competition venue. The Rules say "If Person X does Y, then Person X gets Z". You want to rationalize interrupting that process to take Z for yourself. Y could be "their job" and Z could be "their salary". I suppose, in your terms, highway robbery is also a "high risk, high return course of action".

But entering into the competition under the guise of legitimate play means you also care about the prestige of being declared the winner. But you haven't won the game. You've played a completely different game. You can claim to have played the same game, but that would be a lie. You could just as easily redefine "narcissistic sociopath" in your own head to exclude adhering to The Rules. But it'd still be a lie.

I see in your other comments in this thread that you claim "most people finish dead last in life", intimating that they are fools for not cheating. But that's the thing: if everyone cheated, it would be a complete breakdown of society. Rules, laws, and systems to enforce them, are how we can leave our houses in the morning without wearing bulletproof armor from head to toe.

But what do I know? I only have a happy life with my wife and two kids. I'm a loser. So go! Cheat at science and get that Nobel Prize money! Cheat at keeping your restaurant clean and pocket the savings on soap! Never mind the wasted time and resources and lives ruined. You're a winner.

[Dalewyn]

>you claim "most people finish dead last in life"

I made no such claim. I stated that, quote: "... Honest people finish dead last in the race known as life."

>if everyone cheated, it would be a complete breakdown of society.

Human society has always been, always is, and always will be rife with cheaters of varying degrees and impact. Some will be caught, most won't be.

[wruza]

I cannot agree. First, your position comes with an assumption that one feels okay when cheating. Many people simply do not, for personal integrity, anxiety and other reasons.

Also, if you expect a game to bring profits in a long run, risk assessment may become too complex, if you can be caught retrospectively (like that top-score trackmania guy for example). Some people understand it from the beginning and decide to not put themselves into an unstable trap for life, even if cheating is compatible with their values.

You’re right that games (businesses, situations) themselves may have a long-term model which includes cheating as an optimal solution. But assuming that people playing it are all cheating sociopaths is incorrect. Tbh, your persistence all over this subthread is a sign that you have some sort of a close personal relationship with this topic.

[irjustin]

> cheating is completely legitimate.

100% disagree.

Legitimate would mean condoning cheating. Which then means everyone should be allowed to use engines, which then would mean engine vs engine, which we already have.

Human vs human no augmentation.

[Dalewyn]

I commented on this already in another post, but I'll reiterate here: How do you know a player is a cheater?

If you can't prove a player cheated, that is if you never catch the cheater, then whatever the player did is legitimate. It doesn't matter if the player in fact cheated and got away with it, it's all legitimate if he wasn't caught.

The rules do not and cannot police the act of cheating itself, only the results and only if the cheater is caught.

[patmcc]

Let's say someone robs a bank. They break into the vault, steal a bunch of gold, get out. Never caught. Lives a long life. Were they a bank robber?

A cheater is a cheater even if no one knows it.

[lamontcg]

This sense of ethics is literally going to ruin this country.

[irjustin]

> How do you know a player is a cheater?

> it's all legitimate if he wasn't caught.

> The rules do not and cannot police the act of cheating itself

These statements alone, well sure.... everything is legitimate if it's not caught. That's by definition.

Are you arguing really hard for the definition of word legitimate?

I'm actually quite confused about what it is that you're arguing here from these statements.

[Dalewyn]

I'm arguing that it is in one's interest to not hold naive ideals about the world, about reality. Reality is a dirty, ruthless place. If you don't conduct yourself being aware that other people are going to take advantage of you, or even cheat on you, then you will end up getting screwed because you cannot defend against attacks you aren't aware of nor expect.

[irjustin]

I agree with you on this.

Going back to my comment I have issue with:

> cheating is completely legitimate.

Which is not what you're saying here.

[Edit]

If you made your statement that "the world is a dirty place" I think most would agree with you. The point almost every reply is taking issue with is when you say "cheating is legitimate".

The replies, including my own, are saying "cheating is not acceptable". By originally saying "cheating is legitimate" you are saying "cheating is acceptable", but in your follow up arguments it's "cheating moves that are not caught are considered legitimate", which is the definition of legitimate and thusly there's no substance.

[Thorrez]

You seem to define "legitimate" as depending on society's perception. As another thought experiment, what if someone didn't cheat, but society erroneously came to the conclusion that the person did cheat. Is what that player did legitimate?

I guess it comes down to: does objective truth exist, or is everything relative to society's beliefs?

[Dalewyn]

>You seem to define "legitimate" as depending on society's perception.

