Who entered Leela into WCCC? Bad idea!!

[Chris Whittington]

Who is responsible for entering Leela into WCCC? Not a good idea in my humble opinion. Stockfish has always declined to enter, and Leela is built partly on Stockfish.

Quite apart from ethical issues relating to the organisers behaviour to the Rybka programmer, Vas Rajlich.

WCCC to a second class tournament, no longer taken seriously by many in computer chess.

TCEC has to be the correct tournament format to use, surely?

[Chris Whittington]

For example, re Stockfish and WCCC, a statement by Marco Costalba:
02/05/2015 I have always written all the worst that is possible to write about igca and the farce they call world championship, you can find my comments with broad explanations everywhere, just Google for it. Now I stay consistent with that : I don't want to endorse them, I don't want they use SF to advertise themselves and their void tournament.

[Dietrich Kappe]

What should have been done to Vas, given his transgressions? Perhaps the best punishment was that the marketplace left him and rybka behind.

[gravity_well]

agreed. this sounds like a ploy to gain publicity by using Leela's name

[Jaey Miya]

vas stole to make his program good. he liar deservbe what he get. and he not even defend himself, like coward liar!
n

On Saturday, June 23, 2018 at 5:36:10 PM UTC-4, Chris Whittington wrote:

[Patrick Hill]

It may not be the gold standard, but unfortunately, the WCCC is currently the only well known engine tournament where Leela can BYOH, which is pretty much a requirement for her to be competitive.

[Chris Whittington]

the same ICGA running the WCCC was sanctioned by the Ethics Committee of FIDE (chaired by Professor Ravello, Judge, Jurist and Professor of International law) for acting without statutory basis (acting outside of law) and was invited to alter its penalty against Vas Rajlich.

ICGA has never answered the sanction, nor altered its penalty.

So, by entering Leela into WCCC, "The Authors" are effectively going along with an organisation that considers itself above the law and which declines to modify in the face of the governing Ethics Committee decision against it.

By entering WCCC, "The Authors" expose themselves to arbitrary actions by the ICGA without statutory basis. As has previously taken place. Is a really bad idea to enter. On a purely pragmatic If Leela wins, everybody will say "but Stockfish" was not there, it's a weak tournament, so what?" If Leela loses, well, that's not good. What matters in this game are the rating lists and TCEC. The WCCC is an irrelevancy and run by people who, when they get it wrong, decline to apologise or correct the position; and lastly something of a lottery, nothing can be properly decided by half a dozen games.

This is not the place to argue on Rybka, so I won't. Save as to say that the following programmers collectively took apart the documentary case against Rybka, step by step and line by line and refuted it in its entirety. There is not one single piece of side by side code that can be compared as copied in the entire documentary evidence presented by ICGA. Not one.

• Chris Whittington  games programmer and entrepreneur:
  There may be some anecdotal evidence for your model, but, as far as I can tell there is no good proof, just a groupthinky belief. Basically I think your argument is: Vas started with Fruit because he is a thief. Vas is a thief because he started with Fruit. Or, in other words, your argument is circular: the conclusion is the premise and the premise is the conclusion. More

   

• Marcel van Kervinck  a Dutch software engineer and author of the chess program Rookie:

  Second, I would also like to inform you that with the knowledge I have today, I would have voted differently in the investigation process.  More
     

• Ed Schröder  producer of the REBEL series and 2-times world champion:
  After 15 months of intensive research it's my final conclusion the accusers who investigated the Rybka chess program researched an original program. Strength is one aspect of originality and the way Rybka ruled (on equal hardware) was unprecedented in computer chess history. The ICGA verdict and ban are uncalled for and the event is a regretable moment in the history of computer chess. More

   

• Sven Schüle  a German computer scientist and author of the chess program Surprise:
  This kind of statement has now been repeated by Bob approximately some thousands of times. So frequently that most people seem to have accepted this as a matter of fact, even many programmers who had doubts about it before. I also believe that Zach has done a great work by no doubt. I just do not share his final result, which is most important here. More

   

• Miguel A. Ballicora  an Argentinean Biochemist and Associate Professor and author of Gaviota:

  Your question is a very good question. Taking ideas from one source? many? is it the same? I do not know, and probably there is no simple answer for ICGA purposes, but the question is relevant. The problem is, rule #2 is terribly worded and was designed eons ago with only cut&paste clones in mind.The part that says "e.g. programs that play nearly the same moves" (or something like that) is extremely naive. Let's suppose that I write a program following Ed's document about how rebels plays. That would probably be a program that is 80-90% identical. There was zero code copy because I did not even see it. Is that ok? I believe yes... what would be the difference if I saw the code? More

