Please note, religious or political debate or commentary is not to be conducted in the regular forums: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/forum-posting-rules---be-nice--no-religious-or-political-debate; I am therefore locking this thread.
Please join the Open Discussion Club if you would like to discuss these topics:https://www.chess.com/club/open-discussion
Thanks,
Mike ~ Chess.com moderator
This is actually a really good description of how I experience life itself. But not necessarily in the sense that I have answers or anything, just that everything feels distanced and artificial.
I respond by basically screwing up everything in a variety of colorful ways then rambling about it in a compromised emotional state.
Boop! Unlocked.
I wouldn't say that the OP is , by itself, religioius and I'm glad its unlocked.
the question is what if you had enough knowledge to know that the game wasnt' fair. I guess we have to be careful about any cheating scenario's , but there is more than one way a game might NOT be fair- and many of them aren't forbidden topics.
for example what if you were the only sober guy playing "drunk" experts. a 1611 beats a Roaringly drunk 2088. did you really "beat" him??
my feeling is that when it isn't fair, its not a comparison of skill; and that it might be interesting only as a matter of some technique. like for example, if your drunk guy played a huge, but unsound attack, your had great practice "defending" against a strong player (how isn't quite as strong as he usually is)...
every situation would be different. but somewhere in someway, you would still be struggling to play very well, even if the opponent gave enough compensation to make victory possible, and maybe even likely...
(note all the SITUATIONS I am talking about involve playing a stronger person who has handicapped himself.... we might talk about an unfair game against someone who has engine help. THAT would be forbidden though, and any What-If's would alarm the mods and get this topic locked again).
Yeah, when I saw it was locked I was wondering if this was some famous religious allegory or something I didn't know about (which would easily be possible).
To the OP, I think something similar was talked about before... I remember one person mentioning the idea of authenticity... that the authenticity of an experience is important to them. So for example if everyone in a person's life are actors in a play, and the person is the only one unaware, then discovering this may be troubling to most people.
Whether that points to something... metaphysically meaningful or it's just a trick of psychology I don't know.
I try to value practicality, so to answer your question, I hope I wouldn't care, and would just content myself with living day to day. As long as people didn't treat with me disdain in my day to day interactions, I don't think I'd mind that there's no hidden greater purpose to my life... or that the purpose is mundane.
oh.
boy did I read this op differently. I thought he was talking about chess. not life meaning.
I'm not much into philosophy.
all literature and art has interprative value... if you see a religious significance that's your business. I wasn't intending "religious" conversation. Just saying at what point do you react to altered reality and what should the reaction be?
Here in chess as well. It's no secret that GM's let their favourite youngsters win OTB from time to time. What if you were young and knew reality was being altered? Either for you, or somehow against you?
Locked and unlocked?
Mi little brother (13) played badly in order to let my cousin (24) win. I was really confused at first, then I asked him about it and he confessed what he had done. When I play against my brother I never let him win, he told me that he wanted my cousin to feel good about winning.
What if you were young and knew reality was being altered?
That's such a bizarre hypothetical I wouldn't know where to start.
My mind goes to what it means for something to be supernatural... if you supernaturally alter reality... that new thing IS reality, so it's not supernatural anymore, it just is. It's hard to even imagine what it would mean for something to be supernatural... like a square circle, what does that even mean?
I suppose what you're getting at though is a sense of unfairness. What if fate were against you type of thing... I don't know, I think people deal with that sort of thing every day. The will to live is strong, so I think most people adjust their expectations and life goes on.
Your chess scenario is a pretty different question. Reality isn't being altered, it's just an adult letting a kid win. That happens all the time, and it just depends on the kid's personality. I wouldn't like it, so I don't let others win. Some kids may find it encouraging though.
I'd never let win any kid. Those who are not better than me yet, will be in the future if they really try, and then they'll find my blood much more tasty.
Locked and unlocked?
Forum moderator decisions can be appealed; this one succesfully was.
There is no way to 'know' that reality has been altered. Short of being a supernatural being, you must assume that what you see is real. To do otherwise invites questions of sanity vs. insanity. Or perhaps just alternative medications.
As for the far more utilitarian question of a GM hanging a piece on purpose to allow another person to win, so what? If it's a rated game, take the piece and the points. Their meaning has no more value than you wish to attribute to them. It's a game, not brain surgery. Why should you care that the player who hung the piece was a GM or a patzer?
Remember that Fischer saw that the Russians were purposefully drawing games against each other to keep him from winning some tournaments he was in. They were breaking the rules of fair-play, not the rules of chess. If it was not illegal, what could he do?
Again, it's just a game.
A purely existential POV I admit, but the question is too vague to give it any other answer.
Here is what I mean when I say "altered reality" since someone said my comment was too vague.
When I was in 6th grade middle school cooking class we baked a cake. My group of 4-5 boys put it in the oven with a timer and we went to the next class. When we came back the next day our cake was just a pile of batter in the pan. The grumpy home-ec teacher said "you forgot to turn on your oven, you fail"
2 years later in 8th grade I had the class again with the same teacher. Again our group of boys made a cake and this time I was quite studious in the turning on of the oven and its timer- remembering the occurance 2 years prior. When we came back the next day, AGAIN the cake was an uncooked pan of batter. Proving that the teacher had invented a little "trick" to make the class' boys behave better... turn off their ovens, ruin their project and give them a failing grade... hence an altered reality. I wasn't stupid, I knew she did it to us, not that we did it to ourselves, but I was only a child and could do nothing about it.
