The problem with the GECI is that it doesn't necessarily measure progress toward our desired goal. The gender gap in chess has only ever been a _proxy_ for what we *really* care about, which is the *opportunity* gap in chess. That is, we care that everybody has an _equal opportunity_ to play chess IF they are inclined toward it. We currently suspect that more women are _inclined toward_ chess than _actually participate in it,_ but we don't actually *know* whether men and women are, on average, *equally* inclined toward chess, and therefore we don't know if totally equal opportunity would eliminate the gender gap. In my mind, these indices can be useful to track social movement, but they _cannot_ be used as a measure of success or equality. For actual equality, it would be better to conduct longitudinal polling and surveys asking how many women vs. men have heard of, are interested in, actually participate in chess, and why. Who knows, perhaps there are some barriers to *men's* participation which are _masked_ in the data by the greater number of barriers to women.
It's not about "equality", it's about social "equity". They're not mentioning it but it ought to be clear what's going on here. That's a whole different animal and basically boils down to unfair resource allocation and positioning in favor of women at the expense of men.
@@Sitbear "Equity" is exactly that what it means: supposed "equality" in the social realm, but in reality it's all about unequal distribution of resources, right and favorable laws, usually against men, especial white men. Social equity is supposedly about being against bias, but that's just a veil. The reality exactly the opposite. That's the main takeaway.
My home country, Costa Rica, made it to the top 10 of the GECI, which was shocking to me. Costa Rica has also been a top-ranking country in the Happy Planet Index, which is also shocking to me. So I'm either the only unhappy Costa Rican who thinks not enough women are playing chess here, or there's something about these indexes that merely describes reality without really understanding it (like claiming that if you become too orthodox as a Jew the chances increase for your head to turn into a furry wheel-a descriptive yet flawed way to explain a shtreimel). And since I'm not a maths or statistics person, my unsubstantiated claim about this is that the lower your country ranks at chess overall, the less you are going to see a difference between men and women, for the obvious reason that most people are amateurs of similar strength. Also, if your country is rather small in terms of the amount of people who play actively, you will end up playing the same people over and over for years, which I think would tend to stabilize the overall performance of players, as well as hinder their progress. With the possible exceptions of Vietnam and Mongolia, I think that's true for the top GECI countries. And I think that's what GM Smerdon was hinting at when he said that, as a woman chess player, you would rather live in the Netherlands (GECI #100) than in Uganda (GECI #3). The more competitive the country is, the more you are going to feel the imbalance; and not only in gender, mind you, but also in income, educational levels, etc. So at the end, the GECI measures both gender imbalances in chess AND chess development in general. In that sense, I think it can be a good tool to direct the work of national federations, instead of mindlessly celebrating this ranking as some kind of accomplishment, like I saw the Costa Rican federation do recently. One idea that I found particularly exciting was teams competitions with quotas, like they did in France. That should be a standard practice, at least for a while. One can only hope... Thanks for another great episode, Ben. Happy holidays.
For almost 30 years, online gaming has been unpopular and disrespected in Western Society because of the anonymity. Its as dead and toxic now as it was in the 90s on the PC due to how sophisticated and unstoppable malicious and unsporting activities have become. I thought chess would be different when I became infatuated with it 2 years ago. But we are basically talking about a website that exploits the anonymity for ad money, by letting guys like HIkaru sandbag/smurf for streaming entertainment and expecting people to treat it as a valid sporting platform. What they are literally doing as a gaming platform is HISTORIC. Never before has a game platform literally made exceptions, and never before have athletes in any sport condoned cheating as ok for entertainment. In the Lichess TOS they clearly state they "make no exceptions for speedrunning because it encourages rating manipulation" Coincidence they are non profit? But noone is talking about this elephant in the room? WTF? This is the root most basic thing you nip in the butt before you even open you mouth and insult people talking about cheating. I can't believe people are even downplaying that Kramnik actually said Hikaru got Five almost 50 game winning streaks, in a single month, within the last 60 days at the time of his video, with historic performance ratings for even online play. And all the website replied with was that Kramnik accused hikaru of cheating and its not unusual cause HIkaru played 55,000 games in over 10 years? WTF? come on...... RIP CHESS. Move to Russia, India or China, cause here in the west where we covet sports we are just going to look at chess like NYC Handball..... dead, toxic and completely cheated out by the exclusive organizers and players.
@@cooloutac Ah, in that case I'm expecting the same fate as you anytime soon as well. My post was even saucier than yours. But it wasn't a wall. Maybe some don't like walls. Walls are a hot item as wel LOL.
If teams were obliged to have a player named Joseph, guess what? There are gonna be more chessplayers named Joseph. People act on incentives, that's a no brainer, but should we?
Nice. Another in the list of both PhD / doctorate & GM just like Andrii Baryshpolets.
Ben how many such people have you had on the podcast?
The problem with the GECI is that it doesn't necessarily measure progress toward our desired goal. The gender gap in chess has only ever been a _proxy_ for what we *really* care about, which is the *opportunity* gap in chess. That is, we care that everybody has an _equal opportunity_ to play chess IF they are inclined toward it. We currently suspect that more women are _inclined toward_ chess than _actually participate in it,_ but we don't actually *know* whether men and women are, on average, *equally* inclined toward chess, and therefore we don't know if totally equal opportunity would eliminate the gender gap.
