This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm confused by the quarantine idea. It seems obvious to me that the best way to grind hours of experience playing chess is by playing online, which is not gender segregated. Perhaps even more valuable is playing against an engine and doing analysis of games. Do people really think that lack of tournament play in open divisions is what's holding women back, or is this just an excuse/cover to try to get rid of the women's divisions?
I'm going to add another Hikaru video, one just released today, because he went on a mini rant about this exact topic. It starts here with another GM asking him about a possible computer line from the game he had just played (he had a smile on his face, because he knows). The mini rant ends with, "This is the problem with these games, it's that, it's like whenever you use a computer program, you really lose the human feel, because some of these moves are just not human, or they just don't feel right. They just don't feel right at all."
How to effectively use engines to improve your ability to play human over-the-board games is genuinely hard/controversial.
More options
Context Copy link
There is a huge debate about playing online or against engines, and this could certainly come up in a conversation about the controversy. This requires another digression into some background on chess.
One major perennial discussion in the chess world is about time controls. That is, how much time do players have to think about their moves? There are a lot of different time controls out there that people use, and I'm certainly not going to cover the entire debate here. The most prestigious chess events are still 'classical' time control. This already gets confusing, because there's not just one single time control for classical, but there is somewhat of a range of possibilities that people generally view as 'classical'. For example, right now, both the open/women's candidates tournaments are happening. The open is using a time control of two hours with no increment for the first 40 moves, then an additional 30 minutes plus a 30 second increment added to your time for every move you made thereafter. The women's section is instead using 90 minutes plus a 30 second increment from the beginning through move 40, then an additional 30 minutes (still with increment) thereafter. But both of these time controls are still generally considered 'classical'.
Time controls are enough of a controversy that it is often cited as one of the issues that has driven a wedge between Magnus Carlsen (viewed by many as still the best player in the world) and FIDE, with Magnus giving up his title of classical world champion, participating in fewer FIDE events, and possibly(?) building groundwork for a competing organization to challenge FIDE. But that's an aside. All to say, they're a big deal.
Second is online vs. 'over-the-board'. Online chess has enabled a lot of people to play casually or even competitively. However, the online community is generally very skewed toward much faster time controls. I haven't checked the stats, but my sense is that online, blitz (approx 3-5min) is the most popular, followed by rapid (approx 10-25min) and bullet (approx 1min) in some order. There just aren't that many good players playing classical online (or honestly, that many players in general). There is huge controversy as to what extent playing much faster chess translates to success in slower chess. You can try out more ideas more quickly; you can train your instinctual or short-calculation skills; it may genuinely improve your play if you get into a time crunch in a classical game. But you don't get the experience of really sinking into a position and calculating deeply. It has not been uncommon in the current candidates tournament for players to invest 30-60 minutes on a single move that they think is critical. Recognizing when to use that sort of time and using it effectively is a skill that you simply cannot build playing blitz. But we've also seen some players get really really good at blitz first, and then eventually transition into playing quite good slow chess, so it's still a pretty open question of controversy concerning the relationship between them.
Moreover, there is a perception that cheaters (using engines) are much more prevalent online than at over-the-board events. It's already hard to find many people playing classical online; but if a bunch of them just sort of give up and start using engines anyway, are you really getting much that you wouldn't be getting by playing an engine? In fact, some people think that it's even worse if you're worried that your opponent is cheating. It's harder to stay focused; you're more likely to waste clock cycles thinking about whether they're using an engine or not rather than on the game.
That, then, brings us to engines. Engines are super super good. Much better than any human. Sometimes there are ways that you can play anti-computer chess, but even that is pretty hard. And they do not "think like humans". Top players certainly use engines to help come up with opening ideas, or they'll use them to help them improve some of their calculations, but there's somewhat of a fine line between looking at something the engine says and thinking, "Oh, that makes sense; I can maybe try to incorporate that idea into my thinking in some way in the future," and, "No dawg; even if you gave me an additional hour in a game, I am either not going to come up with that idea or not going to be able to calculate enough of it accurately to ever feel comfortable trying such a thing." Engines can help, but it is hotly contested concerning how they can help, what level players can get what kind of help from them, etc. The current classical world champion famously was not allowed to use engines at all for the first however many years of his development (I don't remember the exact number).
