Levy's interview on Chessbase about ICGA/rybka

[bob]

No.
This is much alike a referendum: there are n individuals that have voting rights (those enlisted in the panel). Whether they don't exercise their right, the referendum is won by the majority of effective voters.
It would be different If everybody in the panel would have been asked for voting: in this case, abstainers would actually be counted as negative voters, againts the positive votes.

Of course all were asked in a general expectance having made up their mind.

But I see the problem here. Levy is not entitles to proclaim an absolute clear voting in favor of his later decision because for such a title he didnt have the majority of votes at all.

The psychological reason for the zero votes against could be of a group zwang NOT to out oneself as the lonely troublemaker in a group with loudmouthed anti Vas votes. The pro votes are much easier to explain because the panel was organised to prove the guilt of Vas. So it would have been insane if the secretariat would have abstained. Here you can also see the fatal flaw of the whole event. The candidates for any task didnt come from both sides equally but only from the killer side. All that wouldnt exist in a legal court case.

Actually, 100% of the votes said "he violated rule 2." I believe that 100% is "a majority"??

[michiguel]

Whether or not Vasik used Fruit codes is unsolved. There are debates for, and there are debates against, so what's to believe.

I think it is too easy to say he used Fruit codes and leave it at that, because it is the easiest, more logical thing to do, and hereby condemn him beforehand.

Should we rely on ICGA's version who consists of Vas competitors who btw are commercial, or on Ed, Chris and others version who are studying the code and are trying to compare the differences and similarities between the two programs ?

16 people voted. I believe that only 3 were potential "competitors", that is, affiliated with a commercial computer chess program. So how does 3 out of 16 match up with your statement? What about the other 13 who are not competitors, some of which have been inactive in computer chess for 20+ years???

I just looked who is in charge of ICGA panel, and it appears to be one of Vas main competitors, who more than just once on countless occasions wanted legally to prevent Rybka from participating in important events, by hardware restrictions&uniformed hardware you name it...

It says all and everything about this ICGA panel, who is about to decide Vas further involvment in computer chess.

Now he says 16 people voted- all along we were told it was 14. Which is the truth, and which is another damn lie? As for the voters who were not his competitors, they won't even tell us the names of the voters, and from Hyatt's statement, we don't now know for sure how many there even were. And does he expect us to take his word for anything- how many or who? Not a chance in hell. They either feel ashamed of the way they voted, don't have the guts to come out and tell us- or both. My money says both. Who in the goddam hell ever heard of a secret vote. Ed and Albert saw it for what it was and had the guts and character to walk off. The rest had neither.


gts

For the Nth time, 14 voted in the public Wiki. 2 chose to vote privately. If you close your mouth, and read, I have said "almost" that several times. I just did not reveal how many voted privately and generally said 14 public votes + some private votes. So no lies. No hyperbole. No distortion. We raised the question about publicly listing the votes and names, the panel (not the secretariat) chose to keep the votes secret to avoid EXACTLY the kind of attacks, insults, threats and distortions we have seen...

Who ever heard of a secret vote?? Every time I vote for president, governor, etc, it is a secret ballot. What planet do YOU live on? Do you see jury votes made public except in very rare cases? Do you see personal evaluation votes made public? There are reasons.

As a member of the secretariat, it is entirely your fault that these things were not clear. There should have been in the report = x number of people voted this, n number abstained, z number did not vote. Everybody thought that there were 34 votes to 0 based on the report, which was extremely misleading.

Miguel

[bob]

......If you have 300 programmers (amateurs and pros) and gather 34 in a special ICGA panel and then only 16 voted, then even the result of 16-0 isnt a clear result at all.........

Funny how 14 people voting has suddenly become 16.

Not suddenly. I have stated several dozen time that 14 voted publicly, and that a few voted privately by email. You can find that statement from me dozens of times over the past 8 months or so. I just never said it "was exactly 2" until David decided to make it public.

[bob]

Whether or not Vasik used Fruit codes is unsolved. There are debates for, and there are debates against, so what's to believe.

I think it is too easy to say he used Fruit codes and leave it at that, because it is the easiest, more logical thing to do, and hereby condemn him beforehand.

