Moderators: hgm, Rebel, chrisw
Do yourself a favor, don't dive into that, stay healthy!
too many ideas
I am not going to judge on that.
I still remember Wegner posting on Rybka forum, so I have an opinion of my own. I don't see how being a student is relevant here.chrisw wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:20 am I knew Zach Werner actually quite well, given social media, and discussed with him a few times by email. At the time he was still a student, not written any chess program, and his main motivation, as far as I could tell, was a new found social acceptance into a world of “famous” people, increased much by working on the “evidence” document. He was just a student and he told me afterwards that the document was just a first shot on which he expected critique and discussion. It wasn’t meant to be any final paper (Zach’s words, to me, in email). In fact, he said, the reception was no critique at all, just an immediate “great, this is just what we need”. Again, in fact, any college supervisor actually reading it with some knowledge on the subject and the necessary objectivity would have put a big red line through it and either marked him “Fail” or “Start Again”. Zach later realised that the social group he so aspired to be accepted into had collective feet of clay and were mostly either idiots or really rather unpleasant, that he had been used, and he washed his hands of computer chess and all to do with it, leaving, never to return. I guess he got a useful lesson at a relatively early age but it was not very nice for him, he being a victim of it too.
The lesson? The entire thing against Vas was fired by social group dynamic, it was a large social group, the inner core had “titles”, people are attracted to the idea of being “in”, they believe “titles”, the social group welded itself together by creating an “outside” hate figure. The hate figure suited many of them for commercial/professional/status/personal reasons. The evidence wasn’t meant to be read, it was meant to be bulky. The evidence wasn’t read. It wasn’t critiqued. The was no red team, only a blue one, and they fixed it so there was no internal disagreement.
An interesting lesson in how things can go catastrophically wrong, a lesson in how everything a social group knows can be wrong, shame it had to destroy somebody’s life in the process.
Sorry, I probably wasn’t being clear enough.mar wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 12:11 pmI still remember Wegner posting on Rybka forum, so I have an opinion of my own. I don't see how being a student is relevant here.chrisw wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:20 am I knew Zach Werner actually quite well, given social media, and discussed with him a few times by email. At the time he was still a student, not written any chess program, and his main motivation, as far as I could tell, was a new found social acceptance into a world of “famous” people, increased much by working on the “evidence” document. He was just a student and he told me afterwards that the document was just a first shot on which he expected critique and discussion. It wasn’t meant to be any final paper (Zach’s words, to me, in email). In fact, he said, the reception was no critique at all, just an immediate “great, this is just what we need”. Again, in fact, any college supervisor actually reading it with some knowledge on the subject and the necessary objectivity would have put a big red line through it and either marked him “Fail” or “Start Again”. Zach later realised that the social group he so aspired to be accepted into had collective feet of clay and were mostly either idiots or really rather unpleasant, that he had been used, and he washed his hands of computer chess and all to do with it, leaving, never to return. I guess he got a useful lesson at a relatively early age but it was not very nice for him, he being a victim of it too.
The lesson? The entire thing against Vas was fired by social group dynamic, it was a large social group, the inner core had “titles”, people are attracted to the idea of being “in”, they believe “titles”, the social group welded itself together by creating an “outside” hate figure. The hate figure suited many of them for commercial/professional/status/personal reasons. The evidence wasn’t meant to be read, it was meant to be bulky. The evidence wasn’t read. It wasn’t critiqued. The was no red team, only a blue one, and they fixed it so there was no internal disagreement.
An interesting lesson in how things can go catastrophically wrong, a lesson in how everything a social group knows can be wrong, shame it had to destroy somebody’s life in the process.
He actually wrote ZCT - a sub-par (even back then), extremely buggy program that allegedly supported DTS, yet it seemed worse than on single core to me due to bugs from what I've seen.
From what I've read, he was trying to "join forces with Tord", probably by spamming him. He must have done the same to Cozzie later so that he
gave up the Zappa sources, Wegner renamed it to Rondo (probably with some changes) and won the ICGA championship later, he retired after that. Of course that was after Vas being out of the way.
Those are simple facts that can be easily looked up.
So I really don't believe that he was a victim with crystal clear motives, quite the contrary.
As for the evidence, the PST part is complete nonsense,
the rest is mostly comparing techniques everyone uses (and used back then as well) or focusing on non-gameplay code, however I don't know exactly which part was written by Wegner and which by Watkins.
the was no "source code", just a decompiled fantasy of those two gentlemen who made it somehow fit Fruit despite the vast differences (also: rotated bitboards in Rybka), and that was even a decompiled Rybka version that didn't play any ICGA tournaments.
The only victim that was shamed in public was Vas and Wegner played an important role in building up the "evidence", which was fundamental for the panel (perhaps Ed can shed some light).
The only one who didn't vote against Vas AFAIK was Richard Vida who abstained; but that doesn't really matter.
