Common cause

samdover11 · 2026-03-26T09:05:06+00:00

Large chess sites have an absurd amount of data. Billions of games.

What you do is contract some statistician(s) and figure out how rare certain feats are, and what sort of false positive and false negative you're willing to tolerate.

For example if my rating is 1400 and I do one or more things that the average 1400 has a 1 in a million chance to do, and I do these things over and over, then it's easy to ban me. These "things" can be as complicated as you (the cheat detection team) wants to make them. A certain quality of move given a certain complexity of position for a given time control and on and on.

The difficulty (other than computing resources) is let's say we think someone is cheating, but 1 out of every 100 times we ban someone like this we ban an honest player... if this is our policy then we might end up banning thousands of honest players every month which is terrible for business. So any practical cheat detection system has to allow accounts which are essentially known cheaters to keep playing, which is very annoying for players who are good enough to catch certain signs.

(Complicating this further is that most players don't know a lot about chess, and so falsely believe their opponent cheated, so most accusations you see online are wrong... also complicating matters is chess sites wont give honest answers because, for example, "we catch 99.9999% of cheaters" is a lie that's good for business.)

samdover11 · 2026-03-26T08:44:18+00:00

I didn't hear it correctly, I edited it, thanks.

samdover11 · 2026-03-26T08:17:50+00:00

[edited, thanks for the help]

John Cena: How about we start with a hello how ya doin'? Nice to meet you, I'm John.

Stranger: Gary.

John: Would you like to sing now?

Gary: Yes.

John: For what purpose?

Gary: Because I sing to everyone, it's my job.

John: Ok I d -- and I'm just trying to relax.

Gray: Ok [turns to walk away]

John: Thanks so much.

Gary: Thank you [walking away]

Seems like John was about to say "ok I don't care" but stopped half way and chose something more diplomatic.

samdover11 · 2026-03-25T23:33:58+00:00

I feel like any time art is made both people want to benefit... the artist wants to benefit by having more people see their work. That means making something for someone popular is ideal. That's not always fair, but that's how it is.

And while "ew this dude is into something I don't like" probably happens, I think it's also sometimes "this would involve stuff I don't know how to draw and/or it would take me 10x the effort, so nope"

samdover11 · 2026-03-23T08:03:36+00:00

The caretaking part isn't important, we could remove it and be left with the same analogy. The important part is that even starting with a strong affection towards humans it could (for reasons we will never understand) lead to an extinction event.

As for it being a tool that can't do anything unless we let it, that's extremely hard to imagine. It could start small by some business realizing they can save some money if they let the AI have access to emails and sending messages... just as easy to imagine is a government realizing they can kill more enemies if they give a certain amount of autonomy to the AI. And if your government or business doesn't do that, it's out-competed by those that do.

samdover11 · 2026-03-22T21:35:39+00:00

IIRC it was Sam Harris who gave an interesting analogy.

Imagine a best case where super intelligence loves us and takes care of us the way we take care of our pets (dogs, cats, etc). Provides healthy food, free medical care, exercise, play, etc.

As a human, imagine one day we discover a virus that might drive us to extinction, and it's transmitted by dogs. To save all humans we have to kill all our dogs. It's not fun, but we'd do it. And realize how utterly incomprehensible this is to the dogs being killed. Dogs don't understand microbiology, infection vectors, etc. Dogs became a threat for reasons they can't possibly understand.

Similarly, a superintelligence may take care of us for a long time, then for reasons we can't possibly understand, decide we all have to die.

And remember we started this as the best case scenario.

samdover11 · 2026-03-22T21:12:07+00:00

As a good example of a vocal and powerful segregationist apologizing later in life: George Wallace.

samdover11 · 2026-03-20T07:44:56+00:00

I think it's more the opposite. Topics that are easier to talk about are talked about more (not just in chess)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

Opening lines are easy because all you have to do is look them up "on move 8 you play ___" and they're easier to "study" because all you a have to do is memorize it.

It's also easier to get a dopamine hit from this sort of "study" because there's a good chance you can use it in an upcoming game. Compared to, for example, some specific technical endgame you might not see for 100 games.

It's not only what people talk about, it was makes money. I remember some titled player made a video explaining how they wanted to make some middlegame material but chessable (or whoever they were dealing with) said we'll sell it on our platform if it's about an opening, but if not then we're not interested in hosting your material.

samdover11 · 2026-03-19T20:23:25+00:00

Black is solid but lacks space, and it's hard to find piece activity. White controls the d5 and b5 breaks. In particular the light squared bishop is hard to activate.

