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8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

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Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#131

Post by dlandis »

bluGill wrote: post #76
dlandis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

After game analysis. When someone picks the computer best most from a position you can ask how likely it is they came up with that on their own. Expert chess players recognize computer moves fairly accurately in a lot of situations (this is easy to test, just take a bunch of positions, show the last move and ask if it was human or computer). From there human judges look at the game and decide how likely it is someone…

I see, that’s interesting. Although I also wonder if players cheat in other, more subtle, ways such as to just prevent blunders; not necessarily to choose the best moves.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#132

Post by lazyant »

mindgam3 wrote: post #82

As someone who had the unfortunate label of “prodigy” applied to me in my youth (chess master at age 10), I’d like to offer a perspective. It almost goes without saying, but huge respect to the kid for being able to persevere through massive adversity and achieve such a result. What I want to suggest without hopefully ruining the “feel good” party is that the adversity and the success here aren’t just a striking coin…

There is a relationship between great success and hard childhood, I think PG for ex wrote a tweet about this around last weekend.

Also: it's terrible to tell a young kid "you are very talented" and similar; positive encouragement is good but it's better to praise effort.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#133

Post by KorematsuFred »

devmunchies wrote: post #118
KorematsuFred wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are plain wrong. A good engineer can hav far better impact on the world through doing engineering (or marketing, or something else) where it is valued the most than doing the same thing in low opportunity areas like Harlem.

You are underestimating how big the SV has been as a force of good around the world and the positive impact a company like Google has on even the tiny and remote villages in India or Africa. As someone who has come from dirt poor family and a completely backward village I can attest to that.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#134

Post by periodic123 »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #91
yathern wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evenly distributed not in the sense that everyone has an equal amount, but that every way you can cut up demographics (age, race, sex, nationality) will have the same bell curve of talent. But that is not necessarily so with opportunity.

No offense, but it seems preposterous to suggest the talent distribution within any demographic category is uneven, but if you compare two demographic categories, they are the same. Take a look at the top marathon runners, and tell me that the long distance running talent is distributed equally in Bolivia and Kenya.

let's drop a kenyan marathon runner in the bolivian andes and let's see how far he gets over the course of 1 week compared to a bolivian farmer.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#135

Post by [deleted] »

iguy wrote: post #127
yathern wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's more of a question on what defines "talent" - and if such a thing exists. Genetic predisposition certainly is a thing in sports, and genetics and ethnicity are obviously closely related. The context we we're talking about was specifically taken in terms of intelligence. Or "potential". If you want to make the argument that intelligence potential is affected by your ethnicity, you are free to do so, though…

> But it's something I'd prefer to believe regardless and be wrong about. This is fine so long as you are judicious about what actions follow from such beliefs. If it motivates you to seek opportunity and encouragement for all, that is wonderful. If it motivates others to run witch-hunts in against fairly meritocratic organisations whose makeup stubbornly refuses to conform to their beliefs, that is less than wonderf…

[deleted]

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#136

Post by omegaham »

dlandis wrote: post #131
bluGill wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After game analysis. When someone picks the computer best most from a position you can ask how likely it is they came up with that on their own. Expert chess players recognize computer moves fairly accurately in a lot of situations (this is easy to test, just take a bunch of positions, show the last move and ask if it was human or computer). From there human judges look at the game and decide how likely it is someone…

I see, that’s interesting. Although I also wonder if players cheat in other, more subtle, ways such as to just prevent blunders; not necessarily to choose the best moves.

Yes, they do.

The result is that time controls have shortened accordingly. It's a lot harder to cheat convincingly when you're playing bullet chess, whereas it might be easier to do so when you're playing 10 or 15-minute time controls.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#137

Post by frutiger »

intuitionist wrote: post #124
KorematsuFred wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talent is highly distributed, Opportunity is not. Fixed it for you.

Talent is higher-entropy than opportunity.

Pithy, but that’s not really what entropy is about (logarithm of microstates corresponding to a macrostate).

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#138

Post by frutiger »

radiator wrote: post #90
abetterday wrote: post #41

You can find Top 100 lists at http://www.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Item... and his play history at http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?16649696 . It is almost precisely a year since his first tournament game so there is no exaggeration. Going to 1473 in one year is extremely impressive especially since early tournaments show loses so it isn't like he excelled but simply wasn't rated. For refe…

Who is Magnus Carlson?

Typos or not, in a Chess thread, there should be enough context to recognize who is widely regarded as the greatest chess player to have ever lived.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#139

Post by seppin »

cerealbad wrote: post #117
Quarrelsome wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

The whole point about refugees is you don't know what they will become, especially children.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#140

Post by seppin »

sDlEzAtyoNAz wrote: post #105
packet_nerd wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me smile a little. My civilization includes all human kind; we're all stuck on this rock together, after all. Think about the vastness of the universe and the billions of civilizations that must be out there! It makes me think that our petty squabbles, divisions, and tribes are just so much of a tempest in a teapot.

I wonder if people that belong to other civilizations see it the same way as you, and what the consequences would be for your civilization if people in yours did and people in other civilizations did not.

they most certainly do not, because they are more concerned with their own survival.
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