Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 14:02:47 07/13/00
Go up one level in this thread
On July 12, 2000 at 17:21:30, Dann Corbit wrote:
>On July 12, 2000 at 14:02:16, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On July 12, 2000 at 00:45:58, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>[snip]
>>>I don't agree. The player who has the most wisdom wins the most games.
>>>Let's separate human intellect into components:
>>>
>>>1. IQ (Raw problem solving ability)
>>>2. Knowledge (Storehouse of data)
>>>3. Common Sense (Ability to get the big picture)
>>>4. Wisdom (application of all of the above)
>>>
>>>There may be some additional components of importance, but those are all that
>>>spring to mind. We can make an anaology to chess programs easily.
>>>
>>>IQ would represent the fundamental algorithms and hardware.
>>>Knowledge would represent the evaluation parameters, opening database, endgame
>>>tablebase and other data.
>>>Common Sense would represent bug free operation (you don't suddenly poke your
>>>queen in front of an enemy pawn for no reason) and also correctness of the
>>>fundamental algorithms applied.
>>>Wisdom is the measure of all factors combined.
>>>
>>>You could have 100 times more knowledge than anyone else, but if your algorithm
>>>or CPU is 100x slower than your opponent, you will probably lose.
>>
>>
>>Well you are right, but it is a proven fact that a K6-2 450MHz has much more
>>chess knowledge than a 486dx2-66MHz has.
>>
>>If you don't like the above idea and don't want to consider CPU speed as being
>>part of the "knowledge", then your remark does not refute my definition...
>
>Actually, I agree (based upon how you define knowledge). I would have called it
>IQ [see above].
>
>Consider a program that searches one million NPS and does no positional eval at
>all. It only looks at the material, period. It has no openings database, and
>no EGTB. It does not bother to order the moves at all and does (at least) use
>NegaScout to search efficiently.
>
>Consider a second program that searches at 1 NPS on identical hardware but
>considers all kinds of positional evaluation and chess knowledge implemented.
>It can do everything Yassar Sierwan talks about in his books (given enough time)
>as far as knowing the value of "pigs on the seventh" etc. It has opening (GM
>inspected) database and EGTB. It orders the moves perfectly 99.999% of the time
>and also uses NegaScout to search.
>
>Program 1 makes 13 plies and kicks the butt of program two which makes one ply
>at 60 seconds per move.
>
>Program 1 has more chess knowledge? If winning is the only measure then the
>answer is yes.
>
>Again, I would call it "chess wisdom" instead. But we can argue about semantics
>all day.
>
>In the final tally, I will agree with your basic concept whole-heartedly. The
>saying goes, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" which basically means
>the actual outcome is what matters.
I understand your point.
My feeling is that in the current state of the art, we are too much ignorant to
decide so easily what is knowledge (or chess wisdom) and what is not.
Most people, when they use the words "chess knowledge", are thinking about
"position evaluation". I find this very short minded (I'm not saying you think
this way, of course).
Position evaluation is not the only part of a chess program where you put "chess
knowledge". A lot of chess knowledge is put somewhere else in a chess program.
There is a LOT of chess knowledge in the search algorithms. The concept of
recapture extension, for example, is pure chess knowledge. Move ordering is, as
well.
They are both very related to chess, and quite unrelated. A grandmaster could
find these concepts useless maybe. But maybe a grandmaster is not a reliable
source of chess knowledge.
Also, very often "knowledge" is associated with "memory" (storing data). This is
misleading as well. Most of the knowledge in a chess program exists in the form
of algorithms, not tables, databases or files.
I tend to define knowledge (actually "relevant knowledge") as the set of
information processing procedures (algorithms) that help a given entity to
survive or even to grow in a given environment. Maybe I'm melting several
concepts together in this definition, but anyway these separate concepts are
really hard to differenciate. So maybe it is not so useful to differenciate
between them.
Christophe
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