In my mind, these indices can be useful to track social movement, but they _cannot_ be used as a measure of success or equality. For actual equality, it would be better to conduct longitudinal polling and surveys asking how many women vs. men have heard of, are interested in, actually participate in chess, and why. Who knows, perhaps there are some barriers to *men's* participation which are _masked_ in the data by the greater number of barriers to women.
It's not about "equality", it's about social "equity". They're not mentioning it but it ought to be clear what's going on here.
That's a whole different animal and basically boils down to unfair resource allocation and positioning in favor of women at the expense of men.
@@angel_machariel That’s not really what equity means, but I was trying to give a nuanced version of what you’re trying to say.
@@Sitbear "Equity" is exactly that what it means: supposed "equality" in the social realm, but in reality it's all about unequal distribution of resources, right and favorable laws, usually against men, especial white men.
Social equity is supposedly about being against bias, but that's just a veil. The reality exactly the opposite. That's the main takeaway.
@@angel_machariel Yeah, why do an intelligent critique of equity programs when you can just accuse anyone who disagrees of being the _real_ racists?
@@Sitbear Yes, you do your "intelligent critique" whilst someone else had to explain you the basics of what equity really is about.
My home country, Costa Rica, made it to the top 10 of the GECI, which was shocking to me. Costa Rica has also been a top-ranking country in the Happy Planet Index, which is also shocking to me. So I'm either the only unhappy Costa Rican who thinks not enough women are playing chess here, or there's something about these indexes that merely describes reality without really understanding it (like claiming that if you become too orthodox as a Jew the chances increase for your head to turn into a furry wheel-a descriptive yet flawed way to explain a shtreimel). And since I'm not a maths or statistics person, my unsubstantiated claim about this is that the lower your country ranks at chess overall, the less you are going to see a difference between men and women, for the obvious reason that most people are amateurs of similar strength. Also, if your country is rather small in terms of the amount of people who play actively, you will end up playing the same people over and over for years, which I think would tend to stabilize the overall performance of players, as well as hinder their progress. With the possible exceptions of Vietnam and Mongolia, I think that's true for the top GECI countries. And I think that's what GM Smerdon was hinting at when he said that, as a woman chess player, you would rather live in the Netherlands (GECI #100) than in Uganda (GECI #3). The more competitive the country is, the more you are going to feel the imbalance; and not only in gender, mind you, but also in income, educational levels, etc.
So at the end, the GECI measures both gender imbalances in chess AND chess development in general. In that sense, I think it can be a good tool to direct the work of national federations, instead of mindlessly celebrating this ranking as some kind of accomplishment, like I saw the Costa Rican federation do recently. One idea that I found particularly exciting was teams competitions with quotas, like they did in France. That should be a standard practice, at least for a while. One can only hope...
Thanks for another great episode, Ben. Happy holidays.
For almost 30 years, online gaming has been unpopular and disrespected in Western Society because of the anonymity. Its as dead and toxic now as it was in the 90s on the PC due to how sophisticated and unstoppable malicious and unsporting activities have become. I thought chess would be different when I became infatuated with it 2 years ago. But we are basically talking about a website that exploits the anonymity for ad money, by letting guys like HIkaru sandbag/smurf for streaming entertainment and expecting people to treat it as a valid sporting platform. What they are literally doing as a gaming platform is HISTORIC. Never before has a game platform literally made exceptions, and never before have athletes in any sport condoned cheating as ok for entertainment. In the Lichess TOS they clearly state they "make no exceptions for speedrunning because it encourages rating manipulation" Coincidence they are non profit? But noone is talking about this elephant in the room? WTF? This is the root most basic thing you nip in the butt before you even open you mouth and insult people talking about cheating. I can't believe people are even downplaying that Kramnik actually said Hikaru got Five almost 50 game winning streaks, in a single month, within the last 60 days at the time of his video, with historic performance ratings for even online play. And all the website replied with was that Kramnik accused hikaru of cheating and its not unusual cause HIkaru played 55,000 games in over 10 years? WTF? come on...... RIP CHESS. Move to Russia, India or China, cause here in the west where we covet sports we are just going to look at chess like NYC Handball..... dead, toxic and completely cheated out by the exclusive organizers and players.
Quite a wall of text, but you're right basically. But damn that's a wall of text. Maybe next time at least use paragraphs.
@@angel_machariel well ben banned me so there won't be no next time lmao.
@@cooloutac What do you mean, banned. From where? I can still see your comment here.
I don't understand.
@@angel_machariel I can't make any new posts on his channel I can only reply.
@@cooloutac Ah, in that case I'm expecting the same fate as you anytime soon as well. My post was even saucier than yours. But it wasn't a wall. Maybe some don't like walls. Walls are a hot item as wel LOL.
If teams were obliged to have a player named Joseph, guess what? There are gonna be more chessplayers named Joseph.
People act on incentives, that's a no brainer, but should we?