     

• Dann Corbit  an American programmer and computer chess expert, tester and advisor:
  My main complaint is with the process of fault-finding itself. I think that the design of the process was flawed and with a flawed process flawed decisions are far more probable than via correct process. I do not expect the majority of chess programmers to agree with me or with my analysis. My opinion is mine alone but I wanted to say something since it appears to me that a bad process has been used to reach a final decision that affects a man's career in a significant way. More

   

• Uri Blass  an Israeli mathematician and author of the chess program Movei:

  Rybka is not designed to be a copy of fruit and you cannot show me a big similiarity in the analysis between rybka and fruit that is a strange similiarity between different engines. More

   

• Ronald de Man  a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist and author of the Sjaak chess engine:

  Certainly it does matter. We already KNOW that Vas is capable of adding 500 ELO to an engine when given enough time. That's how you brush away all arguments: not important, because he is guilty for all the OTHER reasons. In your world, all counterarguments fail BECAUSE HE IS GUILTY. More

   

• José C. Martínez Galán  a Spanish computer chess programmer and author of Averno:

  People is not condemned for doing unsual things. To condemn someone, to be able to say you have proven guilt, you must refute even the most unusual possibilities. Otherwise, the "in dubio pro reo" must be applied. More
   

• Charles Roberson  an American computer scientist and chess programmer author of the chess enginesNoonianChess, Telepath and Ares and as ICGA panelist during the official voting: 
  I think the key to the Fruit eval issue is whether or not they both could have been inspired by other previous open source code and open technical discussions. On this issue, I've found some of Zach's paper to be incorrect as to the originality of Fruit's eval. 
   

• Sergei Markoff  a Russian chess programmer and author of SmarThink:
  As the Rybka source was never published, the only possible thing to do with disassembly is to say that it contains a code that compiles at the same instuction sequences. But it's not a prove of direct copying of the code. More
• 
  

[Dietrich Kappe]

When I read FIDE and ethics mentioned in the same sentence, I spit out my coffee!

It's time to get over your butt-hurt on this and move on.

[Chris Whittington]

the FIDE Ethics Committee to whom we appealed is (was) chaired by Professor Ravello, an internationally renowned and respected jurist and professor in law and Italian judge, and not by FIDE itself. Would you like me to refer your gratuitous comment to him and he can argue with you on your slur as he thinks fit?

Is not a question of "butt hurt", whatever vulgarity that is, its a question of applying and operating to acceptable standards. The ICGA has trangressed ethical and lawful standards (as decided by a professor of law) at the WCCC and has not corrected itself in any way. Therefore, you are saying a) you don't care about entering a tournament where extra-judicial things can happen to you, b) you're prepared to overlook them happening to others because it suits you and c) use a program which is as a minimum leveraged on Stockfish in a tournament which Marco Costalbo has absolutely refused to allow Stockfish to enter because he finds ICGA ethically unacceptable.

It will be tile to "move on" when ICGA corrects its behaviours, as shown to do by a Professor of Law.

Meanwhile, my opinion is that programmers should follow the Stockfish lead as expressed by Marco Costalba and boycott the ICGA on ethical grounds. Yet you're in favout of JOINING the ICGA in order to oompete in this very muchg second best tournament. Please reconsider.

The syzsgy author wrote, btw:

"as far as I understand, the EC did conclude that the whole procedure leading up to the decision was flawed in that it did not comply with FIDE standards.

If you're only interested in "does the decision stand or not", then you might consider such flaws irrelevant. However, the ICGA *might* now feel obliged to recognise that the procedure was flawed and that therefore the decision cannot stand. In any event, that the procedure was flawed implies that it was unfair and also raises doubts as to the material correctness of its outcome."

Three years later, the ICGA has not retracted, apologised. Nothing. It's a law unto itself. Enter its tournaments at your peril.

[Patrick Hill]

Let her play! This project is about Leela, your posts are about grinding your axes. Let's see more chess and less settling of old scores.

[Dietrich Kappe]

Sure. I always enjoy arguing with an Italian judge.

So, you were a party to this proceeding and aren't impartial. I watched this whole fiasco from afar. Neither side was worthy of respect in these proceeding.