So what you were only a kid!
Fair point. One day in college as I was getting a degree in music from the university of Nebraska, I was conducting an orchestra full of 3rd grade kids in a concert. My classmates and I all conducted a piece for the kids' parents in the university concert hall.
A 70 year old retired violin teacher from the state was playing violin in the orchestra along with the kids. During the concert she purposefully played in the wrong spot and half the kids followed her and half followed me- making the piece fall apart... I'm not stupid, it was her attempt to make me fail and look bad in front of all my peers, professors, and students (she was upset that I was involved in the LGBT community, not something forgiven in the very conservative NE)
Once again, I have no power to fight back against the malice, I'm only a kid compared to the power a retired 70 year old church lady with 4 decades of teaching has in the local circles.
That my friends is what I mean when I say altered reality... when everyone in the audience simply says... Nick messed up something, he's not very good, and no one knows the truth behind it.
Here's an example in chess:
During a game at a local KC club I was still learning the game and my low rating was not indicative of my abilities. I had to play in the reserve section. I paid the $50 and won my games, scoring like 3.5/4 (I don't remember exactly). After the tournament I asked for my prize money and the TD said "I changed the rules after round 2 and made all the prizes into one pool"
He decided to change the rule after he saw me beat his students in rounds 1 and 2 because he was mad at me and thought I was sandbagging to win $100. He made no public announcement to the club before or after any round, nor did he post a sign by the scoresheets. It was only done because I won. "Can I have my $50 entry fee back if I'm not elligible for the prize fund" "No."
I'm the new guy who found the club on the internet, joined the tournament because I'm a nerd, but I don't know a single person in this club. They all know each other and play with each other weekly.
I have no power to change this "altered" reality. The rules were one thing, until I did well, then they were another.
Here's another chess example. During an earlier tournament I played round 1 with a closed sicilian (because I don't know sicilians very well). During round 2, I again played a closed sicilian, but somewhere around move 7 I saw my opponent make a sly grin.
After the game he said me "Ken showed me your game from round 1, he said you're playing an innacurate move, here, and this is how I can exploit it." The TD took the scoresheets in between rounds and showed them to his own student in order to help him beat me (the game was a draw I had to make from a worse position).
I had no access to the scoresheets at all... so the game was a version of "altered reality" - his prep was not fairly put up against mine, he was simply allowed 'extra help' (cheating) during a tournament in progress. when I had spent many hours reading chess books on my own, without help, he was given a quick 2 minute targeted insight to me- not general chess knowledge- through dubious means... shouldn't all the players have access to the scoresheets equally regardless of whether they take lessons from the TD?
Altered reality. The oppoenent got to see me (mid tournament) while I was blind.
Would you go take your pill ?....pleez ?
And leave Diakonia outta this. He's my friend & chess pal.
ok, so your situations are NOT hypothetical.
but I would hardly call any of these a situation of "altered reality" rather simple unfairness. a teacher being unfair, an old violin teacher sabotaging your orchestra, an unfair club (and potentially its TD).
l don't know what to say beyond that life isn't fair. in some examples it would seem to me that there are higher authorities that you could have appealed to. but truthfully, my life experiences are that appeal involves lot of effort that perhaps leaves you monetarily compensated but in total conflict with an authority figure.
at any rate, you seem to take to much imagination to these real world examples; you are NOT trapped in an "epic" play.
just like the rest of us, you need to figure out how get out of a problematic relationship.
for example, presumably you didn't keep taking classes with your unfair teacher, and have severed ties with the sabotaging violinist.
in regards to chess; you should not join a club where you don't feel welcome, and avoid playing tournaments when the prizes are not distributed by the rules. on chess.com get out of any conflicting clubs, and block people that are rude or insulting to you.
one of the great advantages to chess.com is to be able to play with people around the world and avoid clubs and groups that are toxic to you. you can't always do this OTB. I think though that most clubs are very aware of the need for new players to feel welcomed.
my only last thought about deliberate playing low is that generally I think its Not a good idea. Many impressively strong youth have gotten that way by having a club rated dad/uncle/etc who beat them over and over and over again. A kid with a strong mentor can always play Here to be matched with a fair opponent.
"How can you know?"
"How can you be sure?"
. . .
"Diakonia should be ashamed for [not knowing something he couldn't possibly know]"
heh
How do you play when you know the game is unnatural?
If you were a child prodigy and you somehow saw that your superior opponent was playing sub-par moves in order to let you win ... for whatever reason elders do that... what would you do?
Most kids are just kids- they don't know that the game is being rigged- either for or against!
What if you were a kid, playing your game, and physically saw the game being rigged. Had "biblical knowledge" that you were not allowed to play chess in the free market- the way they make a fake little santa village inside malls for kids to shop in for christmas presents...
What would you do if you were Hamlet and you knew you were inside a play within a play? Play the game anyways? Purposefully play strange random moves in order to see if "god" is really altering your game? Try to win knowing it's not "real"?
Or would you simply lay your king down and go outside?