But no, let's keep making it harder to get a Visa.
this is news because of how rare it is. its a classic underdog story.
Yeah. It's rare in every category you put people in whether it's nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or whatever.
8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
111–120 of 192 posts
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. This isn't a contrived category, which is common in tournaments, to make them interesting. On chess.com and Lichess there are chess tournaments that are restricted to people with lower than, say, a 1500 rating. If a 1700 chess player plays worse on purpose to get the score down, that's called sandbagging. There is little room for sandbagging here. People can't just change their ages, or up and move to the…
What (if anything) stops people from cheating in online tournaments (by simply asking a computer for the best next move, given the current board arrangement)?
People's honor and integrity. :) There are anti-cheating counter-measures but they would be trivial to defeat for someone who knows a little bit about how computer chess works. For example, Lichess is a free chess site and all the source code is open, except for the anti-cheating heuristics.
However, getting a computer to play realistically like a good eight-year old wouldn't be to easy. The computer-generated moves would stand out much more due to the skill differential than, say, if a grand master cheated using a chess engine.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...." And they are sending us their best too.
yeah think of what he could have done for Nigeria. actually kind of sad. You need these sharp kids to grow up and help their own people so that there are less people wanting to escape.
Sadly that is wrong kind of thinking. What make other Nigerians "his people" or his responsibility ? I feel humanity's interests are best served if an individual is able to move to the place where his talents are best used. World and consequently Nigeria is a better place because this little kid is in NY and not in a child grave in Nigeria.
Of course there is a valid argument for Americans to say we can not take infinite people in anymore for various reasons and that is a fine argument. I think however it is unfair to force identities on people that they themselves are not interested in.
We can extend similar arguments and say no black kid should move out of harlem and travel to pursue career in tech in Silicon valley instead she should stay back in Harlem and help "her" people.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#114Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#115Wouldn't hurt to put chess in the title.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#116As they say, talent is evenly distributed and opportunity is not. Good on the little fella.
Who are “they”? I’ve never heard this and it seems incorrect.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
yeah think of what he could have done for Nigeria. actually kind of sad. You need these sharp kids to grow up and help their own people so that there are less people wanting to escape.
why'd ya wanna shake it that way? There's nothing stopping him from giving back at a later stage. Refugees are refugees for a reason, people leave countries for a reason. When the conditions are right again I'm sure they'll visit or their children will, giving an opportunity to contribute. Sometimes you've gotta leave, would you be annoyed for a Russian leaving Putin's autocratic Russia? For some (depending on career…
isolationism and nationalism IS america....
selecting for highly intelligent immigrants is eugenicism, one step above racism - since racism at least allows for prejudicial morality, biological determinism doesn't have space for free will, let alone natural genetic variability or universal morality. rich european nations engage in various varian disasters in order to push through more regulations. america engages in predatory forced immigration by destabilizing ripe nations and then preying on their elites with faustian bargains. it's colonialism of the mind.
if world power cared about the poor of africa they would stabilize it with a permanent global peace keeping force for one or two generations, and allow people the freedom and space to develop outside of the debt structure which has crippled them since independence. yes, they would do this by forced occupation, at the gasp cost of national sovereignty. china is engaged and accelerating in this process for the coming decades, and in return will secure resources for the next century of cold war.
assad said something very telling when asked before the 2016 us presidential election who he preferred, it was something to the effect of "we don't listen to what the american politicians say, because they always do the opposite when they come to power. we will wait to see what they do."
it's unfortunate that so many people just accept what america says, and avoid looking at what it does, has done, will do.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
yeah think of what he could have done for Nigeria. actually kind of sad. You need these sharp kids to grow up and help their own people so that there are less people wanting to escape.
Sadly that is wrong kind of thinking. What make other Nigerians "his people" or his responsibility ? I feel humanity's interests are best served if an individual is able to move to the place where his talents are best used. World and consequently Nigeria is a better place because this little kid is in NY and not in a child grave in Nigeria. Of course there is a valid argument for Americans to say we can not take infi…
>the place where his talents are best used
>to pursue career in tech in Silicon valley
working for a tech company in SV is NOT the best thing for humanity. There is much more to do in Harlem or in this case Nigeria than working on marketing tech in the bay.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...." And they are sending us their best too.
yeah think of what he could have done for Nigeria. actually kind of sad. You need these sharp kids to grow up and help their own people so that there are less people wanting to escape.
Who is to say that he won't go back to his country of birth at a later time and use the knowledge he gained elsewhere to help them pull themselves up?
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> #27 in America for eight-year-olds The granularity of this ranking is interesting.
I disagree. This isn't a contrived category, which is common in tournaments, to make them interesting. On chess.com and Lichess there are chess tournaments that are restricted to people with lower than, say, a 1500 rating. If a 1700 chess player plays worse on purpose to get the score down, that's called sandbagging. There is little room for sandbagging here. People can't just change their ages, or up and move to the…
You disagree that it's interesting?