Romania's Got Talent 2015 Final

[bubbagrub]

Not in the most direct way, apparently, but lies come in many forms.

True, of course, but I'm still not convinced that they did anything worthy of being called liars.

What BLD/MBLD tricks are you talking about?

Well, I guess the method you came up with for treating a scrambled cube as a set of cycles could, in my opinion, be considered an amazingly clever (and effective) trick. My point is that it seems to me that what these guys did is no less "real" than that kind of thing, not more a trick, and no less valid. But maybe this is the problem -- what's "valid" in the first place? I don't intend to suggest that using OP is "invalid" or "just using a trick", and I similarly feel that what these guys did is reasonable and impressive.

I feel like the main thrust of this thread is that what these guys did was not valid, in some sense -- not fair, or real, whereas the standard approach to BLD solving is, in some sense more valid. I realise I'm playing with fire making this particular argument with you, but hey...

You must have missed the argument that fake solves can make real solves look bad in comparison.

I did miss that argument. But I think it's specious. That's like saying "one-handed solves make two-handed solves look bad in comparison". Or "Maskow's insane MBLD solves make normal 3BLD solves look bad in comparison". In what sense would the Romanian guys' solves make any other kind of solve look "bad"? I can't see it.

And did anyone here really claim the public would think something like "Hah! What a bunch of fakers. My respect for the speedcubing community is way down" or is that just a straw man you just made up?

OK -- you got me. Yes it was a straw-man. I was trying to figure out what negative effect people anticipated. My point is that I'd be amazed if it has any negative effect on non-speedcubers and their interactions with cubing.

 

[blade740]

This performance is great, and I'm very happy for you guys!

Sure, there's a "trick" to it. But nobody hates on magicians for not using REAL MAGIC. And these guys clearly know how to solve, both speedsolving and BLD. They even get the facts right - about memorizing the state of a cube, and then recalling it. And you know what? The "world class" BLD solvers are FASTER than what these guys are showing. You can't really say they're misleading people. The only "cheat" is that instead of memorizing 100 different cubes, they memorized one, plus a couple of simple rules to differentiate each one.

I've often thought about what it would take to turn cubing skills into a decent stage show. BLD is something that's highly impressive to crowds, but the chance of failure makes it risky to perform live. Not only that, but the memorization phase takes time and isn't very entertaining. This technique gets around that - it allows you to practice the "default" scramble to lower the likelihood of mistakes and memorization errors. Plus, since the cubes are already memorized beforehand, the audience doesn't need to watch that part.

Seriously, though. **** the haters. You'll be laughing all the way to the bank!

 

[qqwref]

Sure, there's a "trick" to it. But nobody hates on magicians for not using REAL MAGIC.

Maybe people would be bothered by it, if it wasn't obvious they were magicians - if a lot of the audience members went away believing that the magician literally sawed a woman in half and fixed her again, or something like that. Imagine if those people then lost respect for actual doctors, because they saw a guy on stage do something that these so-called medical professionals could never do. Of course, that could never happen because normal people understand what doctors do and what magicians do.

...But normal people do NOT understand what cubers do, and almost certainly will not understand that this was the equivalent of a magic trick. How are people who've spent years of effort and hard work learning to be incredibly good at something very difficult supposed to compete with this?

I feel like I watched someone cheat on a difficult exam, without admitting to it but in such an obvious way that lots of observers can see they cheated, and now everyone else is supporting them because hey, they got more points than anyone else, that's all that matters right?

 

[blade740]

...But normal people do NOT understand what cubers do, and almost certainly will not understand that this was the equivalent of a magic trick. How are people who've spent years of effort and hard work learning to be incredibly good at something very difficult supposed to compete with this?

I wouldn't call this the equivalent of sawing a woman in half. I didn't check frame-by-frame, but it at least appeared to me that they were using BLD methods and techniques. They didn't make any outrageous claims about their skills or the limits of BLD solving. And they didn't solve faster than high-level BLD solvers - I'm not sure how the editing of the program affected it, but the video runs almost a minute between the first moves and the first cube solved. And that's not including memo. What's there to compete with?

They claimed that they had memorized the cubes ahead of time - true. They claimed that they were all different - also true, albeit only technically so. Still, I don't think they did anything that they couldn't have done "legitimately" - given adequate memorization time. Memorization was done beforehand off-stage, and I think it's implied that it took a long time.

