They did. Using electronic devices to communicate during a game (I guess besides the dugout phone) is banned. They were watching the video feed in the clubhouse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Astros_sign_stealing...
Sheesh, didn’t expect to re-litigate WS‘17 on HN today… I concede that there was at least some gray area in the codified official rules and the 2001 directive around electronic transmission, but it very clearly was a violation of the norms, IMO, and the Giants-Dodgers binocular incident in the 50s and its reception is good precedent.
> There is no “own notion” of ethics here, and it’s presumptuous and incorrect to suggest that exploiting games during a game exploit competition somehow reflects on ethics and makes the cheating “interesting”.
That’s not what I was suggesting was interesting to me. What interests me is the social phenomenon that is what the actual members of the community deem to be acceptable or in this case unacceptable, how the the community works to identify violations of norms, and then handle with the fallout.
You cited the exploiting as the one and only reason that cheating is interesting here, and explicitly implied that it’s somehow different from other kinds of competition. After this new comment, I don’t see how to interpret your top comment any differently.
This community competition didn’t do anything differently than any other competition. Someone entered the competition claiming to be adhering to the rules (https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Rules), they flagrantly broke the competition rules, tried to hide their cheating, and people got upset when it was uncovered. No different than any competition cheating, I don’t see what you’re implying about what people deem to be acceptable, or norms. The norms here are no different than anywhere else.
As far as I can tell, I did not… this is what I said:
> it’s very interesting to see how a practice that is fundamentally about exploiting generally unintended mechanisms within a system design still develops its own notion of ethics, legitimate and illegitimate exploits, etc
Removing extra clauses:
> it’s very interesting to see how a practice […] develops its own notion of ethics, legitimate and illegitimate exploits, etc
Oh, “fundamentally about exploiting” is just a “extra clause”? Hahaha.
Your sentence intentionally juxtaposed game exploits with ethics. If you disagree with that, you’re contradicting yourself and not me.
What’s left over is still the part I’m objecting to. Nobody developed their own notion of ethics, the community has the same competition ethics that practically any competition anywhere uses.
This is not at all the same thing as the Astros scandal. Astros didn’t break the agreed upon rules (edit: I’m wrong - human sign stealing was allowed, but electronic sign stealing was not). Groobo did break the agreed upon rules.
There is no “own notion” of ethics here, and it’s presumptuous and incorrect to suggest that exploiting games during a game exploit competition somehow reflects on ethics and makes the cheating “interesting”. Cheating and ethics in a competition is defined by what the agreed upon rules are. Perhaps ironically, your comment is developing it’s own notion of ethics.