I was out of computer chess for many years precisely because of all of the cranks and kooks that populate it. I'm glad that LCZ is largely free of this nonsense, though apparently not completely.

Your vaguely threatening and preposterous language -- "enter at your peril" -- doesn't help your case.

Let it go.

[Chris Whittington]

maybe it is because your first language is not English

"enter at your peril" is not threatening you, vaguely or otherwise, it:s WARNING you that the place you are going has been and still could be a minefield for engine authors. Which should be clear from the previous sentence "ICGA is a law unto itself".

OK, you raise side issues, you make personal attacks - but you do NOT ANSWER or COMMENT the central point for not entering ICGA tournaments. ICGA has been censured by a well qualified legally constituted Ethics Committee, to which ICGA was/is signed up to recognise the power of over itself. ICGA has ignored the findings and recommendations of that Ethics Committee. An unethical act in itself. Until such time as ICGA does correct its behaviour (for example causing by press release a tabloid newspaper to emblazon Vas and his wife's wedding photograph with the caption "checkmate cheat" under it - horrifying even the usual ICGA supporters), apologising, correcting the penalty and recognising the flawed process it presided over, then, no ETHICAL programmer or programming team should support the ICGA. This is really simple, and base. Is no question of partiality or impartiality, is a question of right and wrong. That you still want to enter Leela, when there are many other opportunities (better ones) is a sad sign of your ethical level. "My technology before everything". bad, bad, bad.

You're wrong here; the argument presented above is clear and correct. Only your desire for the technology trumps it, so you make a wrong choice. Do the other Leela Authors agree with you? 

[Dietrich Kappe]

Wow. I was born in raised in these here United State of America. Sometimes our American accent makes the brits think we don't speak English. Don't know if that's your defect.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but clearly you do. Let me give you some advice:

1. Spell the name of your legal authority correctly. It helps your case.

2. Make sure not to claim that he still chairs or belongs to a commission when that's demonstrably false.

3. Stop whining.

4. Don't cite a commission that never once found against Ilyumzhinov. It doesn't help your case.

You can have the last word, if you want it.

[Chris Whittington]

Rivello not Ravello, thanks for correction. 

https://en.chessbase.com/post/roberto-rivello-how-the-fide-ethics-commiion-works

and yes, he has moved on since the time of the Rybka judgement. I did NOT try to suggest otherwise. I believe he moved on shortly after completing the Rybka judgement.

Mr Roberto Rivello, Manager of the HELP Programme of the Council of Europe, speaking at Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) conference in Strasbourg (4 June 2015) about the importance of the 2015 annual HELP network conference for the interaction between legal professionals and other professionals, and for the development of appropriate tools for continuous training of judges and prosecutors.

https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/interview-roberto-rivello-en-

Rivello's judgement on the Rybka case was a very professional piece of work, well considered and well judged. I do not accept your tarnishing of it, especially when a) you didn't read it and b) you watched in any case "from afar" and c) drew the wrong conclusions. There weren't two "bad" sides, there was our side, the good side, and a sadly corrupt and mal-motivated other side which really badly behaved itself (as confirmed by the EC).

"Whining" is again a personal attack. You still fail to address the central point, namely that one should not support unethical behaving organisations that refuse to correct themselves. This is base. Especially when there are plenty better alternatives. Throwing mud at me, Rivello, FIDE, it's ethics committee and so on, does NOT a case make. It just shows you lost the argument, but you're going to enter the program anyway, because you can, because you want, because is your technology, screw any ethics and accuse anyone who tries quite politely actually to ask you to reconsider of "whining".

Well, as projects I always supported both Leela and Stockfish. Open source good. New ideas good. Machine Learning good. but, at same time, I am always aware that technologists need to also recognise social and humanities issues. It can't just be all about the technology, as history has taught us. Here, where there is right and wrong, ethical and unethical, I hope it is not only Stockfish team which follows an ethical path. Do the other Leela Authors agree with you? When there are many alternative better competitive platforms for Leela?

[Dietrich Kappe]

I know I said you could have the last word, but you live too much in your own head and make unwarranted assumptions. I am not a LCZ "author," nor do I have anything to do with the WCCC registration.

I hope Leela does play in the WCCC, especially if TCEC is not able to wrangle a GPU or two.

P.S. Stop cutting and pasting your endless Rybka talking points. It's annoying and nobody cares.