Should we rely on ICGA's version who consists of Vas competitors who btw are commercial, or on Ed, Chris and others version who are studying the code and are trying to compare the differences and similarities between the two programs ?

16 people voted. I believe that only 3 were potential "competitors", that is, affiliated with a commercial computer chess program. So how does 3 out of 16 match up with your statement? What about the other 13 who are not competitors, some of which have been inactive in computer chess for 20+ years???

I just looked who is in charge of ICGA panel, and it appears to be one of Vas main competitors, who more than just once on countless occasions wanted legally to prevent Rybka from participating in important events, by hardware restrictions&uniformed hardware you name it...

It says all and everything about this ICGA panel, who is about to decide Vas further involvment in computer chess.

Now he says 16 people voted- all along we were told it was 14. Which is the truth, and which is another damn lie? As for the voters who were not his competitors, they won't even tell us the names of the voters, and from Hyatt's statement, we don't now know for sure how many there even were. And does he expect us to take his word for anything- how many or who? Not a chance in hell. They either feel ashamed of the way they voted, don't have the guts to come out and tell us- or both. My money says both. Who in the goddam hell ever heard of a secret vote. Ed and Albert saw it for what it was and had the guts and character to walk off. The rest had neither.


gts

For the Nth time, 14 voted in the public Wiki. 2 chose to vote privately. If you close your mouth, and read, I have said "almost" that several times. I just did not reveal how many voted privately and generally said 14 public votes + some private votes. So no lies. No hyperbole. No distortion. We raised the question about publicly listing the votes and names, the panel (not the secretariat) chose to keep the votes secret to avoid EXACTLY the kind of attacks, insults, threats and distortions we have seen...

Who ever heard of a secret vote?? Every time I vote for president, governor, etc, it is a secret ballot. What planet do YOU live on? Do you see jury votes made public except in very rare cases? Do you see personal evaluation votes made public? There are reasons.

As a member of the secretariat, it is entirely your fault that these things were not clear. There should have been in the report = x number of people voted this, n number abstained, z number did not vote. Everybody thought that there were 34 votes to 0 based on the report, which was extremely misleading.

Miguel

The number matters? 100% agreement is irrelevant. Should a murder trial have 100 jury members? In fact, most have 15-18, with 12 voting, the rest being alternates in case one of the 12 gets sick. So is that a 2/3 majority vote since the other 6 did not vote?

Was the wording precise? No. Does it change a thing? absolutely not. So why quibble about something that is 100% irrelevant?

[Dr. Axel Schumacher]

...
(1) First of all their mathematical foolishness.
If you have 300 programmers (amateurs and pros) and gather 34 in a special ICGA panel and then only 16 voted, then even the result of 16-0 isnt a clear result at all. Levy says if it had been 9-7 then the staff should have taken some serious considerations out of doubt.

However this is against all knowledge coming from stats.

So you are saying instead of assuming a pretty obvious result of 16-0, we have to assume that all the others that did not voted are most likely pro Vas?

No, exactly this wasnt what I meant. I just wanted to mention the until now unknown reasons for their abstination. Dont waste so much time in computerchess. Take the political elections. You know that non voters are usually counted for the negative votes from opposition?

This is completely irrelevant. The motivation of the non-voters do not matter. It is in politics the same thing. When people decide not to vote (and hence have no direct input in the voting), that's their problem and their problem alone.
In the whole Rybka-issue it is even much easier. If a programmer (or hundreds of them) were able to provide reasonable proof that no wrongdoing by Vas was involved, they could have approached the panel and could have presented their evidence, and may have voted. Nobody did (not even Vas himself!).

False!

For instance, I did not participate because I could not allow myself to be associated with a process in which 2/3 members of the secretariat should have recused themselves. This was mentioned but they won't listen.
The whole process was flawed from the beginning.

Miguel

No, not false.

The motivation is irrelevant for the outcome. The fact that the process was flawed (which is to be expected in such a small and minor 'club') is irrelevant and should not affect participation.

It's your opinion that the process was flawed, don't state it as a fact.

I did primarily answer to the previous comments that the procedure was flawed. Myself, I do NOT think it was heavily flawed. I just think people should not expect a perfect procedure as this would be too much asked from such a small organization. It cannot be perfect at this level. Overall it was a quite good process IMHO (but not perfect).

