Author: Dan Homan
Date: 05:19:14 06/18/99
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On June 17, 1999 at 22:08:24, Fernando Villegas wrote: >Hi Dan: >You are right, of course, but there is a practical point regarding the nature of >a test that must be taken into account; his meaning in terms of human >usefulness. The example of you race is good precisely to show that: the >experiment would be right as a test of the fastest vehicle on wheels, but >meaningless, preposterous and something to laugh at. Experiments must be not >only logical, but to have a sense. You, as a scientis, know that very well; you >prepare an experiment not just because it can be done in his own terms, but to >probe something that is important for human purposes, theoretic or practical. >Then, when people talks of the sense of this tournament where programs are >running in monster kind of hardware, what probably they try to say is that the >experiment, even if logical, is not meaningful for his necesities and in fact >for almost 99% of people that uses chess programs. What is meaningful for us is >what has a relation with our practice. Monsters running at 800 Mhz or so are not >reachable for common folk and so the test is meaningless in that specific but >very important aspect. Logic is not all and becomes ridiculous without a dosis >of common sense. Fact is that we are not going to conclude nothing of the >results of this tournaments not only because the few rounds, but because the >brute force being used into it. >Cheers >fernando Yes, once one understands the question to be answered by an experiment, they are free to think that the question itself is a silly one and the experiment should never have been done. If people think that having a competition to find the best artifical chess player is a silly thing to do, that is fine with me. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that we can use these results to help us do anyting useful..... In this case it is purely for fun! Of course, I suppose that no chess tournament is useful in a practical sense.... they are all for entertainment. - Dan P.S. I know that one of Melvin's concerns is that the results of this tournament will be mis-used by the winners, but mis-use of the results of the competition will not be the fault of the competition itself. The results of any test can be mis-used. Hopefully the winners will also advertise the hardware they ran on to get the title.... it might even be a smart advertising strategy if they are a 1 or 4 processor machine that beats some of the 100+ processor monsters.
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