Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 11:09:32 01/12/01
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On January 12, 2001 at 09:49:52, Roy Eassa wrote: [snip] >Has it been proven mathematically that chess programs are GM strength? No. >Beyond a reasonable doubt? That's debatable. By a preponderance of evidence? >I'd say yes. > >(I haven't heard this kind of argument since my M.I.T. days!) In the 1930's, they did not know about nuclear fission or fusion. I read some remarkably funny proofs about what is going on in the sun in old physics textbooks. In a book from the 1940's I read a proof that airplanes cannot possibly fly faster than sound. They gave detailed measurements to show why this was so. In a book from the late 1940's I read that it was impossible to put a rocket into orbit. The reason given was that the mass of the fuel required would be too large to fit into the rocket, and so it would be impossible to build. A famous proof that the bumblebee cannot fly starts out like this: "Assuming laminar flow, the mass of the body of the bumblebee compared to the wing area is to large and therefore it cannot fly." This example is largely a misquote, because the scientist knew that it must be the case that the flow is not laminar. In each case the thing that went wrong was unwarranted assumptions. They did not know some key fact and made assumptions about the model that turned out to be incorrect. Much of what is accepted as proven is really not proven at all. This is especially a lack when the tools to form a correct proof are readily available. We can excuse the rocket scientists for not figuring out how to orbit, since they had not figured out how to do multiple stages yet. But to say that it is impossible was a mistake. Acceptance is another thing. I think already it is widely accepted that computers play as strongly as GM's. In fact, it is not at all unlikely that this is true. But to say that it has been proven is a big mistake.
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