How to effectively use engines to prepare for human tournaments is difficult. Aside from using them sometimes for tactics or other ideas, they're probably most used in "prep", where a person makes some plans ahead of time for what they want to do in the opening phases of the game. This is notoriously difficult, even at the highest level. In this very candidates tournament, one of the most well-known players (because he's also a streamer) got into a situation where he had played his computer-driven prep, and at one point, his opponent played a move that wasn't in his prep. His next decision was a critical one, but the position was quite complicated. He spent like an hour and then played the wrong move. After the game he blamed himself and his team for not looking at that move in preparation. He thought that the position was "impossible to play" as a human, and this is one of those pitfalls that make working with engines hard. You can't download everything from the engine into your brain; you have to stop somewhere. Where do you stop? You have to be a highly skilled player with a sense of, "This is a position that I can probably figure out over-the-board," versus, "This position is absolute madness, and so if I'm not able to just memorize what the engine says, I probably won't be able to figure it out, and I may end up just lost."
All of this is very controversial on its own, and I get no sense whatsoever that these controversies are being propped up in some way to support a position on women's chess.
More options
Context Copy link
Online games are faster and more casual, and typically don't involve both players analysing the game afterwards (a crucial part of chess improvement). The best way to gain experience is generally to play OTB (over the board) games at classical time controls (>=1 hour per player).
More options
Context Copy link
My intuition as a complete outsider to chess is that hours of grinding online could get you from low to mid or mid to high, but to reach the truly elite levels of top-10-in-the-world, you really need to spend lots of time competing against people at or near that level. I don't think a billion reps against little leaguers would be as valuable as a thousand against minor leaguers for someone aiming for the MLB. That said, I do wonder if chess engines, given their clear superiority over any and all humans, might enable the best of both worlds, but also, as an outsider, I could be missing some important distinctions.
I'd guess it's a genuine belief in the former, for the purpose of something like the latter, but rather than to try to get rid of the women's divisions, it's to try to land at a societally mediated conclusion for elite women's evident underperformance in chess compared to elite men's.
Chess engines are simply too strong to be used as sparring partners. People improve most when they have the chance to play consistently against players at their own level or a bit higher. The main benefit of chess engines is their use as analysis tools.
Is it not possible or practical to gimp chess engines to play at a level and style equivalent to elite human players? I would have thought that lowering a super-capable tool to human level capability would be possible, but, of course, with something as complicated as chess, it's not just a matter of scaling some number down by 50% or whatever.
That's basically the issue.
More options
Context Copy link
Level, yes. You can actually do an okay-ish enough job by just dialing down some numbers. The great thing about the ELO system is that you can just use results to figure out how to 'rate' a bot. Just create a gimped bot, let it play a bunch of people online, see what rating range it ends up in, and poof, you've got a bot that plays "at that level". Want it a bit higher/lower? Turn it up/down a smidge. You'd need a lot of top-level players to play along with the scheme to dial it in decently at the elite level, though. Your estimate of its level gets better as it plays more, so this is likely practical for someone like chess.com for very short games. It's harder for elite-level and longer games, just because it's going to be hard to get enough data.
Style? Not a chance. At least not right now. This is an area where a lot of folks are investing significant efforts. The hope is that rather than just using traditional engines, you can take gigantic databases of human moves, sprinkle in some ML magic, and get something that plays more like humans. My sense is that no one has been really successful in doing so yet. I haven't even heard any rumors of any top-level players finding someone who has managed to do this and then proceeding to use it. Maybe someone has, and they're keeping it top secret for a competitive edge, but if so, it's very secret, and I haven't heard a peep.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link