Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 09:38:51 06/14/98
Hi all: I cannot believe that after so many post from one side and another still nobody seem prepared to accept how complex is this issue respect to the apparent conflict between fast search and knowledgeable but slow search. I have even seen a post where Mark said that the path to get the bottom of the game is search, pure and simple. Yes, but, what kind of search? Search is just a word, not a thing in itself. Is not the answer, but the question. So we should go to the beginning and do some questions. Let me recall some of them: a) To be faster or stronger on anything else that can be quantitatively measured is not equivalent to be in the right path. You can be faster to follow the wrong path. You can dig deeper in the wrong place. You even can discover something -as alchemists did- trying the wrong method with the wrong assumption and the wrong ideas. Then is not good argument to say because this and that has been got thought search THEN we must continue with that no matter what. b) Is not the same to be acquainted with the previous point than to have a real an specific different and best method to replace the first. Is not enough to say you are digging in the wrong place if don’t say where that task should be done. If there is not real alternative, then to dig deeper is the only one for now. So, is not enough to blame at the “stupidity” of current search methods. c) Nevertheless, although the advocates of “smart” search instead of brute force have been incapable of doing much more, that does not mean they are not aiming at the right directions even if they cannot do much else than that. To stuck stubbornly in the faster approach and believe IS the approach just because has given results until now is no smart or scientific at all. Anything stubbornly and systematically done gives some results, but they are increasingly less -law of diminishing returns- and costly. In fact, all scientific and technological development happens not when a method has failed, but on the contrary, when it has reached his perfection. The ground is then ripe for a new, superior principle. To be blind on that after so many historic lessons is not a showing of intelligence. d) This new principle surely will be something superior in kind and level to the actual search, mainly based in the examination of how good moves are with respect to parameters established in a table. That there is another method is no fantasy: just take a look a at what experts or above players do when playing chess. Surely they does not go move after move looking his possibilities and then measuring how good they are or not. They look at the position as such and understanding what is happening -a game of chess is an historic process, not an static math problem- they decide what should be done and only then they begin to look for moves and only at the end of all this they perform calculations to test the moves chosen on the ground of the previous understanding. e) The previous point is not to say that tactical calculations are inferior, meaningless, etc. A game is lost or won on the ground of specific, tactical moves. That is the reason computers are so strong. But even if you can win because of tactical shots without any concern for “what is happening “ in the game, that does not prove the game IS JUST tactical shots. We must differentiate between what chess is and how players can play it. Millions of games are won of lost by patzers that have no idea of nothing, and nevertheless a chess result is produced. One of them won, the other lost. Does that means the winner had understood the game? Equally, thousands of games are lost by humans against computers, each day: does that means computer have a real grasp of the game and so no further investigation about different method is needed, just more of the same, more speed ? f) The fact that the supposedly current smarts programs -as CSTAL- does not show to be that smart and fall in many traps, tactical shots, etc, does not prove anything, either. First steam locomotives were a lot slower than horses. CSTAL is a kind of experiment . Maybe even is a complete failure. But, again, that does not mean a thing. The debate is not between CSTAL and the rest of the programs, but between search methods based in the examination of many K-moves, one by one, of another method that try to understand the position as strong human player do. I would like to see a debate opened here on the ground of this last specific point: how a program could simulate that kind of qualitative understanding of position and his dynamic. Or is not possible? Bob? Don? Amir?
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