IMJohnCox wrote on 03/19/07 at 13:19:08:
This is what administratively minded people always say of course, ‘oh good heavens no, we’re not accusing you of cheating, we’re merely barring you from talking to people during the game because those are the rules in place to prevent cheating.’
The trouble is that this is a legalistic fiction which ignores human nature and doesn’t work. What happens is that the rules, being annoying and inconvenient to those honest players who make up the overwhelming majority, are ignored until someone takes it into their head to suspect cheating and make a complaint, and only then enforced. The authorities, of course, wring their hands and say that if only the rules were always observed and enforced, by everyone, all the time, and any violation no matter how minor always reported as we have asked in our guidelines, no such problem would arise. But it doesn’t happen, and it never will. History has shown that by no process can this eternal truth be implanted into the mind of administrators.
The effect of the said fiction is also undermined if you promote the guidelines Mr Aigner quotes which urge children to report ‘cheating or rule violations’ to the authorities.
I was going to let this discussion die with the quoted observations, but since it continues, I will rejoin. You still have to deal with my point that the rules are there for a reason, and that if we jump up and say "What??! You accuse me of cheating!!??" whenever there is a rules complaint, we undermine the rule of law. Likewise when a complaint
has been made, the arbiters must be accorded some reasonable scope within which it deal with it. It approaches childishness, it seems to me, to dismiss arbiters as merely "administratively minded people."
There is a certain tendency in people to be mistrustful. Recognizing that, bad appearances, which Taylor certainly created, are in most respects as harmful as actual cheating. This is the same principle as that an officer of the court should avoid even the appearance of impropriety -- and can be disciplined merely for having created such an appearance. So when a ruling is made that requires someone to amend his behavior in an instance of possible cheating, it does not
per se accuse him of impropriety. In itself, it merely says that he has created an appearance of the same, and that he should suitably change his conduct.
The difference between accusing someone of cheating and merely raising a rules complaint, or making a ruling based on one, is not trivial or merely legalistic. It is the difference between the rule of law and the rule of the popular and strong. What, shall we sweep away the rules that govern chess events, and dismiss the arbiters, on the ground that some less artificial form of regulation would do instead?
You have also not answered my point that you appear to assume that stronger players are less likely to cheat than weaker ones. I can see no rational basis for that. I wasn't aware that Elo points conferred virtue as well as chess strength. In any case, shall stronger players not be governed by the same rules as weaker ones?
You say, "What happens is that the rules, being annoying and inconvenient to those honest players who make up the overwhelming majority, are ignored until someone takes it into their head to suspect cheating and make a complaint, and only then enforced."
As I read this, you say that the rules are
in essence tools of obnoxious, suspicious players, and that the overwhelming majority of "honest players" don't need them. Is that really what you mean?
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Taylor's so-called Kafkaesque Experience (Read 35213 times)