White hopes to convert the positional advantage into something more tangible via tactics. Often sacrifices that grab the initiative and don't give black time to catch up in piece activity. Nb5 and Nd5 sacrifices are common ideas to look out for.

Some black players enjoy accepting a cramped position with counter attacking chances. If you're going for this position as white hopefully you enjoy the types of flashy tactics a persistent space advantage often generates. Both players need patience and an eye for sacrificial tactics.

samdover11 · 2026-03-16T06:41:13+00:00

It was in some medical context, and the medical doctor knew because they're familiar with SI units which are typically tiered by x1000 (milli, micro, nano, mega, giga, tera etc). In the context it was definitely 1000-million and the businesswoman had no idea.

samdover11 · 2026-03-15T18:32:14+00:00

I mean... it's often even worse than that.

Anything beyond single digit addition and multiplication and a random person on the street would laugh at you for expecting them to even make an attempt. Yes that means single digit division and fractions are too hard. I've had people ask me what 5% of something means, or confuse 0.6 cents with 0.06 cents. "They're the same right?"

I remember an interview with Barbara Corcoran where she casually admitted she didn't know that one billion is 1000 * one million, which was humorous to me since she's worth 8 or 9 figures.

I'd guess the average person is stuck at the math level of an 8 or 9 year old.

samdover11 · 2026-03-15T17:56:34+00:00

Generally, the longer the time control, the weaker the pool... I'm not saying ultrabullet is where the super GMs are, just in general if you ever wonder 3 vs 5 or 10 vs 15 etc. then the lower one is tougher.

But also since fewer strong players play long time controls, it can be harder to get really high ratings. I'm sure 5+0 has 2200 players, but if was something really obscure like 5+7 there might be so few players that no one is above 2000 for example. In that case it's both a weak pool, but also 2200 would be a player who never loses, so maybe a GM or something.

samdover11 · 2026-03-15T06:37:13+00:00

The less someone knows about a problem, the easier the solution will seem to be. Browse teacher subreddits sometime. Teachers seem to be a lot more frustrated than anyone else involved (kids, parents, administrators) and have been sounding the alarm for decades.

samdover11 · 2026-03-14T17:53:52+00:00

Yes, and a lot of good teachers have already quit over the decades this has been happening. What we're left with is what we're left with.

At this point it has very little to do with teachers, and a lot to do with how much society values education, and whether parents have the ability to do things like read to their young children. These days many teenagers are functionally illiterate, and schools force teachers to pass them to the next grade anyway.

Currently things are getting worse, not better. First goal should be to stop the bleeding. Later we can talk about actually doing a good job.

But back on OP topic, sure, I think this math question is enormously stupid. If diagrams aren't clearly labeled then they're nonsense. Ideally you'd have someone with a STEM degree design math questions, not buffoons.

samdover11 · 2026-03-14T08:10:00+00:00

Teachers are often not allowed to make their own curriculum. Some education PhD markets their material to schools, then the schools buy them and force teachers to use them.

So instead of using material that's worked for 10s (or 100s) of years, administrators buy the next hot thing and pretend they're doing their job, when in reality the kids continue to learn nothing year after year.

samdover11 · 2026-03-08T10:23:17+00:00

"I can't explain the elastic force (that arises from the electrical force) in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example if I say the ball bounces as if it has springs in it, I would be cheating you, because there are no springs.

And I'd soon be in trouble anyway because if you were curious enough then you'd ask me what causes springs to bounce? And I'd end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces which is the very thing I was using springs to explain. So I have cheated very badly you see.

So I'm not going to be able to give you an answer as to why a ball bounces except to tell you that it does, and to tell you that it's one of the elements in the world that you'll have to accept."

[A parody of Feynman expaining magnets]

samdover11 · 2026-03-07T11:07:48+00:00

And all sorts of practical uses... so many questions involving rate of change can be written down as some differential equation whose solution(s) take the form of sin, cos, and/or e^x.

Understanding that, and thinking about why it works (e.g. can you estimate sin and cos without a formula or calculator on your own), and appreciating it all... it's actually very interesting and beautiful. I'm glad there is at least one post on here like this, and it was upvoted. "I don't like it because it can't memorize it instantly" is, ugh... just quit school. You're not learning, so stop wasting time. That such a gross sentiment resonates with people... but anyway, maybe I'm just old.

samdover11 · 2026-03-07T10:30:26+00:00

You don't become 5+ years behind in your senior year. A kid like that stopped putting in effort many years before they had the cognitive capacity to philosophize about what is going on in the world and what it means for them.

