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Subject: Re: Are comments about Crafty 16.6 to harsh or just accurate observations?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:11:27 01/11/00

Go up one level in this thread


On January 11, 2000 at 22:45:52, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>On January 11, 2000 at 18:25:44, Mark Young wrote:
>
>>No one is just talking about one game, i agree any program can have a bad game,
>>even Ferret, and you know my opinion on Ferret. And it has nothing to do with
>>like or dislike of the programmer. I judge Ferret on what it shows me in games,
>>as I do with Crafty. And I don't think it is smear to express ones opinion on
>>any program as long as it is accurate. The only smear I seen was to the person
>>who wrote one article and devoted a few words to Crafty that were accurate. Now
>>some on this board think it is insane to say Crafty is weaker then the top
>>commercial programs, and it is smear to explain why it is weaker. So I think the
>>only way to resolve a dispute like this is with some games.
>
>I didn't like Cock's article because I thought it used bad data to try to
>support a proposition that Crafty was weak.  I don't say that I am going to
>fight to the death to prevent anyone from presenting that proposition.
>
>Pick a random person who doesn't like Bob, and have them write an article about
>Crafty.  Do you think it is possible that there'd be little truth in the
>article, even if every sentence in the article were literally true?  I can
>easily believe this.
>
>Just take that Hiarcs-Ferret game and annotate it as if white is brilliant and
>black is completely incompetent, and you'd have an article that is factually
>true and yet allows hugely different conclusions than if you write the same
>article about Ferret-Fritz.
>
>Perhaps the issue here is that Cock raised doubts in my mind about his motives
>because of the way he presented his case.  Even if everything is true I think
>the article still stunk.  Notice that I didn't argue against the truth of the
>article, since I don't know if it is true or not.
>
>I think people have a tough time talking about computer strength because very
>few people are competent enough to analyze the games properly with their own
>minds.  Instead they use statistically meaningless short matches and
>tournaments, analysis made by other programs, and emphasis on class-B mistakes
>that every program still makes.
>
>If someone wants to talk about games from a higher-level perspective, I would be
>happy to listen, and I bet Bob would be as well.
>
>Likewise, if someone wants to learn enough statistics to perform a match and
>accurately express what the results mean, it would be hard to argue with the
>result, although if this effort is undertaken as a precursor to telling Bob that
>he's wasted his life, or something similar to this, it might reflect rather
>poorly upon the experimenter.
>
>bruce


As far as your last sentence goes, I have been hearing that for years.  Until
my wife gave up telling me.  :)



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