4 ms·
There are two things that must be understood before making any judgement on this case: 1. It is solidly within the realm of possibility that a person who spend
by planetsprite 4y ago
There are two things that must be understood before making any judgement on this case:
1. It is solidly within the realm of possibility that a person who spends all his time devoted to succeeding in tournament chess would be able to devise a cheating method that cannot be easily detected by standard protocols
2. It is impossible to prove a negative, so it is impossible to disprove Magnus' claims
With these things being said, it is both possible that Hans didn't cheat and we'll never know for sure, or that he did cheat and we'll never know how. Given these facts, the most productive analysis would be to find just how unusual Hans' performance, both in the game and prior, really was.
A few things could be determined:
1. How many other high level players have a history of cheating? Have any players who have once cheated in a lower stakes match later been proven to have cheated in a higher stakes one?
2. Based on improvement per game played, how unusually rapid was Hans' development in the past 2 years? Are there other players which have progressed as rapidly as he has despite having progressed slower earlier in their careers?
3. Do all the engine correlation analyses that implicate Hans not fire warning signals when analysis any other game by confirmed non-cheaters? Do they signal cheating in a similar way when analyzing games of proven cheaters?
- Maursault 4y ago> It is impossible to prove a negative Since this statement is itself a negative, you've presented a paradox, because if it were proven true it would then be false.
- planetsprite 4y agoI'll amend my statement It is easier to prove a positive since it requires only the "smoking gun" to be made apparent. It is much harder to disprove a negative because it requires hypothetical smoking gun that could have caused the effect (Han's beating of Magnus) to be disproven. Since we don't have a record of every electromagnetic and sonic wave which passed through the room the day Hans beat Magnus, disproving the cheating claim is likely impossible.
- bombcar 4y agoIt would be amusing if such a record had been quietly made and then made available to all for analysis.
- JulianWasTaken 4y agoThings which are true but not provable aren't paradoxes, they're simply unprovable.
- Maursault 4y agoThis is a straw man. Truth values of paradoxes can not be determined, only postulated. It is a paradox because if it were proven true it would be false, and vice versa. In precisely the same way, "this phrase is false," is also a paradox, and whether or not the truth value can be determined (it can not) is not relevant to whether it is a paradox.
- JulianWasTaken 4y agoYes, truth values of paradoxes cannot be determined, but it's you who called it a paradox. On its face, it isn't a paradox. If we're being pedantic, which your initial response struck me as, there are again true statements with no proof, and this isn't a paradox, it's Gödel's first incompleteness theorem (which is specifically different from the liar's paradox you mentioned, precisely in the difference between what is true and what is provable).