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Subject: Re: Symbolic: The TNS (Thousand Node Search)

Author: martin fierz

Date: 14:11:57 02/16/04

Go up one level in this thread


On February 16, 2004 at 16:06:00, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On February 16, 2004 at 15:38:58, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On February 16, 2004 at 14:43:48, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On February 16, 2004 at 10:31:03, Steven Edwards wrote:
>>>
>>>>Symbolic: The TNS (Thousand Node Search)
>>>>
>>>>The idea of limiting the cognitive search in Symbolic to under a thousand nodes
>>>>is based upon psychological studies that suggest top level human chessplayers
>>>>usually visualize between 100 and 1,000 positions per move in complex
>>>>middlegames.  My personal time control upper limit preference for non-blitz
>>>>chess is a minute per move, and so the resulting target figure for node
>>>>frequency is about 20 Hz.
>>>
>>>I think you are starting off here using an unsound assumption.
>>>
>>>"100 to 1000 positions per move" is probably nowhere near right.  There is a
>>>difference between a human mentally moving pieces around, and his comparing them
>>>to pattern-recognition information that in itself is the result of searching
>>>significant amounts of tree space.
>>>
>>>Who knows _what_ I actually do after thinking a few minutes and moving the
>>>pieces around in my head, to decide 'this position is one I want to reach."  Did
>>>my "static evaluation" fold in a bunch of past experiences via pattern matching?
>>> IMHO picking some number like 1K is just picking a number like 1K, not that 1K
>>>is more or less meaningful than 100 or 10K...
>>>
>>>
>>>trying to quantify how many "positions" a human searches is pointless until we
>>>know how a human really "searches".  To date, we have no idea.  this probably
>>>won't change for many years, until all the marvelous abilities of the human
>>>brain have been analyzed and understood.
>>
>>I think that it is not necessary to know how the human brain analyze and it may
>>be possible to generate something better because humans do not do something that
>>is close to optimal.
>>
>>Humans do a lot of mistakes and they use a lot lazy evaluation.
>>When humans visualize positions they do not count exactly pawn structure of
>>every position and other factors and their lazy evaluation may miss an important
>>positional factor that they could see by looking at the relevant position for
>>another second.
>>
>>Humans also do not have a perfect memory and they may analyze the same line
>>again because they forgot that they already analyzed it or they forgot the
>>result of their analysis.
>>
>>Uri
>
>
>I wouldn't argue that point at all.  however, the original reason for choosing
>"1000" was based on some perceived human ability to evaluate that many positions
>(upper bound).  I think that concept is what is flawed.  Trying to do a good
>program with only 1K nodes is an interesting goal.  But thinking that the 1K
>number has something to do with human thought processes is probably incorrect.
>I say probably because no one knows, just yet...

i believe it's fundamentally wrong to force computers into some human
straight-jacket. we have our capacities, the computers have theirs. nobody in
his right mind would attempt to emulate the human thought process on a computer
when trying to add up two numbers.
limiting yourself to 1000 nodes for a search, just because humans are limited to
that seems like limiting yourself to e.g. computing one digit per second in an
addition - and then claiming that that is better than doing it in a nanosecond
:-)

cheers
  martin



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