The next part is not particularly directed to you, I'm addressing the entire forum interested in this:

It's my opinion that the process was NOT flawed and if you read the Levy interview you will see that a great deal of effort was spent trying to ensure that it was fair.

Most of the basis for saying it was flawed is the idea that it was "heavily stacked" with direct competitors of Rybka, which is completely false. Look at the names again and count how many could have had a vested interest in seeing Vas go down. Maybe there were 3 who could be considered "threatened" by Rybka and then you have to assume all 3 are corrupt enough to lie about what they saw. I invite you to throw out all the names of the ones that you think are biased and then count the percentage left who were unfavorable to Rybka (hint: it will still be 100%)

Then you have to consider the fact that the panel members were not allowed to be involved in the decision other than in an advisory role. It's not like the panel voted unanimously to remove Vas from the competition, in fact we were NEVER EVEN ASKED what should be done, IF something should be done and we had no knowledge of what would actually be done if anything. It was our job to simply advise the board on what we saw. I have to say that because for years now we see forum posts saying that we "voted him out" or other similar stupidity.

Vas and Rybka are superstars in computer chess and it would NOT be in the ICGA's best interest to kick the top superstar out of computer chess since this is their bread and butter UNLESS there was a good reason.

I for one cannot understand how anyone could not be impressed with their integrity in this matter. Kicking the superstar out of the competition takes a great deal of fortitude and there is absolutely no reason they would be predisposed to wanting to do this.

One last point. If the ICGA really wanted to remove their superstar for no particularly reason other than just to "wield power" or to be "mean" they did not need to consult with ANYONE. They had the authority to do so but they didn't do it that way.

Your assertion that the process was "highly flawed" just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Calling it the "old boys club" is dirty tactics and does not contribute anything sensible to the argument, it's just name calling and is sophomoric and immature.

I agree.

[michiguel]

Whether or not Vasik used Fruit codes is unsolved. There are debates for, and there are debates against, so what's to believe.

I think it is too easy to say he used Fruit codes and leave it at that, because it is the easiest, more logical thing to do, and hereby condemn him beforehand.

Should we rely on ICGA's version who consists of Vas competitors who btw are commercial, or on Ed, Chris and others version who are studying the code and are trying to compare the differences and similarities between the two programs ?

16 people voted. I believe that only 3 were potential "competitors", that is, affiliated with a commercial computer chess program. So how does 3 out of 16 match up with your statement? What about the other 13 who are not competitors, some of which have been inactive in computer chess for 20+ years???

I just looked who is in charge of ICGA panel, and it appears to be one of Vas main competitors, who more than just once on countless occasions wanted legally to prevent Rybka from participating in important events, by hardware restrictions&uniformed hardware you name it...

It says all and everything about this ICGA panel, who is about to decide Vas further involvment in computer chess.

Now he says 16 people voted- all along we were told it was 14. Which is the truth, and which is another damn lie? As for the voters who were not his competitors, they won't even tell us the names of the voters, and from Hyatt's statement, we don't now know for sure how many there even were. And does he expect us to take his word for anything- how many or who? Not a chance in hell. They either feel ashamed of the way they voted, don't have the guts to come out and tell us- or both. My money says both. Who in the goddam hell ever heard of a secret vote. Ed and Albert saw it for what it was and had the guts and character to walk off. The rest had neither.


gts

For the Nth time, 14 voted in the public Wiki. 2 chose to vote privately. If you close your mouth, and read, I have said "almost" that several times. I just did not reveal how many voted privately and generally said 14 public votes + some private votes. So no lies. No hyperbole. No distortion. We raised the question about publicly listing the votes and names, the panel (not the secretariat) chose to keep the votes secret to avoid EXACTLY the kind of attacks, insults, threats and distortions we have seen...

Who ever heard of a secret vote?? Every time I vote for president, governor, etc, it is a secret ballot. What planet do YOU live on? Do you see jury votes made public except in very rare cases? Do you see personal evaluation votes made public? There are reasons.

As a member of the secretariat, it is entirely your fault that these things were not clear. There should have been in the report = x number of people voted this, n number abstained, z number did not vote. Everybody thought that there were 34 votes to 0 based on the report, which was extremely misleading.

