A Dispute Again

[lemmata]

"Surgeons shouldn't have to think about prevailing moral standards in the middle of a surgery. That is unfair to them. If indeed there is a prevailing moral standard concerning cutting out people's organs for fun and profit, that should be incorporated into tort laws to unburden the surgeons from such decisions."

Indeed, do you fault doctors for operating within the law? The more prevailing moral standards for cutting out people's organs (such as informed consent) is incorporated into the law. None of this prevents the doctors from going above and beyond the law, but we do not fault the doctors for actions within the letter of standard procedure and law. Beyond the law, the doctors also have their own standards for operation starting from the Hippocratic Oath. When you become a doctor, there are certain rules and procedures you agree to follow and it is understood by the consumers of medical services (or should be understood) that the services they receive will be guided by those rules and procedures. That is there is a mutually agreed upon explicit contract, which is entered into implicitly and explicitly.

"Drivers shouldn't have to think about prevailing moral standards in the middle of the road. That is unfair to them. If indeed there is a prevailing moral standard concerning unsafe or egotistical driving, that should be incorporated into the traffic laws to unburden the drivers from such decisions."

Indeed, the prevailing standards have been incorporated into traffic laws. When I drive I get mad at people who don't follow the traffic laws, but I don't get mad at people who drive the speed limit. A lot of people do put pressure on these drivers to drive faster, and they sometimes feel intimidated by this, and that just isn't right. You shouldn't have to fear being branded a jacka** for driving within the bounds of traffic laws. Being on the road is a dangerous thing to begin with... It makes perfect sense to me that universal moral standards should be incorporated into the laws. Of course, if you're talking about moral standards common to 70/80%, that is a different story---tyranny of the majority.

"Lovers shouldn't have to think about prevailing moral standards in the middle of a date. That is unfair to them. If indeed there is a prevailing moral standard concerning respect for your date, that should be incorporated into harassment and rape laws to unburden lovers from such decisions."

Wow. This is really stretching it. This sort of argument is argument for argument's sake. It is sophistry. First of all, unless you are "dating" a hooker or a crazy person, there is no explicit contract that you enter into by going on a date. The rules are fuzzy and you only have your own moral standards as a guide. Furthermore, to speak of rape and harassment and think that this is an appropriate comparison for Jasiek trying to win by rule dispute? That seems to be using inflammatory language as a rhetorical device. In fact, the scale of the things that were at stake in Jasiek's rule dispute and the examples that you gave here are vastly different.

I'm sure you could use the cookie-cutter to generate more examples, mutis mutandis. Here is what I observe:

1. "X-ers shouldn't have to think about prevailing moral standards in the middle of an X." This is equivocal. If you mean "they shouldn't have to actively cogitate about standards," it seems true. If you mean "they shouldn't have to have any regard for standards," it seems false. For example, consider the prevailing moral standard prohibiting cannibalism. I should hope that I wouldn't, in a game of go, be put in a situation where I need to think seriously about whether or not I should make a casserole out of my opponent! If I were forced to do so, either there is something seriously wrong with me, or the tournament director has made some very tragic mistake. (Perhaps he held the match on a life boat in the middle of the Pacific.) Nonetheless, the moral principle continues to apply throughout the game.

After reading this, I think that I may have been too harsh in my evaluation of your comments earlier. You have either 1) misunderstood my argument or 2) misconstrued it to win an argument on the Internet. Since I am an optimist, I will place 95% probability on it being case #1 (the 5% is because I am also agnostic). My argument was for a specific X (=tournament go) not all possible X. Furthermore, my arguments depended on the particulars of the specific X that I was speaking about. You cannot disprove the specific by disproving the universal argument. The reverse is true (you can disprove the universal by disproving a specific case). 3 is an odd number and it is prime. Not all odd numbers are prime.

2. "This is unfair to them." Why only unfair? I would make it, This monstrosity is barbarous to them! or, This barbarism is monstrous to them! or, To them this indignity is nothing short of a catastrophe! And then I would put it in a red, 72-pt., blinking font.

It's only unfair, as opposed to barbaric, because the wrong leg was not amputated. It's only unfair because they didn't become a paraplegic after a go-related accident. It's only unfair because the only consequence was the win/loss.

3. "If there is indeed a prevailing moral standard, it should be incorporated into the X-rules to unburden the X-ers from such decisions." This relies on the unstated but nonetheless universally accepted maxim that when we want to unburden people from making complicated decisions, the obvious answer is to heap more rules onto them (preferably with subsections, footnotes, and plenty of unexpected exceptions).