So the only "destroyed life" I see is not Weger's, who quit as a champ as I wrote. I didn't like the guy back then (which is obvious I guess) and don't like him now either.
The one who was actually destroyed was Vas...
EDIT: this doesn't mean that Vas was a saint (see my remark on Rybka 1.6.1), but he ruled the CC world for a couple of years and also pushed computer chess forward with several ideas.
I don't like the "evidence" and the way it was presented as well as the lifetime ban that destroyed him. also the "Czechmate, mr. Cheat" title in a not-so-serious newspaper that Ray posted speaks for itself.
one last remark regarding PST: we remember how one of the older Craftys cointained a verbatim copy of Fruit bishop PST, that was handwaved away with some silly argument
well, perhaps what I wrote about Wegner isn't entirely fair towards him (especially that he cannot comment himself), but that's just the small pieces I put together from what I remember, to be fair I didn't know him well enough.chrisw wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 4:22 pm Sorry, I probably wasn’t being clear enough.
Wegner was no victim, he was a prime mover. He did end up retired hurt, regretting his role but failing to remedy it. Tough Karma.
That he was a young student and actually not a chess programmer other than hacking around bits of code is relevant to the fact that his “paper” was astonishingly gleefully accepted with zero critique and zero analysis by the panel chiefs. Zach’s own defence of it, to me later, was that it was never intended for publication, he sent it in expecting several iterations (well, you do, no? When submitting initial stuff to academics) and should not have seen the light of day. But they just said “great, that’s just what we needed” and proceeded to publish pages and pages of nonsense (as you wrote below). Well, it fools those who are impressed by diagrams, titles, bulk and opinions.
And, of course, then the social group formed around titles and silly secretariat terminology, with no red team, no internal critique, went mass hysterical leading to the psychopathic headline that Ray has shown above.
And Vas? Entirely innocent and talented engine programmer. Dealt with them perfectly. Ignored them as a bunch of nobodies. Pompous clowns even tried turning that against him “guilty for not turning his source code over to the commercial competitors who couldn’t catch him”. As if source code was safe with any of that lot. “Guilty for not answering to them”. The pompous self-importance of a gang of nobodies.
Yuk. Even thinking about it and I want to vomit.
Well, it was regret for having been involved in a group venture that generated so many bad outcomes. Transgressors Remorse. Regret doing the burglary because got caught and now doing time - that type regret.mar wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 5:22 pmwell, perhaps what I wrote about Wegner isn't entirely fair towards him (especially that he cannot comment himself), but that's just the small pieces I put together from what I remember, to be fair I didn't know him well enough.chrisw wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 4:22 pm Sorry, I probably wasn’t being clear enough.
Wegner was no victim, he was a prime mover. He did end up retired hurt, regretting his role but failing to remedy it. Tough Karma.
That he was a young student and actually not a chess programmer other than hacking around bits of code is relevant to the fact that his “paper” was astonishingly gleefully accepted with zero critique and zero analysis by the panel chiefs. Zach’s own defence of it, to me later, was that it was never intended for publication, he sent it in expecting several iterations (well, you do, no? When submitting initial stuff to academics) and should not have seen the light of day. But they just said “great, that’s just what we needed” and proceeded to publish pages and pages of nonsense (as you wrote below). Well, it fools those who are impressed by diagrams, titles, bulk and opinions.
And, of course, then the social group formed around titles and silly secretariat terminology, with no red team, no internal critique, went mass hysterical leading to the psychopathic headline that Ray has shown above.
And Vas? Entirely innocent and talented engine programmer. Dealt with them perfectly. Ignored them as a bunch of nobodies. Pompous clowns even tried turning that against him “guilty for not turning his source code over to the commercial competitors who couldn’t catch him”. As if source code was safe with any of that lot. “Guilty for not answering to them”. The pompous self-importance of a gang of nobodies.
Yuk. Even thinking about it and I want to vomit.
if he ended up regretting, then I have to adjust my opinion a bit.
He did. But that was down to lack of field knowledge, lack of experience and failure to analyse. For example - how are PSQTs built? What does everybody else do? If he, or one the others had bothered to consider how similar (of necessity) are other engine PSQTs to Fruit then they wouldn't have published. As you know and mentioned Prof Ballicora did that cross check afterwards, with the icing on the cake that the most similar (actually identical) were with prosecutor in chief with the title, Bob's PSQT. So, negligence, peer group social approval, encouraged by the titled ones, no red team in critique, and our young student generated the paper that everybody all 'believed' but actually, when properly later read, self-destroyed the ICGA technical case.
Perhaps he genuinely believed what he found was true.
Yes, exactly. Confirmation bias.
this reminds me of people who can conjure pi and many other things from the measure of egyptian pyramids - I know there's a scientific term for this, but I forgot - maybe confirmation bias?
In fact, when I first saw the "evidence" it seemed compelling at first as it was rather well presented - only later did I realize that it's more of a fantasy and wishful thinking.