Miguel

The number matters? 100% agreement is irrelevant. Should a murder trial have 100 jury members? In fact, most have 15-18, with 12 voting, the rest being alternates in case one of the 12 gets sick. So is that a 2/3 majority vote since the other 6 did not vote?

Was the wording precise? No. Does it change a thing? absolutely not. So why quibble about something that is 100% irrelevant?

Of course it matters, because you were indirectly implying that Silver, Friedel, and many others (who have been listed) have voted guilty when they did not even participate, and the numbers were used in the press to vilify the accused. Do not complain if later people are confused about the final count.

Miguel

[Don]

...
(1) First of all their mathematical foolishness.
If you have 300 programmers (amateurs and pros) and gather 34 in a special ICGA panel and then only 16 voted, then even the result of 16-0 isnt a clear result at all. Levy says if it had been 9-7 then the staff should have taken some serious considerations out of doubt.

However this is against all knowledge coming from stats.

So you are saying instead of assuming a pretty obvious result of 16-0, we have to assume that all the others that did not voted are most likely pro Vas?

No, exactly this wasnt what I meant. I just wanted to mention the until now unknown reasons for their abstination. Dont waste so much time in computerchess. Take the political elections. You know that non voters are usually counted for the negative votes from opposition?

This is completely irrelevant. The motivation of the non-voters do not matter. It is in politics the same thing. When people decide not to vote (and hence have no direct input in the voting), that's their problem and their problem alone.
In the whole Rybka-issue it is even much easier. If a programmer (or hundreds of them) were able to provide reasonable proof that no wrongdoing by Vas was involved, they could have approached the panel and could have presented their evidence, and may have voted. Nobody did (not even Vas himself!).

False!

For instance, I did not participate because I could not allow myself to be associated with a process in which 2/3 members of the secretariat should have recused themselves. This was mentioned but they won't listen.
The whole process was flawed from the beginning.

Miguel

No, not false.

The motivation is irrelevant for the outcome. The fact that the process was flawed (which is to be expected in such a small and minor 'club') is irrelevant and should not affect participation.

It's your opinion that the process was flawed, don't state it as a fact.

I did primarily answer to the previous comments that the procedure was flawed. Myself, I do NOT think it was heavily flawed. I just think people should not expect a perfect procedure as this would be too much asked from such a small organization. It cannot be perfect at this level. Overall it was a quite good process IMHO (but not perfect).

I really didn't want to make it appear that I was addressing you except for this statement which I now assume you delivered almost tongue in cheek. I understand where you are coming from now.

It goes without saying that nothing is perfect however you could say that about things that are at a very high level too. I think the process was at a very high level. In fact I would be curious to see what improvement David Levy was talking about in the interview - I'm not sure what I would change without putting some thought into it.

I think what is happening is that people are saying, "I don't believe Vas is guilty, therefore the process is flawed."

The next part is not particularly directed to you, I'm addressing the entire forum interested in this:

It's my opinion that the process was NOT flawed and if you read the Levy interview you will see that a great deal of effort was spent trying to ensure that it was fair.

Most of the basis for saying it was flawed is the idea that it was "heavily stacked" with direct competitors of Rybka, which is completely false. Look at the names again and count how many could have had a vested interest in seeing Vas go down. Maybe there were 3 who could be considered "threatened" by Rybka and then you have to assume all 3 are corrupt enough to lie about what they saw. I invite you to throw out all the names of the ones that you think are biased and then count the percentage left who were unfavorable to Rybka (hint: it will still be 100%)

Then you have to consider the fact that the panel members were not allowed to be involved in the decision other than in an advisory role. It's not like the panel voted unanimously to remove Vas from the competition, in fact we were NEVER EVEN ASKED what should be done, IF something should be done and we had no knowledge of what would actually be done if anything. It was our job to simply advise the board on what we saw. I have to say that because for years now we see forum posts saying that we "voted him out" or other similar stupidity.

Vas and Rybka are superstars in computer chess and it would NOT be in the ICGA's best interest to kick the top superstar out of computer chess since this is their bread and butter UNLESS there was a good reason.

I for one cannot understand how anyone could not be impressed with their integrity in this matter. Kicking the superstar out of the competition takes a great deal of fortitude and there is absolutely no reason they would be predisposed to wanting to do this.