For the purposes of this discussion, I define "legitimate" as whether anyone wants to cry foul on a player's performance. If a player cheats but doesn't get caught, it's legitimate because nobody can cry foul and make it into a problem.

>As another thought experiment, what if someone didn't cheat, but society erroneously came to the conclusion that the person did cheat. Is what that player did legitimate?

Nope.

>I guess it comes down to: does objective truth exist, or is everything relative to society's beliefs?

If we were to drill down to it, it can be argued humans can never truly be objective. Take Neiman for example; so far we haven't seen any evidence (that I'm aware of) that Neiman did cheat in his game with Magnus without any doubt, but it appears that society at large has decided that he was a cheater in that game.

This and the aforementioned thought experiment actually also come back to one of my original arguments: That not cheating is stupid. When you can be judged a cheater despite being honest, or judged honest despite being a cheater, it is much more beneficial to just cheat and attempt to reap the rewards of cheating. Being honest gains you nothing while burdening the risk of losing everything, while cheating potentially gains you more at the risk of losing everything.

Also, I hope you don't misunderstand any of this as me passing judgment one way or another on this sort of behaviour. Personally, I would prefer no cheating, but there are my own thoughts and then there is reality, and reality is as filled with sunshine and flowers as it is dirty and ruthless. I see all this as a great opportunity to appreciate reality for what it truly is, so we hopefully don't end up on the short end of a stick insofar as what's within our powers to affect.

[Thorrez]

> That not cheating is stupid.

Hans cheated in over 100 online chess matches, and now he's stuck in this giant controversy. If he didn't cheat in those matches, none of this controversy would have happened, and he would be judged based on his skill.

[Dalewyn]

I would argue his failing wasn't that he cheated, but that he got caught by cheating too obviously against someone who wasn't going to take it lying down.

The people who succeed cheat only as far as to reap the rewards while avoiding the risks thereof, they pick the time and place to cheat and not cheat. Of course, we don't know as third-parties whether any such successful individuals are in fact cheaters or not since nobody caught them.

To put it another way, if Neiman cheated in over 100 online chess matches and nobody caught him, we wouldn't know he's a cheater and we would judge him based off his apparent "skill". Thus, cheating is only a problem if you're caught.

[grog454]

> Cheating is only a problem if you're caught.

I don't agree with blanket statements like that but I think there's a kernel of truth in your mindset that many people are oblivious to.

Chess, as a competitive game with meaningful stakes, is obsolete. It became obsolete when the first computer outplayed the reigning human champion, and it's been gradually becoming more obvious. Recent events have started to demonstrate precisely why: people are becoming better at cheating at chess way faster than they're getting better at playing chess.

[moomin]

All of those things you can get by cheating. But cheating is never winning. The whole point of a game or sport is that it ceases to be a game when you go outside the rules.

Yes, many can square this circle in their own heads and convince themselves that anything goes. Some, like Lance Armstrong, will enrich themselves enormously. But none of them will have “won”.

[lvass]

Games are just games, they don't have to mean the same thing to everyone. The way you view them tells more about youself than about the games.

[Dalewyn]

The question is one of incentives and motivations.

Am I playing chess because I love chess? To have fun? In that case, cheating is counter to my goals (unless I enjoy the act of cheating itelf, but that's getting besides the point).

On the other hand, is chess simply a means to an end? Am I playing chess because I want to win something? If so, cheating is but one of many possible decisions I can undertake to increase my odds of winning.

Where professional games are concerned, where money and fame are at stake if you lose, cheating is downright inevitable and certainly not something to be surprised about.

[lvass]

I don't disagree at all. But there are people who just want to play the game by the rules. There are people who won't cheat for moral reasons. There are people who lack competence to cheat. There are people who are risk averse. Cheating should be expected, but you were implying every single person has more incentive to cheat than not, which just isn't true. You could even argue most people are in fact cheating and I might even agree with you, but without evidence it's just slandering, something even the world champion should be reprehended on.

[Dalewyn]

>but you were implying everyone has more incentive to cheat than not,

I am implying that because that's inevitable in a situation where winning is so much more important than simply playing. Again, these aren't games of pleasure, games "for fun". These are games with valuable stakes on the table.

Even Magnus himself can be argued as playing to win in order to eventually obtain the famed 2800 ELO or whatever the magic threshold number is. If evidence comes out that Magnus cheats, it would be a shame but I wouldn't be surprised either.

In situations where the ends justify the means, the means will include cheating.