Author: Mogens Larsen
Date: 04:22:22 11/09/00
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On November 08, 2000 at 21:08:18, Bruce Moreland wrote: >Political ideology is very important to Thorsten, and he plays out the struggle >between political ideologies with these mechanical robots. He sees one that >suits him politically and he gets behind it with extreme force because he >believes that its superiority proves the superiority of his political ideology. > >Or if not that, probably something equally strange sounding. That is a pretty accurate description IMO, which is a view I've been advocating for some time now. The fundamental flaw of the entire "new paradigm" discussion is the style argument. A lot of Thorsten's speculative approach is based the subjective and unscientific term "style", which obviously vary accordingly and therefore completely nonsensical for any practical use. The other problem is the development of GT. According to the author, as far as I've understood, most of the framework is adapted from Tiger 13.0. Tiger 13.0 is basically a knowledge propelled bean counter like a lot of the commercial alternatives AFAIK, eg. Shredder, Hiarcs, Gandalf and others. This suggests that at least the initial stages (GT still needs finetuning and modifications according to the author) of transistion between the old and the new is trivial, ie. anyone can do it with a little (or most likely a lot of) effort. The mindbarrier assumption is nonsense as well. If there's ample documentation that the approach works longterm then there will be a change, because the essential motivation IMO for the creators of chess programs, is winning. The introduction of the mindset argument is purely for egoistic reasons, because it makes them sound like intellectual giants compared to the rest, which obviously isn't the case. >But people are being led around by the nose because of this. With due respect >to Christophe, we have here a new version of a program, not proof that communism >is more humane than capitalism. It's a strong version of a strong program, and >it is possible that others will imitate certain aspects of it. But that doesn't >warrant the term "revolutionary", however good it would look in advertising >copy. This is an evolution, it's something for others to experiment with, and >nobody will have to rewrite their program to do it. There's nothing revolutionary about the program. At least not yet. In the next months and maybe years we'll see a process of adaptation. Resembling the process we know from the theory of evolution. The adaptation will be as follows IMO: If the GT program proves to be consistantly stronger than the existing programs then two things will happen. The competition will focus on identifying and exploiting weaknesses of GT, which can be of a positional or tactical kind. Maybe the speculative evaluation can be exploited in some way(?). The other topic would be to contain and analyse its strengths, eg. making king safety development a priority. This process, if succesful, will undoubtedly be countered by CT, using the data and experience he's been gaining in the mean time, watching the competition trying to solve the GT "style". A revolution, or a shift of paradigm, will have occurred if the process of continued adaptation breaks the framework of the old system in a way that makes progress impossible. Similar to ordinary evolution theory in the sense that the prey fails to develop countermeasures against the hunter and becomes extinct. This can also happen to the hunter of course. So far there's nothing to suggest that the old framework can't adapt to the threat. The only danger might be the lack of willingness to do so before it becomes blatantly apparent. Mogens.
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