One last point. If the ICGA really wanted to remove their superstar for no particularly reason other than just to "wield power" or to be "mean" they did not need to consult with ANYONE. They had the authority to do so but they didn't do it that way.

Your assertion that the process was "highly flawed" just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Calling it the "old boys club" is dirty tactics and does not contribute anything sensible to the argument, it's just name calling and is sophomoric and immature.

I agree.

[Rebel]

There is a lot of "convenience" in these "protests." Ed bailed out because Chris was not approved. That was HIS mistake, not ours. Miguel failed to participate. That was HIS mistake, not ours. This "I don't like the make-up, or the rules, or the process, or the wattage of the light bulbs, so I am not going to participate" is, quite simply, a cop-out...

One of the better things I did in my chess live.

[michiguel]

...
(1) First of all their mathematical foolishness.
If you have 300 programmers (amateurs and pros) and gather 34 in a special ICGA panel and then only 16 voted, then even the result of 16-0 isnt a clear result at all. Levy says if it had been 9-7 then the staff should have taken some serious considerations out of doubt.

However this is against all knowledge coming from stats.

So you are saying instead of assuming a pretty obvious result of 16-0, we have to assume that all the others that did not voted are most likely pro Vas?

No, exactly this wasnt what I meant. I just wanted to mention the until now unknown reasons for their abstination. Dont waste so much time in computerchess. Take the political elections. You know that non voters are usually counted for the negative votes from opposition?

This is completely irrelevant. The motivation of the non-voters do not matter. It is in politics the same thing. When people decide not to vote (and hence have no direct input in the voting), that's their problem and their problem alone.
In the whole Rybka-issue it is even much easier. If a programmer (or hundreds of them) were able to provide reasonable proof that no wrongdoing by Vas was involved, they could have approached the panel and could have presented their evidence, and may have voted. Nobody did (not even Vas himself!).

False!

For instance, I did not participate because I could not allow myself to be associated with a process in which 2/3 members of the secretariat should have recused themselves. This was mentioned but they won't listen.
The whole process was flawed from the beginning.

Miguel

No, not false.

The motivation is irrelevant for the outcome. The fact that the process was flawed (which is to be expected in such a small and minor 'club') is irrelevant and should not affect participation.

It's your opinion that the process was flawed, don't state it as a fact.

I did primarily answer to the previous comments that the procedure was flawed. Myself, I do NOT think it was heavily flawed. I just think people should not expect a perfect procedure as this would be too much asked from such a small organization. It cannot be perfect at this level. Overall it was a quite good process IMHO (but not perfect).

I really didn't want to make it appear that I was addressing you except for this statement which I now assume you delivered almost tongue in cheek. I understand where you are coming from now.

It goes without saying that nothing is perfect however you could say that about things that are at a very high level too. I think the process was at a very high level. In fact I would be curious to see what improvement David Levy was talking about in the interview - I'm not sure what I would change without putting some thought into it.

I think what is happening is that people are saying, "I don't believe Vas is guilty, therefore the process is flawed."

Not really.

It was beyond flawed. A member of the Secretariat has been notoriously and publicly biased from the get go. That is unacceptable. He was the same who has declared that "guts" are good to detect clones (in other accusations), the same member who has been leaking information in a process that is supposed to be confidential. Another member of the secretariat is not even a programmer and he is a member of a direct competitor team... To make things worse, at the very moment that rybka 1.6 was found to have Crafty in it, Bob should have recused himself on the spot. That is the same silliness as having Fabien in the secretariat, in charge of writing the report. In addition, the final report misrepresented who signed and who did not and was written... and was not even circulated for final approval. Was it? and do not get me started in how the report was written.

I bet most (if not all) of the members of the panel had good intentions, but the behavior of the ICGA was, at best, incompetent. Several rules that you may expect to have in a cheating investigation were violated.

The only thing I ask myself is... Why do I freaking care.

Miguel

The next part is not particularly directed to you, I'm addressing the entire forum interested in this:

It's my opinion that the process was NOT flawed and if you read the Levy interview you will see that a great deal of effort was spent trying to ensure that it was fair.


