I have no experience on amphetamine use but the Wikipedia page
says that
Amphetamine is used by some athletes for its psychological and athletic performance-enhancing effects however, non-medical amphetamine use is prohibited at sporting events that are regulated by collegiate, national, and international anti-doping agencies. In healthy people at oral therapeutic doses, amphetamine has been shown to increase muscle strength, acceleration, athletic performance in anaerobic conditions, and endurance (i.e., it delays the onset of fatigue), while improving reaction time.
while they have many physical and psychological adverse effects.
iām aware, i still just think itās silly. caffeine also has performance-enhancing effects. as does a proper diet.
i take meds to manage my adhd, and those could absolutely be argued to be performance enhancers. itās true - they enhance my performance from nonexistent to acceptable for the society we live in and there are lawmakers who want to take that away.
i tend to look with great skepticism at organizations who want to dictate how their members manage and/or improve their own bodies
In the end, the main question becomes, what do you want to protect? I pose this question honestly. The prison system is the more extreme case but here we have actual good evidence that just (sic!) punishing people as hard as possible does not reduce socially disregarded and destructive behavior.
Here my general left leaning will manifest, but why should I be angry with the Player when I am not also angry with the institution that push players to such extremes that they see this as their only option to not loose their income in a profession in which they invested their whole childhood. Therefore, I also strongly disaggree with the notion that the players have chosen this path themself. This rings not true to me seeing how early you must start today to become a pro.
Maybe a bit more kindness and trying to understand what leads to such actions knowing what harsh punishment may follow would be good
I see this as an excuse for people who advance in show business a certain way as well. āBut if they didnāt do that, they would never get the starring role that made their career!!ā
Well, guess what, millions of talented people make the opposite choice every single day. Inb4 people please donāt equate it with actual life and death situations, getting a lucrative career isnāt life and death.
They can choose to be cheaters and advance in that specific profession, they can choose to opt out of cheating and do something less, but honestly.
They donāt choose. Their parents did. There was a book not so long ago from a female professional player that demonstrated to me how much you have to disregard school and other training to pursue this career from a very young age.
Well, seeing how many of my childhood stars turned out to be disgusting people your statement appears very true to me. A lot of stars did use connections to start their career and, hence, ācheatedā. Imho, meritocracy is a myth in the show business as well as in Go (or chess). Not saying that those people are not also very talented or that you shouldnāt address socially destructive behavior. I would only argue that ever escalating draconic punishments and control mechanisms are no solutions.
I left the chess community because I couldnāt handle the culture of distrust there even on the amateur level ā¦ I would be heartbroken to
see this happen again with the Go community.
EDIT: @Gia I just read your post again and realized that we are maybe more on the same page than I initially thought. My bad, me tired, me dumb. Sorry xāD
Iām afraid the problem stems from how much we, as a society, value the end result of cheating, ie the success.
For every Eun Ji who must be excused for cheating because sheās a child*, thereās a hurt child to the opposite side that got their dreams shattered, and their efforts amounted to nothing, because of the cheater. Why nobody spares a thought for the talented child who never got the career they rightfully deserved because the ārising starā cheated?
Because, as a society, we only pretend to move away from āthe end justifies the meansā while really we applaud and support it.
*Children cannot be always blamed, because they can be manipulated, brains not fully yet developed and whatnot. However, any average child has a grasp of right and wrong after a certain age. Itās not simple to judge here, and I would be more lenient with children.
I aggree and I will add that it is also the choice of the community what the game becomes. Until now, it heavily leans to produce (I mean this as inhumane as the verb implies) the best possible players and not to foster a healthy community and favoring the gentle yet powerful player archetype I learned to love through HnG. Dream big, yes, work hard, yes, live a free and happy life but it shouldnāt be the incentive of any one of the players that one game can become so important that dreams are crushed over it. Imho, it is such a crazy development that we love the genius child that canāt possibly know what economic implications being a professional player has and that prize money is more and more unevenly split among participants in top-level tournaments. Imho, all participating players should always get a generous game fee for every played game when considering how much they had to invest to get to this point. Then, you could also handle botting cases more gracefully by stripping a player from their money and distribute it among their opponents and maybe an equivalent to community work to equalize the damage one did to the community
I think for Eunjiās case it was different because it was just a one-time off thing (at least officially) and it was more of a case of āclickingā round in an online game. So probably no dreams shattered if it was just a one-time foolish mistake.
But in Qinās case, itās different. Assuming what CWA said was true, it was a clear malicious intention to cheat, which might have been done for more than one game based on her performance and AI matching rate. So yes she might have crushed many talented childās dreams.
I donāt know the full context, but I would go and make an assumption and say this has happened before (but they got away with it)? If not then 8 years is probably too much but from what I read it seems as if this could have been happening - sudden increase in winrate, beating top female players
Trust of opponents is one thing, trust of spectators may be even more important. Go fans are not interested in watching AI programs battling against each other, but want to see competitions between humans. If spectators lose interest then competitions wonāt be able to attract sponsor money. So punishments in professional go should be harsher than in amateur go.
On the other hand, trust between players is also important in amateur go, I understand that my opponents want to play against a human, not against Katago, so cheating in amateur tournaments should also be punished. But I think that cheating in amateur IRL tournaments is quite rare.
I guess thatās why they are punishing her so severely. They want to earn the trust of the spectators and want to prevent another player from turning rogue.
Chess fans may be out there for the drama, but I donāt think Go fans are ready for the drama yet.
and there are lawmakers who want to take that away.
