Author: Joe Besogn
Date: 14:47:43 11/08/00
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On November 08, 2000 at 15:59:32, Bruce Moreland wrote: >On November 08, 2000 at 11:02:54, Joe Besogn wrote: > >> >> >>Kuhn concluded early that the conventional textbooks on the history of science >>were simply wrong, not so much about facts as about processes and sequences. No >>science primarily develops in steady, small increments — tiny accruals of fact. >>Science develops in revolutionary spasms, with periods of consolidation between. >>Both before and after revolutionary changes, any given discipline has >>overarching theories, some models, favorite metaphors, systems of symbolization. >>These ways of thinking — Kuhn called them together paradigms — not only define >>the discipline but can be used to explain most of the phenomena in which the >>discipline is interested, as did Ptolemaic astronomy or the phlogiston theory. >> >>Most "normal science" is not engaged in radical innovations, lonely and heroic >>explorations of the unknown. Most normal scientists work with the puzzles for >>which the contemporary paradigm is applicable. Those puzzles for which the >>paradigm does not apply are typically ignored or even denied to exist. But >>sometimes these anomalies of explanation cannot be denied, either for pressing >>general reasons (in which case several people are apt to create a new paradigm >>almost simultaneously) or because some atypical scientist finds the climate >>right for the acceptance of his ideas. Then a new paradigm is created, a new >>system of thought, which explains more phenomena more parsimoniously and >>elegantly. Often, Kuhn tells us, there ensues a battle between the >>conservatives, the adherents to the old paradigm, and devotees of the new ways >>of thinking. When one side or the other wins, they can return to their more >>peaceful puzzle laboratories. >> >>A new paradigm amounts to seeing the theoretical structure of a scientific >>discipline in some new and useful way. The effect, if innovation takes hold, is >>revolutionary. If the revolution is a large one, the effector or effectors are >>often dubbed geniuses, and previous geniuses become denigrated. > >Someone else claims that we can't talk about paradigm shifts in our field, >essentially because it's not an important field. > >I don't know a lot about paradigms, and I haven't read Kuhn's book. In college, >my libertarian roommate Jerry read it, and that was good enough for me. That >guy preferred Art Garfunkel to Paul Simon, avoid avoid avoid. > >New paradigms would tend to get adopted quickly in computer chess, since it is >usually easy to provide evidence that something works. Particularly strong >evidence would be a program that wins. > >There have been a couple of times where people jumped on a specific bandwagon. >People didn't know that full-wdith search could make a strong program until >Slate and Atkins did it, and after that point it became typical to write >full-width programs. > >There was another shift when Donninger published the null-move article. Prior >to that, null move was underappreciated, and after that it became the norm. At first thought, it seems it is for the revolutionaries to _prove_ a paradigm. The onus in this case being on you. I try you on Kuhn's requirements, and will answer a response tomorrow, since it is late here: normal-science before null move you describe as what? what exemplars from normal science time became anomolies? Were they important? what was the crisis in normal-science? what anomoly was then solved by the null-move technology? how were chess revolutionarily programs different afterwards? did anyone resist the null-move? politically? can you say that null-move was more than just "puzzling" (kuhn's phrase) within the normal-science? Personally, I think it was great idea that required a real leap of thought, so I'm open to the idea .... I ask because there are of course developments evolutionarily. Kuhn claims these as puzzling in normal-science. The revolutionary changes, he says, take place as a result of crisis in normal-science. Presumably Kuhn sees paradigm shifts as being at the top end of grey scale of change, where the scale is gradual, but with a catastrophic over-the-edge-flip in some central region. The other quick thought, is that Kuhn talks of pre-science, where developers are working independently, without too much communication. The first paradigm arises from this. Some of the items you describe sound like this pre-science period. > >Other programs have had success with techniques that weren't thought to be >useful, for instance self-teaching. This hasn't started a wave of self-learning >programs yet, but there have been some interesting articles and some interesting >attempts. > >We will probably see more interest in speculative evaluation since Christophe's >speculative program has been a success. > >All the programs that I know of now are built on a brute-force framework, with >selective extension and selective pruning. If anyone can make a strong program >that doesn't use these mechanisms, that will cause the most major shift we've >seen so far. > >bruce
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