Again, as I mentioned, I was talking about a specific X.

[lemmata]

lemmata, you appear to approaching my text as if I'm claiming Robert did something incorrect or invalid. I did no such thing.

In essense, my opinion of the whole situation can be summed up as follows:
....

topazg, after reading your post, I agree 100% with 100% of your post (except for the part about interpretation of the rules, since I don't know enough about rules to say one way or another). I wish that more people would take your sort of calm view. Why can't the argument be that "It was correct for the committee to decide against Robert" instead of "Robert was unsportsmanlike little man who cares so much about winning and losing that he tried to win by immoral trickery." Your position (the former) is eminently reasonable and does not bring personal feelings into it. The latter is quite personal and may even go beyond the bounds of politeness that those who espouse this position seem to care so much about.

EDIT: While I agree with you that the actual decision was a fine one, I think that going the other way would have been just as fine---as long as they clarified/improved the rules afterwards, which they did. So I still agree with that part of your post, but I think that there are more possibilities there.

[RobertJasiek]

as long as they clarified/improved the rules afterwards, which they did.

I had to convince the EGF Rules Commission to write the Simplified Ing Rules, then (not always successful) to convince it that it would be used and used also as interpretation aid for the Ing 1991 Rules' game ending rules etc., in 2007 convince the AGM to adopt the new tournament rules, which set the Simplified Ing Rules as an option.

The Ing 1991 Rules have not been clarified/improved by the EGF beyond my referee teaching in EGF referee workshops and a very few explanations mostly by me at tournaments. Everything ko-related I had explained as well as possible years before the dispute on my webpage.

A bit of further clarification came during the International Go Rules Forum, when, during meetings and in informal talks in their breaks I asked Mr. Yang. He explained a bit but not convincingly about removals and he very shortly confirmed that my Ing ko rules understanding (incl. the New Ko Rules' prohibition rule's idea) was basically in agreement with the intention according to his understanding.

A sort of official written commentary on the Ing 1991 Rules other than the terrible Ing rules booklets and the earlier hopelessly misinterpreting Kim-Simon-Straus paper for the AGA does not exist, AFAIK.

Thus, "which they did" is a great exaggeration.

[Matti]

I re-edited this because the forum allows only three levels of quotes.

Top players have spent countless hours in playing through professional games, studying joseki, tsume go end game etc. To learn, how a new rule set differs from the old, which one is familiar with, requires less than an hour. When a player does not know the rules, he risks in getting a dispute or losing. Why to blame the players who knows the rules instead of the player who does not?

Sportsmanship. Why is that concept so incomprehensible to both of you? (which I find alarming, given your positions in the EGF)

I think this question as flawed. On what basis you claim that concept of sportsmanship is incomprehensible to me and how incomprehensible do you cali it is?

Seems that my typo messed up the question.

I don't really understand what you are saying. Could you retype that question?

You wrote:

Why is that concept so incomprehensible to both of you?

One does not usually ask for reason for something one does not think as true. Your question implies that concept of sportsmanship is incomprehensible to me. Do you mean this and if so, why?

[p2501]

Your question implies that concept of sportsmanship is incomprehensible to me. Do you mean this and if so, why?

The formulation was a bit harsh. Since you seemed to agree with Robert I put you in the same shelf so to speak.

I said what I said since you both seem to believe sportsmanship stands in some kind of competition with rules and that you have to give one priority and abandon the other. I do not share that vision, as I have already explained more than enough in this thread.

[RobertJasiek]

abandon the other

not "abandon"

[HermanHiddema]

lemmata, you appear to approaching my text as if I'm claiming Robert did something incorrect or invalid. I did no such thing.

In essense, my opinion of the whole situation can be summed up as follows:
....

topazg, after reading your post, I agree 100% with 100% of your post (except for the part about interpretation of the rules, since I don't know enough about rules to say one way or another). I wish that more people would take your sort of calm view. Why can't the argument be that "It was correct for the committee to decide against Robert" instead of "Robert was unsportsmanlike little man who cares so much about winning and losing that he tried to win by immoral trickery." Your position (the former) is eminently reasonable and does not bring personal feelings into it. The latter is quite personal and may even go beyond the bounds of politeness that those who espouse this position seem to care so much about.

