[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.

[Thorrez]

I would say there are 4 main motivations to not cheat:

1. Getting caught and problems arising from that

As you stated, there is a non-zero chance that someone who cheated will get away with it. And there is a non-zero chance that someone who didn't cheat will be wrongly widely accused of cheating. But someone who cheats has a much much higher chance of being widely accused of cheating that someone who doesn't. Cheating purely increases your chance of being widely accused of cheating.

You as a single individual cannot know all the various analyses that will be done on your games in the future (whether analysis of your moves vs engine moves or analysis of video or data recordings from websites you're on). You cannot foresee all the different possible ways you might be caught. The better you get, the more analysis will be done on your past games. Every past cheating instance is a liability for the future.

And if you rely on the cheating to get to a high level, you'll be forced to continue doing it to retain that level. You can't foresee the various anti-cheat mechanisms that will be put in place in the future that will catch your future cheating.

Once you're caught, it's basically disaster for you. Even when you don't cheat in the future, people will still suspect that you're cheating.

2. A feeling of accomplishment

People are often motivated by a feeling of accomplishment. If you're cheating to get ahead, you're not accomplishing as much, so you won't have as much of a feeling of accomplishment. If you use a cheat code to beat a videogame you don't feel much accomplishment. You won't feel like the best person in the world at chess if you only won due to a computer feeding you moves.

3. Enjoyment of a better world

You said you'd personally prefer a world without cheating. By not cheating you would be helping create that world. By cheating you would be helping to create a cheatful world. You're going to have a hard time advocating for a cheat-free world if you yourself are cheating due to the conflict of interest. E.g. you won't be able to advocate for installation of anti-cheat protections because if they get installed, they'll catch you. Same with advocating for stronger statistical analyses.

If you cheat, you're disrespecting the people around you, both your competitors and the audience. When you're consistently disrespecting everyone around you, I would expect that to have a negative impact on your ability to make friends with them. It could negatively affect your mood and your outlook on life. Overall I expect your life to be less enjoyable.

4. Morality

Is there objective morality? Do we have a moral obligation to respect other people? What is the meaning of life?

I say yes there is objective morality. Yes we have a moral obligation to respect other people, it's one of the components of the purpose of our lives.