P.P.S. The FIDE Ethics Commission was a corrupt fig leaf for FIDE. It's hard to take any of their decisions seriously.

P.P.P.S. There, now you can have the last word.

[Dietrich Kappe]

On a completely different topic, who do I see about getting a refund for the double plus ungood Chess System Tal? :-)

[Chris Whittington]

I hope Leela plays in TCEC. 

Google adds the text, I just click on the reply button. Like now, and google adds your text. Pleased to give you a side issue, so you can continue to ignore the main point :)

FIDE EC did a very good job of the Rybka case. I didn't hear anyone complain about their judgement, from either side. Maybe FIDE is terrible, but that didn't affect this case, there was no FIDE politics involved, and the Ethics Committee remained independent. I actually got the impression that Rivello himself found it a personally interesting case (which it was), hence his very long and considered judgement document.

The last word is that you have not demonstrated any good reason to overrule the ETHICALITY of entry, given the ICGA refusal to consider correctively acting on the EC judgement against it. So, I'm satisfied to have proven the argument. Thank you for all the personal attacks, they do help demonstrate you have nothing else to offer :)

[Jesse Jordache]

The Ministry of Truth.

Chris Wittington, I don't have any background in what you're talking about, but I'd like to.  Did the ICGA have a similarly transparent and on-the-record hearing in its ruling?  If so, is there any way I can get a copy?

Btw, I thought Ed Schröder's argument combined with that of Miguel Ballicora was devastating.

[Jaey Miya]

like they showed you can show that exact portions of code are copied and pasted to his liking for making money, vas got caught, and RAN WITHOUT MOUNTING A REAL DEFENSE. He is guilty beyond belief

[Jaey Miya]

wow Dietrich Kappe  owned Chirs there! and he only can aggressively spew his psychological backwash!

[Chris Whittington]

Yes, well, it's basically smeared all over the internet in a big war lasting several years. I think the key paper that was produced by Vas accusers was from Zach Wagner, you ought to be able to google that.

It helps to understand the Abstraction Filtration Comparison test procedure.

It helps to understand concepts such as cognitive dissonance, groupthink, psychology and so on.

And it helps to understand chess programming.

In other words to make sense of it all you have to be pretty smart, able to gather material from several disparate fields, have a good analytical brain and knowledge of the field itself as well as the fields of psychology and sociology amongst others. Needless to say this is a pretty rare combination amongst computer chess programmers. Plus a great deal of time.

Very few have analysed this deeply and you'll find most of the strong opinions come from those who haven't analysed. Even if you search deeply, you'll face the disconcerting fact that it's pretty much possible to decide your view in advance and then cherry pick other people's opinions to agree with you.

Either side can advance a compelling case. However, only one side can actually be correct and I (and others) are that side. The case was an outrageous attempt to crush and destroy an outstanding programmer who was defeating all in his path with his opponents unable to comprehend what he had done.

In the beginning there was/is a central group in computer chess that believes it owns the space, having invented everything, published academic papers and so on. This group is part academic and quite heavily but not entirely American. If it has a guru/leader figure it would be add prof Hyatt. On the internet it is centered on Computer chess club.

When an outsider appears from nowhere and very quickly overtakes the entire field those that "own the space" had a natural tendency to assume he stole all his ideas from them. Leading this field was ass prof Hyatt who spent around two years of his voluminous output of attacking the character of Vas, the Rybka programmer. Liar, cheat, hooligan and so on. Then someone called Rick Fadden published a post on which he claimed a disassembly of Rybka UCI function was very similar to the program Fruit. It wasn't, the disassembly was errored, but the effect (Rybka was now not only outperforming but outselling everything else) was to unleash a mass more personal attacks (led by Hyatt again) and to provoke more disassembly of Rybka code. Alongside all this a mysterious group of Russians published a program which Vas claimed was a copy of Rybka.

By now Vas has many enemies, Hyatt, Russian hackers, many outclassed programmers, plus end users who "follow" the above. Also many friends, some fellow programmers and end users who were using Rybka.

Probably I got much of the ordering wrong and forgot some things, but at this stage Vas went off and made his own forum, Rybka.net

Things escalated. People disassembled Rybka, a program Strelka which was supposed to be like Fruit and since Vas said Strelka was a copy of Rybka and so on.

