Author: Thorsten Czub
Date: 15:34:27 02/28/98
Go up one level in this thread
>Guess we are talking about two different things then. I see the rating >as a measure of strength, nothing more. And this is what the SSDF is >trying to measure. You don't answer anything. You say you see the rating as a measure of strength. This sentence does not say anything, if you don't explain what strength is. You talk about these things as if there is a big mechanical clock-like instrument in the universe, with a label: "chess strength in ELO" but - i don't think this will work. There is no big instrument in space. Even no big clock. Your mechanical point of you is understood by me. But you cannot relate a frog with a stone. The stone behaves different than the frog and generates no quality. It is not living. The frog is. And it generates something we could call negentropie = quality = order out of the chaos. The measuring of the weights of the frog does not tell you anything about the amount of quality the frog produces. The weigth of the stone does not represent the amount of quality it generates. You can weigth both and you will not be right if you claim the heavy stone generates more quality or negentropie than the lighter frog. In fact you can rename quality in chess strength and still the heavy stone will not play better chess than the frog ! The weigth of something does not tell us anything about the chess strength (however you define chess-strength , if chess-strength is NOT weigth). >You obviously want to measure the best player (program?) from something >else. Some chess soule... Something higher.. The best player obviously >needs human intelligens.. Nothing less. I want to explain to you that you cannot measure something that has to do with something that is NOT represented in numbers (chess strength) by using numbers ! >>Thats my thesis. Also there is NO best move in a position (if it isn't >>mate or forced tactical stuff). > >I believe there must be, since chess is an absolute game. There are a >finite number of possible moves, therefore there must be a best move (or >a set of best moves) in any given position. Again wrong. you cheat with your statement. There are finite number of possible moves, but since nobody of us has infinite time (despite god) we will never find out. If you will never find out something, although the possibilities are finite, the statement - e.g. the statement : THERE MUST BE A BEST MOVE is not helping much. The best move is a position a is what ?? d4 ? c4 ? Nf3 ? Or Kh1 ? You don't know ? Oh - but is is finite ? Take you statistics about results. Maybe they help you ? They cannot help you. The elo numbers from 1600 - 2900 do not have any chess move within ! So how can you find the best move. By studying the games. But you have not taken ONE single look into the games. You don't even know how to make a legal chess move. All you have is data, a number: 2580 and another number: played out of 200 games. And this shall give you an answer about the chess strength ?? You want to measure the IQ by looking which guy has the biggest head. And you don't even have exactly defined what IQ really is. Always people want to measure something that cannot be measured this easy. >You are getting too deep for me. It's starting to sound like you see >chess as something beyond life. Some higher for of inteligens.. :) > >jfm Chess is a game. But a complex one. And too complex for any human beeing. And too complex for any computer. Only god would be able to tell you about chess strength. Since he/she/it is not under us, we should not claim that a number represents chess strength. A statistic cannot tell me anything. A statistic is used to post-game-rationalize decisions and problems that have NOT been solved by logical instruments, but by feelings. Therefore a statistic does not come to the truth, it drives away from it.
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