81–90 of 132 posts
I think the 5% odds are an underestimation, because Carlsen will change his focus now and won't spend time preparing for the World Championship. He will likely also prioritize risky wins vs safer draws.
Considering there are quite a few players from young generation who reached 2700+ recently I don't see him reaching his goal and even 5% looks optimistic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> metal detectors and blood tests What are they looking for? Communicators and ... Adderall? Xanzolam?
> What are they looking for? Communicators and ... Adderall? Xanzolam? Probably not Xanzolam, because there's no way it'd enhance your performance, but yeah, you get the idea.
what else do they check for? caffeine is probably helpful and not banned. LSD (microdosing)? Galantamine? If there are nootropics that can legitimately enhance high level chess play why aren't we using them on our top scientists and engineers?
I think the 5% odds are an underestimation, because Carlsen will change his focus now and won't spend time preparing for the World Championship. He will likely also prioritize risky wins vs safer draws.
> He will likely also prioritize risky wins vs safer draws. It seems kind of unfair that this is the strategy needed to increase ELO. If the safest strategy to guarantee a win in a tournament is winning a single game and drawing the rest, then you shouldn't be penalized for that in your ELO, versus playing risky and winning more but also losing some.
I wonder why Magnus has fixated on 2900. It's sort of a dumb goal for someone at his level because it's out of his control. He can win a lot of games but if his opponents don't win their games that aren't against him then he's not going to get there.
Well if he is bored being the world champion, he may just be looking for any hard to reach goal at all. If the top players are not winning their games, they will not stay at the top for long.
I wonder why Magnus has fixated on 2900. It's sort of a dumb goal for someone at his level because it's out of his control. He can win a lot of games but if his opponents don't win their games that aren't against him then he's not going to get there.
Well if he is bored being the world champion, he may just be looking for any hard to reach goal at all. If the top players are not winning their games, they will not stay at the top for long.
“The Elo system only measures differences between players, it has nothing to do with absolute player strength.” But it seems ratings have been deflating lately ( https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-elo-ratings-inflation-or-d... is a fun read), so hitting 2900 would be even more impressive!
Is the top end deflating? If deflation comes from young high-variance players does that affect the players at very top? As they might be good enough to consistently beat the young players.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but the examples you mentioned are (in practice) absolute and can be reached independently of how others are performing. In that sense, ELO _is_ different (as also explained in another answer, he can reach 2900 more easily if others start performing worse).
What about being "NBA Champions"? It's "relative to how others are performing". Why does that make it not valuable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but the examples you mentioned are (in practice) absolute and can be reached independently of how others are performing. In that sense, ELO _is_ different (as also explained in another answer, he can reach 2900 more easily if others start performing worse).
What about being "NBA Champions"? It's "relative to how others are performing". Why does that make it not valuable?
There are going to be team compositions that didn't win an NBA championship that are stronger than ones that did win a team composition simply because at the time the competition was stronger and so they weren't the best. So, if you use #ofChampionships to generate a ranking of all team compositions there's going to be a lot of debate that the teams aren't actually ranked by strength since some of the teams that racked up championships did so when other teams sucked (I know less about NBA but for NHL's original 6 this becomes the case, the competition was so weak that some people didn't know they were drafted because it wasn't something you cared about).
To get back to the original point, your ELO rating is in relative to your peers. The idea is that for a given point differential you have a x% chance of beating them. So the point being made is that you can't use ELO to compare anything besides two players who can physically can play each other as taking a playing in the past with n elo and having them play a current player with n elo won't match the x% chance.
To counter some of the other points (bowling and the mile). These are precise rankings not relative. If somebody runs a 4min mile in the past you can expect them to run a 4min mile in the future. This doesn't mean that they'll win the same %of races though as they did which is what elo is more about. Same thing with bowling, if somebody constantly bowled a 280 in the past you can expect them (ignoring lane/oil changes) to bowl 280 in the future but if the competition now bowls a 290 that player is going to suck instead of being a legend. So the bowler of the past may have had a very high ELO but now when taken into the future will (after many losses) have a lower ELO despite having the same peformance.
It's worth noting that one of the authors of the cited paper [1] (Nick Polson) is infamous for claiming (incorrectly) a proof of the Riemann hypothesis [2]. This case is somewhat strange because he's not the usual mathematical crank; he's actually a quite well-recognized economics researcher who is clearly mathematically competent. But for some reason he persists. (If you search his name, you can find his YouTube cha…
Sorry, there's nothing holy about the Riemann Hypothesis; anyone can add their input to the problem, especially on ArXiV and/or YouTube. You know, that's how discussions can start, and sometimes people want to discuss things with others.
It seems like you might think only certain people should work on these special problems, and only if they do it correctly according to you.
Your comment is just an ad hominem, so why don't you tell us why you're actually mentioning this? Do you think the math is wrong in the relevant material from the article because of his RH-related musings on ArXiV, or do you have an anti-RH-researcher bias that you want to share with the world? Are you just hating on someone?
It's worth noting that one of the authors of the cited paper [1] (Nick Polson) is infamous for claiming (incorrectly) a proof of the Riemann hypothesis [2]. This case is somewhat strange because he's not the usual mathematical crank; he's actually a quite well-recognized economics researcher who is clearly mathematically competent. But for some reason he persists. (If you search his name, you can find his YouTube cha…
It's odd that people can't work on something in which they're interested and talk about it publicly without being labeled a "crank". Sorry, there's nothing holy about the Riemann Hypothesis; anyone can add their input to the problem, especially on ArXiV and/or YouTube. You know, that's how discussions can start, and sometimes people want to discuss things with others. It seems like you might think only certain people…
You have an interesting idea? Go ahead, please share it! But it's not productive to just start with "Look everybody, I solved it!"
It just wastes everyone's time. For example, this paper. It would take a lot of time to sit down and work through the math until I find a specific error in it. But the barren abstract and reference sections strongly suggest that would be a huge waste of my time and energy.
Mochizuki pulled this stunt with the ABC conjecture. Wasted YEARS of mathematicians' time just to arrive at the conclusion it was all elaborate mathematical smoke and mirrors. The guy is an egotistical asshole with a messiah complex, and managed to burn a lot of PhD students by chasing his red herring. Not cool.