Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Gandalf H, First Impressions

Author: Fernando Villegas

Date: 16:21:47 03/06/01

Go up one level in this thread


On March 06, 2001 at 15:27:35, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On March 06, 2001 at 14:50:03, Fernando Villegas wrote:
>
>>Hi:
>>You are right that is not convincing enough in scientific terms, but it never
>>tried to be more than a opinion, I think grounded, but opinion after all. BTW, I
>>did play the same opennings with every version, but besides that, even with
>>different opennings, you can more or less feel the degree of agresiveness a
>>program has according the kind of moves he choose between the pool of acceptable
>>moves. In this sense H seems to me more interesting. I am sure that you can
>>feel, for instance, the different style between, say, Genius 5 and CSTAl no
>>matter what openning you play. This is, of course, a very extreme example, but
>>makes the point...  until a degree.
>
>If we are talking about impressions then I don't think there is really anything
>to argue about.  In fact, I can form an impression from just looking at the box.
>;-)  Since an impression is nothing more than a viewpoint it is neither right
>nor wrong.  It is an impression.


Maybe you go too far. There are all kinds of impressions. If we understand the
term in the less valuable sense, as it seems you do, it is just a casual,
cursory judgement without any fact behind and without a decent judgement of the
facts. But in the opposite side what we have is not something altoguether
different to impressions, a kind of absolute objetivity, but just the sensorial
impressions scientists gets with his trained eyes, with or without instruments.
They have a method, I know, but also non scientific way of looking at things has
one and is called common sense, very useful many times. Just visual Impressions
and not vectorial calculus is more than enough for driving a car.  You get
results, you get home in safety  and nobody could tell you "you have drove the
car only with impressions...so you did badly". There are lot of realms of the
world where we do not need an exhaustive scientific method to grasp the truth
and for doing the correct thing to do. At least in some areas. In this case we
cannot, without statistics, make accurate judgements about programs, about which
is the best, etc, but we can grasp with just the eyes some generalities about
how they play that are enough fair to be shared. Impressions are just the way we
perceive the world, after all. And always they are made from a point of view. We
cannot avoid points of view and views with them and neither are neccesarily just
trash. So when I am talking of my impressions respect a program, You cannot
assume that they are something so unuseful as looking at the box. It can be a
decently correct impression or at least a possible fair one, with some data to
support it. Of course it can be wrong, but then, if it is wrong, it could be
right. In other words, it is not beyon the realm of right or wrong. Not
organized, not systematic, not enough data, yes, but even so inside the axis of
truth-falsehood.
Regars
fernando



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.