Levy's interview on Chessbase about ICGA/rybka

[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.

[bob]

The second part of Levy's interview is here:
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7908

I just read it, and the questions were incredibly aggressive and orientated. Also, they shown that those who wrote the questions had no understanding of what the ICGA is neither what is really reproached to Rybka (for instance, they still did't get that ICGA doesn't care about copyright but about its own sport rule and that Rybka was accused to use Fruit code without asking for permission, not being reproached to not be 100% original.)

To me, this "interview" looks a lot more like aggressive forum posters throwing orientated questions at David Levy than like a professional journalism work. It looks like the same c**p one can read all along threads in fora.

Were you not told of this previously?

[Graham Banks]

......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.

2 people voted secretly.

Okay - missed that. Thanks.

[bob]

The second part of Levy's interview is here:
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7908

Please take a look into my other message in the other thread about Rybka 1 HERE
http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 411#449411

I want to present two points that do unrefutably prove that the anti-Rybka ICGA side is completely off the road.

(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. If 18 out of 34 (out of a population of over 300!) abstained, this is a clear vote that they didnt agree with the basically called for endresult of the guilty side. But for many reasons in the peer group they didnt want to link their name with such a voting either. That's a typical sociopsychological problem. Anyway, ONLY 16 of the 34, so, less than 50% and less than 5% of all chess programmers voted against Vas Rajlich. That is the correct spelling of the result. Since all knew of the problem and could have cared to participate. If not, they must have had reasons to abstain. I could guess that they didnt agree with the witchhunt of the anti Vas people.

(2) It's completely wrong to apply a processing that examins the legality of programs on a complaint step by step basis. Because first of all, if I have a rule 2 I must guarantee that this rule is enforcable right from the start and not 10 years later. Otherwise no interesting sport. If you didnt have exact rules for the famous 2 condition then after many years you cant reopen the case. It's against the reality of human life. No matter what a certain player might have done wrong. Maybe this then enters the field of historical taboos.

(1) is utter nonsense. We asked two questions...

a. Have you read ALL of the evidence and the report?

b. Do you believe that Vas violated ICGA rule 2?

If you answer question a with a "no" then most people would simply decide "I didn't have time to study all the stuff, so I am not qualified to vote, and choose to not do so."

Does NOT mean that they did not agree with the report or the conclusion. It means they admitted that they had not done "due diligence" and were not qualified to vote as a result.

You ALWAYS want to make irrational assumptions that are based on absolutely nothing. They did not vote, so they thought he was innocent. Never mind that they COULD have voted "yes" and "no" to proclaim their stance.

Rule 2 is perfectly enforceable, and, in fact, was just enforced. Ergo your statement (2) is completely moot.

[bob]

From now on we are living under a false reality of the ICGA with the suspicion that all engines are copies until the holy ICGA has decided otherwise. Meaning that nothing has any importance anymore. That is the bad side of the smear campaign.

the ICGA takes no view on an engine unless it enters on of its events.

Harvey, you dont get it. What do you think my reservations against the whole ICGA are coming from? I can answer that basic question. It's the internal contradiction in masses. Look please, if the ban against Vas really had no other sense than the tournament participation in the ICGA sphere, it's terrible to then see the whole press campaign in the NYT and DER SPIEGEL. Plus, if it's just the problem with these pre pre versions of the early Rybka. Dont you understand that? It just doesnt make sense. You guys are unable to think in what Gestalt means. The whole of each entity. With a minimum of education you just cant do it this way. Also, if one Bob is doing the gig on stage for the beloaden. But it's still wrong. You know, it's right for just a tiny little part of a certain field but not for what we all enjoy as computerchess competition.

If Vas saved say two weeks in that beginning, yes, but what does that mean right now?

Another thing to reflect. Vas already was on retreat for a longer time because of the unfriendly, insane resistance of the peers. Here Bob and David are correct, not they dictate the actual rules but the sissies among the direct competitors of Vas cried wolf. So they banned at first the use of cluster because they were too stupid to program it. This way they destroyed the progress in computerchess. Know what I mean?

You personally from Hiarcs will always remain connected with the preventing of progress in the field. If you dont correct that you will lose the rest of your fidel clients.

I have a little hope left that you might understand the problem. It's not if a side is completely right or wrong, but what is the best for our community. And with a ban of the best you cant expect that people remain interested.

Copying Fruit did NOT "save 2 weeks." It saved MANY months. Perhaps even a year or more.

Stop preaching when you have not studied the bible.

[bob]

I'm considered to be a statistician...

+1

The question is: did you fall from your chair laughing while reading Rolf's post?


A.

Or puked???

[bob]

...
(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?

No they are not. If 10% of the population votes, and 51% of that 10% votes for A, A wins. Not B. Nobody says "but the other 94.9 % were not for A.

[bob]

...
(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...

[bob]

I edited my previous post. Made a difference whether every member was asked to vote: in this case, if the question is : guilty or not, the guilty voters are compared against non-guilty voters ( abstainers or no-voters.)
I mean, in this case there would be an explicit intention of non voting "guilty"
.

Please be precise. You mean in this case you assumed or do you think that we can well conclude that these nonvoters wanted to abstan from calling Vas guilty?

+2

No. They were simply not willing to invest the time necessary to understand all the evidence, or they did not have the necessary technical skills and did not feel they should vote...

[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.

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.

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