Why should we refrain from criticising a person when we feel that that person has behaved in a morally objectionable way? If we never tell anybody that we feel they did something wrong, how do they ever learn to do things right? If a child calls someone names, do we tell the child that it is wrong to do so? If a person cuts in line, do we tell them that they should wait their turn? If someone is rude to a waiter, do we tell them to be polite? Or do we remain silent, and say "Well, we should amend the law to make that illegal, and then call the police when it happens again".

[topazg]

Why should we refrain from criticising a person when we feel that that person has behaved in a morally objectionable way? If we never tell anybody that we feel they did something wrong, how do they ever learn to do things right? If a child calls someone names, do we tell the child that it is wrong to do so? If a person cuts in line, do we tell them that they should wait their turn? If someone is rude to a waiter, do we tell them to be polite? Or do we remain silent, and say "Well, we should amend the law to make that illegal, and then call the police when it happens again".

We shouldn't of course, and we do criticise those who we feel are doing wrong (I commented in my bigger post that Robert will clearly receive criticism for his behaviour), but that doesn't mean they are doing something wrong. Morality is a fundamentally subjective thing - I find it really strange that Robert doesn't consider his behaviour here unsportsmanlike, but he has a different definition of sportsmanship to me, and I really do believe he genuinely sees nothing wrong in his behaviour. We can tell him we think he's wrong, but unlike a child, he's got X decades of life experience behind his reason for feeling the way he does, and I think it's unlikely that we're going to change his world view (or even necessarily should change it).

Rudeness is a good example - what's rude to some isn't rude to others. Whether you cite differences in international post-meal etiquette, rudeness is entirely subjective and cultural, and it is no more intrinsically right for me to expect someone else to conform to my cultural expectations than it is the other way around. If I'm visiting someone else's house, I believe it's fundamentally polite to observe and respect the way they feel people should conduct themselves, but it's within their rights to be offended by me doing this, feeling that I'm compromising my own principles just to fit in.

The whole area of morality around this is very grey indeed. I do think it's fair to raise the point that Robert may find conversations and interactions with other Go players worse as a result of his behaviour, as he may be unaware of it and care enough to change what he does - in this case, I think he's fully aware of it and is happy enough that his actions and behaviour are appropriate, and is quite happy to accept any consequences that arise as a result.

Robert, I do apologise about putting words in your mouth like this, correct me if I'm mistaken anywhere.

[RobertJasiek]

Why should we refrain from criticising a person when we feel that that person has behaved in a morally objectionable way?

("we feel" is rheorics. You should know in the meantime that not everybody considers it an issue of morality.)

1) Expressing opinion about morality is not out of the question, but why must it be a higher level of concept (moral), why can it not rest at the already difficult level of sportsmanship (having good sports)?

2) Some opinion about morality expressed here is out of proportion when emphasising it much but emphasising rules interpretation little.

3) Some opinion about morality expressed here is out of proportion when it becomes a never-ending deeper and yet deeper exploration of conscience.

4) Some opinion about morality expressed here is unfair by not applying the same standards and amount of discussion to both players equally and to players, organisers and go politicians in general.

5) Some discussion style used here does not comply to a same person's expressed opinion on morality.

6) Some opinion about morality expressed here lacks reasons or conclusive explanations and so makes it hard to apply it in future games.

7) Some opinion about morality expressed here violates other fundamental principles such as "players are expected to apply the rules" without convincingly explaining why such violation would be justified.

[Matti]

Your question implies that concept of sportsmanship is incomprehensible to me. Do you mean this and if so, why?

The formulation was a bit harsh. Since you seemed to agree with Robert I put you in the same shelf so to speak.

I said what I said since you both seem to believe sportsmanship stands in some kind of competition with rules and that you have to give one priority and abandon the other. I do not share that vision, as I have already explained more than enough in this thread.

I don't know, if you are from Europe not. The dispute was in Europe. We have the rules of play, which define the game and we have tournament rules. They are used to distinguish the skill of go from other skills, and the effect of other skills should be minimized. Other skills include social skills, verbal skills, physical skills etc. A player with basic social skills should be able to manage in a go tournament. In my opinion sportsmanship is in the dimension of social skills more than a go skill. If players act sportsmanlike, it is fine by me. However, if my opponent breaks the rules, sometimes I feel I cannot choose the way of sportsmanship. I usually ignore minor rules breaches, because the game gets disturbed by the dispute. However, if the breaches get repeated or more serious I would call the referee. If I don't stop my opponent, maybe he continues breaking the rules in his next games also.