These solvers weren't competing in a WCA blindfold solving competition. They were demonstrating the ability to solve a pre-memorized rubik's cube on-stage. The only "misleading" part about the whole thing was that the mixed up cubes were only superficially different. And I don't speak Romanian, but it doesn't sound like they flat out LIED about that either. This is probably one of the best "public" displays of cubing skill I've ever seen, and one of the truest to the sport.

 

[Stefan]

And these guys clearly know how to solve, both speedsolving and BLD.

That very much depends on what you mean with BLD. One of them has never even attempted BLD in WCA competitions, and his last WCA competition was just three weeks ago and BLD was offered there and he did do all other events and won almost all of them. I doubt he can do regular BLD.

I didn't check frame-by-frame, but it at least appeared to me that they were using BLD methods and techniques.

Maybe a little bit, to undo their special scramble modifications. Though I'm not sure they didn't mostly just spam lots of sexy moves to play for time. But in the end, I'm pretty sure they did a CFOP solve. You can at least clearly see OLL and PLL.

 

[cubizh]

This is something that is quite common with pretty much all sports, there are a countless number of people out there doing basketball halfcourt trickshots, golf trickshots, baseball hits, pool combo shots, or (my favorite) football tricks. They are not entirely simulating the rules of the sport but just doing bits and parts of it for dramatic effect.

I think the discussion if this is right or wrong is mostly irrelevant, but if people want to discuss it further, it's worth thinking a little more about this and think about some questions.

- Is everyone that is doing this in other sports trying to make people who are more serious in those sports that are associated with the activity in the sketches look bad or shadow/diminish their competitive achievements and purposedly misrepresenting the sport?

- If you do a sketch unrelated to competitive cubing, without making any reference to the WCA and their regulations and not following any of the procedures used in competitions, should you be judged in what you're doing by those regulations or by your WCA results?

- If you pick up a 3x3x3 cube in a given state and you rotate its faces to the solved state while wearing a blindfold, can you actually say that you did a blindfolded solve?

- If you are a world class competitive speedcuber, can't you also participate in these types of programs and win, getting the recognition you deserve?

- If you are not a world class competitive speedcuber, should you not participate in an entertainment program and try to win?

- Should a 3x3x3 cube be banned to be used in a solve on a TV spot if it's not in a random state scramble, but a known scramble beforehand?

- Should people be participating in competitive speedcubing to get recognition from the general public or for the fun that it provides?

- Is an audience supposed to always believe everything they see and hear on TV in entertainment programs?

- If the end result is more visibility to cubing, more people asking questions and getting interested in the cube, more competitors and more sponsors in competitions, is it really worth to do all this or is it better to do a poorer set and get sent home early without any visibility, for the sake of not misrepresenting the sport?

- Would you do something like this if you were to win 120,000€ or would you waive that money because you may in some way be deceiving an audience and not make justice to the sport?

I may know some of the answers to these questions, but it's at least fun to ask.

Maybe a little bit, to undo their special scramble modifications. Though I'm not sure they didn't mostly just spam lots of sexy moves to play for time. But in the end, I'm pretty sure they did a CFOP solve. You can at least clearly see OLL and PLL.

Since you used a broad definition of a lie before in this thread, you won't mind if I just point out that you kind of lied here too.

 

[Stefan]

- Would you do something like this if you were to win 120,000€ or would you waive that money because you may in some way be deceiving an audience and not make justice to the sport?

I think only rich people and poor people would say "waive". The rich people because they don't need the money, and the poor people because they're poor because they say "waive" to such an opportunity

Since you used a broad definition of a lie before in this thread, you won't mind if I just point out that you kind of lied here too.

I don't think I did. What do you mean?

 

[cubizh]

I don't think I did. What do you mean?

Oh, just that you were implying things as truths when you don't know with certainty if they are true or not.
You can't reconstruct all three solves from scratch and you can't see all the scrambles to know for sure what they did or didn't do at this moment in time. It is possible (or even probable) that they did that, but you don't know for sure.

 

[Stefan]

you don't know with certainty if they are true or not

Well, I explicitly only said "I'm pretty sure" and other uncertain formulations. Precisely because I do try to make it clear when I don't know something for certain. I do believe everything I said there, still feel justified in saying it, and wasn't trying to mislead anyone. So I don't think it qualifies as some sort of lying.

 

[Isaac Lai]

I don't think that this type of thing brings about many negative impacts to the speedcubing community. Precisely because the non-cubing members of the audience cannot differentiate between 'fake' (or at least blindsolves made easier in this context) and real solves, they are even more impressed and more people will be more motivated to get into cubing.

