2knight2morrow wrote:
Dude
Any topic above 1 paragraph is ignored
Keep it short
Any topic above 1 paragraph is ignored
Keep it short
One limitation of the FB/Youtube/media is that they keep it to a small format, making it possible only for a superficial description of the issue.
What I am trying to explain here is not very complicated to understand but I need a minimum length to put my point forward and give example.
Objectively a video explaining to you why this game with 100% accuracy is definite proof of cheating is way longer.
The recent « chess cheating scandal « that has taken a small part of the internet by storm recently remind me a lot of the early treatment covid controversy last year (which touch a WAY larger part of the internet.
The controversy in both cases have its origin in two facts.
One is that the human brain is very bad at differentiating between fact and opinion. This seems simple but even the best educational system in the world cannot teach more than 30% of the 15 years old to do it.
https://theswaddle.com/91-of-15-year-olds-dont-know-how-to-differentiate-between-fact-and-opinion/
The second is the expert paradoxes. That’s the tendency for someone who became an expert in it field to assume that now they can become an expert in other field bypassing the considerable amount of hour they had to put in both learning theory and practical application the first time. A classic example of this, are Lawyer/engineer/doctor deciding that start investing in the stock market, thinking it is not that complicated and that if they just put their mind to it, they will succeed. This effect is also why those same categories are prime target for scam, someone thinking that he/she can understand everything is usually easy to take advantage off.
Those two effects were very visible during the covid especially on the medical group. There were INTENSE debates about the use of Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment of covid. Both pro and con group fighting by exchanging link to scientific publication and YouTube video.
There were just two slight issues with those debate. The first one was that most of the participant despite being medical professional (physician, pharmacist, dentist, nurse) did not have the scientific background to interpret epidemiology/virology publication. Yes, they had learn during the medical training to read publication, but knowing one field does not make you competent in another. Being myself a specialist I have always refused to comment on publication coming from another field even if it is one where I am legally competent to practice .
One good example was a discussion I had with a colleague who insisted that despite not being an epidemiologist or virologist he was able to read and criticized publication in virology because he was reviewing the statistic for publications in his own specialty. The only issue is that statistic while important are not helping you that much for reading a paper as flaw are rarely at this level, the most important thing is to have knowledge surrounding the issue. So, I asked him if he would be willing to read a case report published in the most prestigious peer review publication in my field (he was legally competent to practice the discipline). He of course refused, if he had accepted, he would have found nothing wrong at the statistical level and would have had to agree that the publication was without issue. But the publication was deeply flawed, the author claimed to have done something that was proven impossible by previous studies in the 70s, having read the literature on the subject (apparently that was not the case of the peer review committee ) I immediately went to the reference section, found the 70s articles there and realized that the authors were citing those papers to make them say the opposite of what they stated. That’s impossible to catch if you do not have an overall knowledge of the discipline. And here we are speaking of a relatively small specialty, the volume of publication in both epidemiology and virology is probably at least 10 time bigger. Your chance of being able to accurately analyze a publication without having spent several thousand hours studying the subject are exactly zero.
The second issue was that at the time where the debate was raging, the mains studies on the subject had just started, so there was no solid data in one direction or the other . There was even a possibility that we would never know, if the epidemic stopped before the end of the big studies. The question at the top research level was this: When confronted to a new epidemic should we wait to develop a new cure/vaccine or should we try to treat the patient with existing medication? Both internet and the press in general completely miss this discussion and the fact that the feud between the high-level researcher was only on this point.
The " debate " were in fact fueled by people not making the difference between their opinions and fact. Their opinion was made and most of their energy was spend looking on PubMed at best and YouTube at worse for information confirming their bias.
As a result, there have been no discussion on this very important point? What will we do in case of a new disease, when a wealth of information is available as the epidemic was treated vastly differently. From strict containment policy, from do nothing and treat with conventional drug.
Then came the « chess « scandal and the exit same pattern repeated at a smaller scale.
As with Covid very few information was/is available. One tweet from GM Magnus Carlsen followed by a letter and two interview by GM Hans Niemann, and one announcement from this website stating that they had information that they would no share publicly. That’s all.
There is no evidence of cheating on any OTB games and in fact we don’t even know where and when the cheating online took place.
Simple logic tells you that the only conclusion you can make from this limited type of data are:
The following statement are opinions not facts:
We also had the classic expert going out of their field of expertise. That’s the fun to watch but completely useless accuracy % videos.
Detecting cheating at chess is a COMPLEX task, you need not only to have a strong background in statistic + having actively applied to this specific task, here literally having developed tool design only for this. I would like to speak more about it as the subject is interesting but me like probably 99.9% of the members of this site are not statistician in general and statistician having study this very specific field in particular.
What made GM Finegold special during those time? Simple it is the only one I heard of who constantly followed those two basic rules:
This kind of behavior is in fact quite frequent with high level specialist. If you watch expert speak on C-span or other official website even, they usually follow those rule too as that is what you ask from the expert.
What is kind of sad is that when you follow this road you will usually have both side turning against you, as both are so convinced of the validity of their reasoning that telling “you and I don’t know “is perceived as you being “ on the other team “.
As a general advice you will avoid a lot of drama if you stick to GM Finegold way of life on this aspect. Know the difference between fact and opinion and know what is your domain of expertise, also be award that the vast majority of humanity do not follow those.