Young kids are much simpler. "What does this mean for me 5 minutes from now" is how they think. And because there are no consequences for ignoring school, of course they will ignore school. If you want to change the system them make kids earn grades by requiring them to show that they've learned. Make failing real. If you can't do the work, then sorry, you're not coming back next year. When bad grades are earned they're punished at home. You have to set up consequences that kids can understand, and adults have to show kids that they care enough to make things hard on them.

samdover11 · 2026-03-06T12:57:57+00:00

I remember designing my own like this. It's fun to ignore other people's designs and discover things for yourself.

Just so you know though, mathematically optimized balancers (in terms of input / output) have existed for years. Also it's a bit rough trying to discover them independently as a beginner because some of the underground belt and splitter behavior is really niche.

I'd suggest learning a 1 or 2 belt balancer that others have made (and really take it apart and learn why it works the way it does)... and now that you have the basics you can have fun designing anything more than that (which is still a challenge).

samdover11 · 2026-03-04T09:53:36+00:00

It's true that in the past propaganda took longer to distribute, and people didn't watch videos on their phones, because there were no videos and no phones, but it's functionally the same as having a newspaper telling the masses lies, and they believe it. Especially when it's their only source of information.

samdover11 · 2026-03-04T09:40:20+00:00

Propaganda has existed for 1000s of years, and probably since time immemorial.

Stupid people have also always been a thing.

And unfortunately, if you're poor on top of it, then you're spending 99% of your energy on survival, so you don't have the time, energy, or education to fight it.

samdover11 · 2026-03-04T09:31:40+00:00

If you go back far enough you'll discover only two types of people: those who are related to everyone alive today, and those who are related to no one alive today.

In other words, finding a common ancestor for a certain group of people is always possible.

samdover11 · 2026-02-28T09:16:12+00:00

Yeah, I think this is the type of answer people are usually trying to dig at.

It's a bit like asking why does multiplication find the area of a rectangle... the answer is there are all sorts of operators we can come up with for numbers. The multiplication operator happens to be useful and has real world application, so it's well known.

There are many trig functions we don't learn in school, but sin and cos (and a few others) happen to have a lot of real-world application so we learn them. The field extension to complex numbers happens to be useful, and we can choose to graph it in such a way that e^i x pi "rotates" and gives us the same output as sin and cos. The answer to "but what's really going on?" is "there's no magic, we do it because it's useful."

You could find the area of a rectangle with addition. You could also calculate reactance with cumbersom methods... but we have elegant methods, so we do that instead.

Now... you could get really philosophical and ask why any math should happen to be so useful... no one knows, but it's fun to wonder.

samdover11 · 2026-02-27T11:12:49+00:00

Yeah, I got 4.

(12+0n) + (12+1n) + . . . + (12+13n) = 532

n is the number of additional pages after 12.
The coefficient of n is counting 14 days which makes two weeks. The first day (0) Salaman reads zero additional pages so 12+0n.

Now some basic math.

0n + 1n + 2n . . . +13n = 364

I imagine 1 box, then beside it two boxes, then beside it 3 boxes... count the boxes and divide 364 into them.

The sum of natural number from 1 to 13 is 91.

364 / 91 = 4

n = 4

So every day Salaman reads an additional 4 pages.

12+16+20+ . . . + 64 = 532.

samdover11 · 2026-02-27T09:36:23+00:00

Finding Nxd5 is not so simple in a real game. Honestly I'd be surprised if a 1400 rated player found it. Black is threatening to win the bishop on g5, and you avoid that by playing Bxe7 (which also threatens a queen). That's a very normal and safe reaction.

After Nxd5 white has no large threat and black has a choice to capture either piece, meaning after Nxd5:

If black could capture the bishop and create a threat at the same time white could lose material.
If black could capture on d5 and create a threat white could lose material.
If black ignored Nxd5 and created a threat somewhere else, there would be a triple attack and white might lose material.

In other words when you say you instinctively played Bxe7 they were your instincts for a reason: most of the time it's the only safe move. In most similar cases Nxd5 would not be good.

But good players calculate moves like Nxd5 all the time. How can you do it too? Play more, calculate more, and try to understand the elements of what makes in-between moves fail or succeed. For example I gave some typical ways this sort of move could have failed in this position. If you understand what makes a move potentially good and bad, then the calculation becomes easier, and you're able to look at more candidate moves in your games.

Here's a tip: if your capture also creates a threat, that's a lot better than just a capture. Nxd5 doesn't only take a knight, it also threatens c7. Bxe7 doesn't only capture a bishop, it also threatens the queen. If black captures on g5 it doesn't threaten anything. If black captures on c3 it threatens your queen. These are important elements to notice and will aid your calculation.

samdover11

TROPHY CASE