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Magnus' evidence of "it didn't seem like he was thinking very hard during critical junctures" is the nail in the coffin for me.

If he has a history of stealing cars AND his new car is hot wired? Possible it's legal? Sure. Let's not twist our hands about a grand theft auto charge, however.



I don’t think you can call the opinion of the famous player who lost about how hard he thought his opponent was thinking during the game evidence without twisting the meaning of the word past the breaking point.


> the opinion of the famous player

This is a hilariously inaccurate description of magnus. He is widely regarded as the greatest chess player to have ever lived. His opinion on what it takes to play high level chess is worth taking extremely seriously. It's not like he has a history of temper tantrums or petulant behavior; he's an upstanding custodian of the mantle of world champion.


Not only is that a logical fallacy (appeal to authority) but magnus lost to him and is claiming cheating which is clearly a huge conflict of interest. His opinion should be heavily scrutinized.


> Not only is that a logical fallacy (appeal to authority)

You know appeal to authorities are not always logical fallacies right? It can be, but it's not a "haha you quoted someone therefore you are wrong". Heavily invested and repeatedly successful individuals can be great sources for information on heuristic endevours.

> magnus lost to him and is claiming cheating which is clearly a huge conflict of interest

Except it is verifiable that he talked about leaving the tournament before even playing him. Therefore his suspicions and problems are older than the result. Also you might be overestimating how much chess players care about losing at that level. They play constantly against each other and most have pretty equal head to heads. Magnus usually is a bit ahead like 5 victories to 3 and then like 15 draws against most of them. Losing once against Hans is not gonna make someone cause all of this.

> His opinion should be heavily scrutinized.

By FIDE sure, not by people online whose knowledge of chess comes from the first Harry potter movie.


> Not only is that a logical fallacy (appeal to authority)

Most things that are called that are not.

This would be a fallacy:

1. World’s best player (to have ever lived)

2. Therefore his opinion is correct

This on the other hand is not a fallacy:

1. Ditto

2. Therefore one should take his opinions on this matter extremely seriously

It’s not fallacious since it doesn’t pretend or present itself as a derived fact.


It’s not an appeal to authority it’s an appeal to expertise.


Well we’ve seen pilots with thousands of flight hours crash into the side of mountain or straight up commit suicide in the air.

Humans are mentally fragile.


Which pilots were the best pilots in the world? At a certain point, expertise does matter.

We're not talking commodity expertise, this person is literally the best to have ever done his craft. And has show the ability to "legitly" lose to others.


Appeal to authority is erroneously invoked so often that it should just be retired as a concept.


You’re not addressing the content of the argument and instead trying to dismiss it because of a phrase I used.

Just because magnus is a world class expert at chess does not necessarily mean he is good at detecting a cheater. Furthermore I would argue that taking an experts “gut feeling” as evidence is a terrible argument.


>You’re not addressing the content of the argument and instead trying to dismiss it because of a phrase I used.

The phrase you used has a well-known meaning. If that wasn't what you meant, then you shouldn't have used it.

Magnus may not be great at spotting a cheater, but his expertise in this game suggests that he could be, and adding that fact to an existing body of evidence isn't even close to committing an appeal to authority fallacy. To bring up that fallacy here is just lazy thinking.


> Magnus may not be great at spotting a cheater, but his expertise in this game suggests that he could be, and adding that fact to an existing body of evidence isn't even close to committing an appeal to authority fallacy.

OP:

> He is widely regarded as the greatest chess player to have ever lived. His opinion on what it takes to play high level chess is worth taking extremely seriously.

- A: Magnus is a great chess player

- B: Magnus claims cheating because "gut"

- C: Therefore Hans cheated

The argument rests solely on the fact that since he's an expert his word should be taken "seriously," heavily implying that Hans cheated.

> To bring up that fallacy here is just lazy thinking.

I disagree and you're not going to convince me otherwise with statements like this one.


You are intentionally misrepresenting the argument, to the point of being outright dishonest. The main piece of evidence in this comment thread is that Hans cheated in the past, not Magnus's expertise. So your letter A should be about Hans admitting to cheating, and somewhere further down--maybe C or D--would mention Magnus's expertise, if you were trying to debate in good faith (which you're not).

As for his "gut" feeling being part of the argument, you're not quoting anyone here; you are again intentionally misrepresenting what others are saying.

If you're going to analyze an argument someone else is making, be honest about it or there is really no point in discussing anything with you.


> So your letter A should be about Hans admitting to cheating

you're not quoting anyone here; you are again intentionally misrepresenting what others are saying.

If you're going to analyze an argument someone else is making, be honest about it or there is really no point in discussing anything with you.


> not like he has a history of temper tantrums or petulant behavior;

He absolutely does. People forget because he so rarely loses a classical game. But he almost always shows petulant behavior when he loses an important classical game.


> It's not like he has a history of temper tantrums or petulant behavior

Is this a joke? He literally does have a history of being a sore loser.


> He is widely regarded as the greatest chess player to have ever lived.

By whom exactly? He has a large fan club on the internet and uses modern social network very well but I don’t think there is a wide consensus that he is better than Kasparov at his prime. I personally don’t believe him to be better than neither Fischer nor Botvinnik but that’s only me and is impossible to verify anyway.

And no, his opinion against his own opponent after suffering an embarrassing defeat poorly playing with white doesn’t hold much credibility.


His peers, lol?


Well he does have the highest ELO of all time, no?


It seems like ELO skill ratings fall apart when comparing players of two different eras, since ELO Ratings involve the skill level of your opponents too.

Maybe a better metric would be running both players games through a computer to see the "%best move" metric?


> Maybe a better metric would be running both players games through a computer to see the "%best move" metric?

Due to computers being common place now, Magnus would absolutely destroy that metric compared to older eras. Chess has changed a ton in the past 10-20 years due to computers, being able to analyse lines. And now Magnus is known for playing "Ai Lines" which is the kind of stuff the new ML models do which tends to be pretty bonkers and un-human but gets long term results.


Is he the Champion of all time in cheating. I doubt that.

I lost all respect I had for him. If you don't have foolproof evidence, you take your loss like a professional.


It's not inaccurate because Carlsen is famous.


I don't think you can casually dismiss the ability of one of the greatest chess players to ever live to identify when his opponents are engaged, concentrating and thinking hard, and when they are not, without twisting common sense past its breaking point either.


> calling how hard he thought his opponent was thinking during the game evidence

we can't accept Magnus's testimony on this point, but we can understand that Magnus can consider it himself to be evidence, and he's simply telling us that's what he's doing.

I also think Magnus believes he has additional information about the extent of Hans's cheating, and that's what he can't share without Hans's permission, probably Hans's logs of his online activity that chess.com has, or something like that.


> Magnus' evidence of "it didn't seem like he was thinking very hard during critical junctures" is the nail in the coffin for me.

But is it hotwired? That's speculation from someone who just lost a race to them.




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