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Subject: Knowledge again, but what is it?

Author: Fernando Villegas

Date: 19:29:46 02/24/98


Hi all after my long vacations:
This F5 rating has arisen once again the old, somewhat absurd discusion
about knowledgeable Vs fast searchers programs. I say absurd because,
as ever, discusion is going on as if "knowledge" as such was already a
defined, decided and unquestionable thing. But is not. If for knowledge
we call the somewhat unorganized sum of practical chess signals human
experience has got trought centuries of playing the game, OK, but then
remember that after centuries of common sense and experience people was
certain the Earth was a flat surface. That seemed undisputable
knowledege to date. Before and elsewhere, other thought the world was
supported by a number of elephants, the elephants by turtles and the
turtles...well, as they said, don't bother with silly question. If you
take a look at almost any specifi bit of chess "knowledge", you will see
that does not amount to much more than to a general, umprecise statement
based in a determinate amount of specific, local, narrow experience, and
that's the reason real games offer at each moment - more often that
presumed- clear signs of exceptions. What kind of "knowldege" is that
that can be refuted once in two or three tries? Take a llok at any
theroic book and you will see that at each step. "Yes, knights are good
here, but then"... At leat defenders of knowledge approach should do
something better than to trash "fast stupid searchers" and give us a
more detailed and deep analysis of what is that knowledge they defend so
much. Have they a more specific slice of principles we don't know yet
and that are the "truly knowledge"?. My impression is: a lot of it is
trash itself and that`s the reason a fast progran not too much loaded
with knowledge can give a very good perfomance. Another impression: for
the kind of searching abilities computer have, knowledge probably means
or should mean something very different to our clumsy road signals.
Fernando



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