Once my opponent played a stone, lifted his finger and after one or two seconds moved the stone to the adjanced intersection. I complained and referee was called. We had to play a new game with our remaining thinking times. I had 6 minutes and my opponent 9. Byoyomi was 30 seconds. While waiting the referee I thought that the new place of the stone would have better for me, but I stayed with my claim.

[HermanHiddema]

Why should we refrain from criticising a person when we feel that that person has behaved in a morally objectionable way?

("we feel" is rheorics. You should know in the meantime that not everybody considers it an issue of morality.)

This is a generic we. I could have written "one feels" with the same meaning.

[HermanHiddema]

Why should we refrain from criticising a person when we feel that that person has behaved in a morally objectionable way? If we never tell anybody that we feel they did something wrong, how do they ever learn to do things right? If a child calls someone names, do we tell the child that it is wrong to do so? If a person cuts in line, do we tell them that they should wait their turn? If someone is rude to a waiter, do we tell them to be polite? Or do we remain silent, and say "Well, we should amend the law to make that illegal, and then call the police when it happens again".

We shouldn't of course, and we do criticise those who we feel are doing wrong (I commented in my bigger post that Robert will clearly receive criticism for his behaviour), but that doesn't mean they are doing something wrong. Morality is a fundamentally subjective thing - I find it really strange that Robert doesn't consider his behaviour here unsportsmanlike, but he has a different definition of sportsmanship to me, and I really do believe he genuinely sees nothing wrong in his behaviour. We can tell him we think he's wrong, but unlike a child, he's got X decades of life experience behind his reason for feeling the way he does, and I think it's unlikely that we're going to change his world view (or even necessarily should change it).

Rudeness is a good example - what's rude to some isn't rude to others. Whether you cite differences in international post-meal etiquette, rudeness is entirely subjective and cultural, and it is no more intrinsically right for me to expect someone else to conform to my cultural expectations than it is the other way around. If I'm visiting someone else's house, I believe it's fundamentally polite to observe and respect the way they feel people should conduct themselves, but it's within their rights to be offended by me doing this, feeling that I'm compromising my own principles just to fit in.

The whole area of morality around this is very grey indeed. I do think it's fair to raise the point that Robert may find conversations and interactions with other Go players worse as a result of his behaviour, as he may be unaware of it and care enough to change what he does - in this case, I think he's fully aware of it and is happy enough that his actions and behaviour are appropriate, and is quite happy to accept any consequences that arise as a result.

Robert, I do apologise about putting words in your mouth like this, correct me if I'm mistaken anywhere.

I am well aware that Robert has a different definition of sportsmanship (and by extension, morality), than me. I am also well aware that I am unlikely to change Robert's mind on this issue (or any issue, for that matter). And yes, morality is a grey area, and every social group has different ideas on it.

But what I find very important, and what really is the only reason I give the issue any attention at all, is that Robert is a member of the rules commission, and as such attempts to force his view on others. And I think that with respect to tournament rules, the group's idea of morality should override that of the individual. The individual is, of course, then free to apply his own ideas of morality, regardless of what the group has written in the rules. That is every person's prerogative.

[RobertJasiek]

But what I find very important, and what really is the only reason I give the issue any attention at all, is that Robert is a member of the rules commission, and as such attempts to force his view on others.

Usually, the rules commission makes proposals of rules changes to the Annual General Meeting. This is not "forcing" my view and it is not "forcing" the rules commission's view on anybody - it is PROPOSING rules changes to the Annual General Meeting (once every couple of years).

As a player, I am a player. As a referee (when I am), I am a referee. As a participant in discussion, I am a participant in discussion. As a rules expert, I am a rules expert. In none of these functions, I try to "force" my view on anybody. Instead, I try to CONVINCE.

And I think that with respect to tournament rules, the group's idea of morality

The what? We have, I guess, Christians, Muslims and others with presumably varying ideas of morality. Assuming an already known morality of the group (which group?) is rash.

should override that of the individual.

You think so in contrast to the emphasis of the individual in human rights and various nations' basic rights?

There is not even a uniform understanding of sportsmanship in "the group". Why assume something much mightier - a uniform understanding of morality?

[HermanHiddema]

I try to "force" my view on anybody.

And you think that's ok?

[Bonobo]

I try to "force" my view on anybody.

And you think that's ok?

And you think it’s OK to quote only a part of what Robert wrote, thus changing its meaning to the opposite?

[..] In none of these functions, I try to "force" my view on anybody. Instead, I try to CONVINCE.

[..]