Most of the basis for saying it was flawed is the idea that it was "heavily stacked" with direct competitors of Rybka, which is completely false. Look at the names again and count how many could have had a vested interest in seeing Vas go down. Maybe there were 3 who could be considered "threatened" by Rybka and then you have to assume all 3 are corrupt enough to lie about what they saw. I invite you to throw out all the names of the ones that you think are biased and then count the percentage left who were unfavorable to Rybka (hint: it will still be 100%)

Then you have to consider the fact that the panel members were not allowed to be involved in the decision other than in an advisory role. It's not like the panel voted unanimously to remove Vas from the competition, in fact we were NEVER EVEN ASKED what should be done, IF something should be done and we had no knowledge of what would actually be done if anything. It was our job to simply advise the board on what we saw. I have to say that because for years now we see forum posts saying that we "voted him out" or other similar stupidity.

Vas and Rybka are superstars in computer chess and it would NOT be in the ICGA's best interest to kick the top superstar out of computer chess since this is their bread and butter UNLESS there was a good reason.

I for one cannot understand how anyone could not be impressed with their integrity in this matter. Kicking the superstar out of the competition takes a great deal of fortitude and there is absolutely no reason they would be predisposed to wanting to do this.

One last point. If the ICGA really wanted to remove their superstar for no particularly reason other than just to "wield power" or to be "mean" they did not need to consult with ANYONE. They had the authority to do so but they didn't do it that way.

Your assertion that the process was "highly flawed" just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Calling it the "old boys club" is dirty tactics and does not contribute anything sensible to the argument, it's just name calling and is sophomoric and immature.

I agree.

[michiguel]

...
(1) First of all their mathematical foolishness.
If you have 300 programmers (amateurs and pros) and gather 34 in a special ICGA panel and then only 16 voted, then even the result of 16-0 isnt a clear result at all. Levy says if it had been 9-7 then the staff should have taken some serious considerations out of doubt.

However this is against all knowledge coming from stats.

So you are saying instead of assuming a pretty obvious result of 16-0, we have to assume that all the others that did not voted are most likely pro Vas?

No, exactly this wasnt what I meant. I just wanted to mention the until now unknown reasons for their abstination. Dont waste so much time in computerchess. Take the political elections. You know that non voters are usually counted for the negative votes from opposition?

This is completely irrelevant. The motivation of the non-voters do not matter. It is in politics the same thing. When people decide not to vote (and hence have no direct input in the voting), that's their problem and their problem alone.
In the whole Rybka-issue it is even much easier. If a programmer (or hundreds of them) were able to provide reasonable proof that no wrongdoing by Vas was involved, they could have approached the panel and could have presented their evidence, and may have voted. Nobody did (not even Vas himself!).

False!

For instance, I did not participate because I could not allow myself to be associated with a process in which 2/3 members of the secretariat should have recused themselves. This was mentioned but they won't listen.
The whole process was flawed from the beginning.

Miguel

No, not false.

The motivation is irrelevant for the outcome. The fact that the process was flawed (which is to be expected in such a small and minor 'club') is irrelevant and should not affect participation. If you don't vote you don't vote and this makes it even worse. This is how it works. If somebody is not satisfied with the process, he/she can or better should still vote with their best intention in mind. Not to vote is no solution in this case. Non-voting is inextricably connected to issues of moral responsibility, especially because fewer voters mean less valid statistics. The chess-community would have much more agreed with whatever the outcome of the ICGA voting by attending the flawed process and voting. Of course, it is your freedom to stay away from the case and do something else rather than doing something that you regard as useless.
In the end it was just a poll within a small subset of chesscomputer geeks. Nothing more. If Vas wants a flawless procedure he is free to sue.

Axel

There is a lot of "convenience" in these "protests." Ed bailed out because Chris was not approved. That was HIS mistake, not ours. Miguel failed to participate. That was HIS mistake, not ours. This "I don't like the make-up, or the rules, or the process, or the wattage of the light bulbs, so I am not going to participate" is, quite simply, a cop-out...

I cannot even believe you dare to tell me that it was my "mistake" not to participate. You are talking like I have a vested interest in this, I don't, so it was no mistake because I did not lose anything. It was an ethical decision, since I did not want to be associated with the process that considered unacceptable.

Miguel