I got into speedcubing because of a variety of reasons, but one of the contributing factors was seeing Gabriel Dechichi Barbar's solves on Discovery Channel's show Superhuman Showdown. It was't exactly 'fake' (he did a legit 3/3 MBLD), but it implied that he used a special method of visualising where the pieces would go during normal sighted solving. Essentially, I got the impression that he was able to one look solves (Yeah I was really dumb). Later on, I obviously discovered that this was not true, that BLD solving was very different from sighted solving, that he was definitely not a superhuman, etc. But if I had not watched that episode, I doubt that I would have gotten in speedcubing.

 

[tseitsei]

Maybe people would be bothered by it, if it wasn't obvious they were magicians - if a lot of the audience members went away believing that the magician literally sawed a woman in half and fixed her again, or something like that. Imagine if those people then lost respect for actual doctors, because they saw a guy on stage do something that these so-called medical professionals could never do. Of course, that could never happen because normal people understand what doctors do and what magicians do.

...But normal people do NOT understand what cubers do, and almost certainly will not understand that this was the equivalent of a magic trick. How are people who've spent years of effort and hard work learning to be incredibly good at something very difficult supposed to compete with this?

I feel like I watched someone cheat on a difficult exam, without admitting to it but in such an obvious way that lots of observers can see they cheated, and now everyone else is supporting them because hey, they got more points than anyone else, that's all that matters right?

+1 once again I agree with this completely.

 

[cubizh]

Thank you Stefan for clarifying and making the obvious distinction between what you think is a clear indication of, with some degree of uncertainty and what an actual proven fact is, in what you've been posting.

I find moderate statements like

All the cubes were apparently scrambled the same (if you look at Stefan's picture).

to be far better than

Now, there's evidence to support that they didnt even have 100 scrambles...

Yeah.. They didn't have 100 different scrambles and even if they did...

My only problem is that they didn't memorize 100 cubes like they presumably claimed. Instead, They scrabled 100 cubes the same way(...) and then did a few setup moves matching each number(...) making it super easy to go from a set-up to another or solving the cube.

Nice detective work, this makes a lot of sense. So the cubes are in different positions, but just a short sequence (maybe a trigger or two) from the main scramble

for the general understanding of what you were trying to show, that there are patterns in some of the faces of some of the cubes that suggest some type of connection or sequence among all the 100 cubes. Also that after applying a given number of moves to those three specific cubes, one of the faces is the same in all of them while they are solving them, but since you can only see 1 or at most 2 of the 6 faces of the cubes, you can't say for sure, due to lack of visual information of all cube states.

Maybe a little bit, to undo their special scramble modifications.

Please note I didn't exactly say you were lying, but "kind of", which is also an uncertain formulation , since you are "sort of" implying that they've used one special scramble with modification moves added to them that required undoing, just by looking at one of the faces of the three chosen cubes while they were solving.

What I was really trying to say is basically the same as you, reaffirm that all the statements you made are probably true *but* lack a definitive proof, so people should probably refrain from judging/extrapolating what they did for sure and make inflamatory posts that don't lead anywhere and are unverifiable at this point.

Aside from this, I still think a mass audience that watches something like this is better, in the end, than a mass audience that doesn't see it at all. The people that watch something like this and get motivated to pick up a cube and get attracted to the sport far outweights (in importance, for the sport) any wrong or misunderstood opinion some people can get of what it takes to "properly" solve a puzzle. People are free to do what they wish with a cube, so there's no need to get angry or irritated about it.Same with people that are motivated into basketball after watching half court throws or motivated into pool after watching people do trick shots on YouTube. I haven't yet found professional pool players condemning these people for misrepresenting their sport.

The people that are genuinely interested will learn the ropes and become valid members of the community, the rest doesn't really matter as much. Do I think it would be better to have other sketches to have an equal amount of exposure than something like this? Probably, but unfortunately the world thinks differently with some rare exceptions and there's not a lot you can do to change.

Personally, I do speedcubing because it's something I really like to do myself, I am not insecure enough to care or be affected by what other people think about what I do, or when someone gives the idea they are better than me.

If people like to discuss these subjects, I would also like to suggest a proper discussion of cubing ideas for programs like these that are acceptable/valid, feasible and spectacular at the same time, with potential to win and that would make most people happy, so that when someone decides to go on TV on a similar program, can have a pool of ideas to pick and modify/elaborate from, rather than have multiple "fake speedcubing on live TV police" threads, discussing the same concepts over and over and over again, everytime a situation like this happens, without a lot of progress.