A group of "leading" programmers got together and asked Levy of ICGA to make an investigation. They put together a team of three to lead this (led by ass prof Hyatt) and called for a "panel" of experts gathering up fifty or sixty people, many of whom were not expert at anything. My application was rejected. Since I am probably the best arguer in comp chess you can see which way this was headed. Ed Schroder resigned in protest. The panel "discussions" were secret, although the written statements have since been leaked by dissenters. The panel voted, including the second and third place winners in tournaments Vas would be disqualified from, thus they became World Champion as a result.

Marcel Kervinck, also a dissenter, has said that in fact there was a panel in which very little was said, and an internal group which talked on the side and was responsible for pushing through the guilty vote.

So, guilty vote passed to Levy of ICGA who was not disagreeing and published a very attacking verdict, banned Vas forclife, took away his titles and distributed them to the lucky panelists who voted Vas guilty, whilst press releasing the news into the media.

So, at this point, just about everybody thought well ok, their favorite programmers in their favorite hobby led by the great ICGA say Vas guilty, so they all think so too. Except me. And so began a two years or more war in which the case of the accusers was gradually picked apart and destroyed, gradually more and more programmers (and some other experts) came in until essentially the broad middle ground of programmers, not known for extreme views, condemned the ICGA process.

If you ask where the consensus is now, I would guess it is that Vas did not copy code, but he did use ideas from Fruit, and that this ideas use is no more and no less than any other programmers do. See Dann Corbitt for a typical middle ground view.

Of course, the reputations of the accusing side rests entirely on verdict guilty, so you will still find them arguing it. But, nobody actually believes Vas is a thief, hooligan, liar, cheat, copier, whatever for there is no evidence for that. But these slurs form something for the accusers to hang their cognitive dissonance onto. When reputation is on the line (accusers wrong) or the hobby you loved appears corrupt, or the programmers you looked up to and bought product from might have conspired to destroy another programmer for very base motives, then cognitive dissonance generates all these easy hate words, rather than face the dissonance.

Woo!! That was a long post over one coffee in my cafe!

It was a nasty case, but I guess that's an inevitable result when one group gets together with intent destroy an opponent they couldn't destroy over the chess board. Very bad groupthink. Very bad concept of "ownership of the space". All came together into one very destructive event.

[Chris Whittington]

Just an aside on "computer chess". One can read the personal attack hate just here in this thread from (to me) completely unknown anons who launch into personal attacks on me, Vas Rajlich as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Something in this hobby attracts people who express violent thoughts against those with strong unconventional opinions. Weird. It has always been that way. Presumably cognitive dissonance again. If dissident critiques "hero" figure, or just steps out of line, puts head above parapet, is a guarantee some anons who often never post will throw out personal attacks, as if the anon had been violently attacked first himself.

Ends off topic rant !!

[Jesse Jordache]

Ah, you know, I'm a veteran of a bunch of political internet wars, and I find that virtually no one is capable of saying "my mistake - you're right".

In any event, fair use when applied to engineering or applied mathematics is an incredibly nebulous area, and I'm inclined to side with the author of Rybka since his program was so strong.  Inclined, but I can't see getting emotionally attached.

On a personal note, I think you lean a bit too heavily on the concept of groupthink. If you accuse the other side of groupthink right out of the gate, you're saying they're not capable of rational thought.  There's virtually no way a debate can recover from that.

[Jesse Jordache]

Okay, having scanned an abstract of the ICGA verdict here: http://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/~watkins/papers/RybkaRecap.pdf  I'm not impressed.  What is Ken Thompson doing there?  Why not conscript Carl Sagan while they were at it? Secondly, the panel should not have one of the complainants as a member.  Thirdly, the language they use is sloppy, and is evidence of legal neophytes, as in the repetition of the phrase "mindlessly copied".  Lastly, the following is the worst dressed gibberish I've read in a long time:

"From the above engines, upon excluding the partially-dependent Rybka 2.3.2a, one  obtains  28  overlap  numbers  from  the  pairs  of  engines.   Although  a  fuller statistical analysis for the EVAL COMP result remains obscure, it is abundantly clear that the overlap between Fruit 2.1 and Rybka 1.0 Beta is dramatically more than  would  be  expected  by  chance.   Using  rudimentary  statistics  and  crude assumptions of distribution,  the rarity of the Fruit/Rybka overlap appears to be more than 1 in a million, most likely more than 1 in a billion, and possibly more than 1 in a trillion."

Dude, that's like, highly probative, brah.

I'm not saying what I saw of the evidence was baseless, but I wouldn't trust that body to organize a two-car parade.