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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10350 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025

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I was reading Does the social contract even exist any more?. It starts out with some typical stuff about questionable business models, some people being inconsiderate, some (left-leaning) politics. It mostly seems like a replacement-level post, until we get to the example of Daniel Naroditskys suicide.

Starting in late 2024, Naroditsky received repeated accusations from former world champion Vladimir Kramnik that he cheated in online chess tournaments. There is basically no evidence that this was true - Kramnik threw some slapdash statistics together that were roundly rejected by other experts - but Kramnik kept loudly repeating the accusations in interviews, on social media, and generally to anyone who would listen. As a former world champion, he had a large audience, and he specifically used it to harass Naroditsky without any real basis other than his own paranoia.

This mostly fits the theme (not that paranoid-delusional chess grandmasters are particularly new), and then comes:

Spurred by Naroditsky’s death, the chess community is demanding action. Some are calling for Kramnik to be investigated for ethics violations, stripped of his grandmaster title and kicked from FIDE, the sport’s governing body.

Holy shit, thats the normality youre missing? This is the only thing in the post that was actually unthinkable for me, though in retrospect with the amount streamers in the game, maybe it shouldnt have been. Still, in a post about how things used to work, presenting this as the obvious thing to do would still cause some whiplash, even if I thought to anticipate some people calling for it. The author here is an /r/neoliberal alumnus who frequently bangs the "You can just be center left, wokeness is a distraction" drum, and this feels like Ive just seen the manchurian punditate activate accidentally.

I'm not sure what should happen to Kramnik. The FIDE handbook has a section on false accusations:

https://handbook.fide.com/files/handbook/ACCRegulations.pdf

Reckless or manifestly unfounded accusation of chess cheating is a serious violation of the requirement of fair play. False accusation in chess is an abuse of freedom of expression that is prohibited by the FIDE Ethics and Disciplinary Code.

FIDE did investigate Magnus Carlsen over a similar complaint in relation to his activity with Hans Nieman. But found him not guilty except for a charge relating to his withdrawal from a tournament which I believe is not allowed without good reason. I think Magnus was able to avoid sanction because it didn't make a direct accusation but I suspect Kramnik has walked closer to this line even though he will claim that he is just asking questions or looking at statistics if he is ever challenged.

The other problem I see is this starting to normalize suicidal threats. David Navara made a blog post that can be uncharitably summarized as 'do something about Kramnik or I'll kill myself'. However, I do urge you to read the whole blog because I think the situation is much complicated than that and I think its very difficult for someone in his situation to express how he feels without it coming across as a suicidal threat or emotional manipulation (https://lichess.org/@/RealDavidNavara/blog/because-we-care/fauAwr9r). He even has this to say:

I want to stress that I firmly believe that a suicide is a wrong decision in a vast majority of situations, including mine one. I do not write this to criticize people who were desperate and saw no other solution, I just stress this to discourage depressed people from damaging themselves in an irrevocable way. The human life has a great value. It is a gift and gifts should not be given back.

Kramnik has been making cheating allegations for well over a year now, and i doubt he has been giving evidence. He has already received some kinds of punishment, kinda: I think Chess.com muted his ability to use it as a blog, since he was being annoying or something.

If he gets punished further, it won't actually be because of cheating allegations, it will be because The People Demand Something Be Done because of Naroditsky. (I think its ironic that we take it for granted that he killed himself. You'd think with this topic in particular, we would wait until we have evidence before saying things!)

To my point, its not particularly important what the FIDE policy is currently, its about what Johnson considers reasonable. Unranking someone over... basically anything other than cheating himself, theres no practical reason for this besides "well, we could use this as a stick". Imagine making a list of the 10 fastest marathons ever and omitting someone because he got into a fight with the federation. In line with the point of the post, this sort of thing used to be sacred, now "something must be done".

I guess if FIDE has provision for doing something like that, then that a risk a player undertakes when they violate the rules. But I do agree that it is a bit weird to strip people of results like World Champion that have legitimately earned for unrelated unsportsmanlike conduct that occurred at a different time. Stripping people of titles like Grandmaster seems more reasonable because it sounds more like an honorific even though it is purely based on an objective criteria. It does actually look like a strict reading of the code would allow FIDE to strip Kramnik of his World Championship result (https://handbook.fide.com/files/handbook/EthicsAndDisciplinaryCode2022.pdf). They basically have a bunch of sanctions, and a bunch of offences and there doesn't seem to be any guidance from the FIDE code on which sanctions are appropriate for which offences.

FIDE even has the damnatio memoriae option:

Removal of a player’s historical data from the FIDE database: The deletion, from the FIDE official database, of all data about participation and past results for a player and ratings progress during his/her chess career (in the event of a lifetime ban).

This doesn’t go far enough. We need to remove his games from Chessbase. Books on opening theory should contain the line, “and then one day in late 2000, for no reason at all, people started playing the Berlin defense.”

omitting someone because he got into a fight with the federation.

Joey Chestnut has entered the chat. Although he was allowed back into the championship (and won) this year.

Mostly a funny anecdote: I don't follow the competition generally.

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