Author: Heiner Marxen
Date: 09:11:59 01/21/01
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On January 21, 2001 at 10:25:30, Fernando Villegas wrote: >Hi Dann: Hello Fernando, Let me jump in. First of all: I agree to most of what Dann and you said. >BTW "planning" is one of those -as many-tricky words whose meaning can be read >in many ways. Of course, to begin with, "plans" sounds good, smart. Yes, you are right. "Planning" is one of those things we humans are good at, and so we want to see it as "smart and good". > As if not >stupid plans are the rule in any kind of areas. That is a bit harsh, isn't it? > Presumes an understanding of >what you want, a purpose, but this last one can be very fuzzy and in fact >unuseful. Yes, absolutely! Ther are many important keyword in this sentence: "understanding", "purpose", "fuzzy" and "[un]useful". For me, an important aspect of "planning", as done by humans, is that we try to construct something "useful", which serves a purpose, since in most cases we are not able to calculate 100% of all the facts. Often, not all the facts are known to us. That the resulting "plans" are "fuzzy" can be of great value. The alternative would be to have not even a "plan". > Supposes you handle all or main relevant factor that will appear in >the future and in fact even in chess, a limited, narrowed universe, that is not >posible. Exactly. > So most of the time the so called "planning" is just hoopla. Kind of >self congratulation about how smart we are. Again, this is a bit harsh (in my opinion). The psychological effect "self congratulation" can be a real problem, yes. >What in fact we have all the time are desires to get this or that thing, an >altoguether a dfferent animal. Playing a game we see some advantage in the >queen side and then " we want" to win there and then we imagine a certain >winning position and then we "calculate" some line of playing and in the course >of all these subjetive musing we miss 90% of the real facts. But, nevertheless, >we say that we are "planning" ... Yes. That does look fine to me, up to here. > ... and look from above comps because they does >not.... >Fernando Of course, we should not just "look from above". Also, as I see it, computers (i.e. programs) _do_ plan. Not in the same way as humans do it, but it happens all the time. It depends a bit on the way we look at it. A few examples: When a program calls a null move search, it plans to afterwards be done with this variant of the search tree. Right? When a program, at the root position, creates a piece/square table, doesn't it "plan" to put its pieces there and there, where the large bonus points are placed? I think so. Another, more involved example: When my mate solver (Chest) detects that the attacker (say white, the side that shall mate the other side) has left just some pawns besides its king, it starts reasoning: Ok, in order to mate, white has to say check, at least. That is not easy with just pawns, the white king cannot do this. Ok, lets make a "plan" for black to escape the checks of white... well, here is the plan: black's king will move forth and back between those two squares. Not a brilliant plan, but let's work out the consequences... where can those white pawns appear on the board? Well, here, and here.. darn, does not say check, too far away... or here... aha, this pawn would have to promote, and even then needs at least one more ply to say check. Etc. Result is a minimum depth needed to say check. In my opinion here is some "planning" involved. Or am I way off? For me this is a very fascinating topic. Heiner
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