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Subject: Re: SSDF and the programmers............

Author: Ed Schröder

Date: 15:03:15 03/18/98

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On March 18, 1998 at 13:13:34, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>
>On March 18, 1998 at 05:41:06, Ed Schröder wrote:
>
>>This is no joke. I checked the Rebel9 book learn software and I can
>>do it if I wish. This is crazy no? It's crazy because the 30-40 elo
>>improvement is counted as a gain of playing strength. That's what
>>the list implies or?
>>
>>And now the $64,000 question....
>>
>>Shall I?
>>
>>It's a cheat no?
>>
>>It's a cheat because it hides the REAL strength of an chess engine.
>
>Make a great learner.  I'll never accuse you of cheating.  You can
>promote it as the newest greatest feature in Rebel 10 and you won't hear
>a peep from me.
>
>Learners are great.  It's an area of computer chess that has been
>neglected but now has been brought back into play because of you guys
>competing with each other (trying to dick each other) on the Swedish
>list, and to a much lesser extent because of the success of Crafty's
>learner on ICC.
>
>A learner is as honest and useful as null-move search or what the
>germans call "permanent brain".
>
>If you don't have a learner, your domain is the single game.  Chess
>programmers have been competing in repeated instances of single games
>for years and years.  But this has always been a flaw in the computer
>approach.
>
>This "REAL" strength you speak of is incomplete and sadly limited.
>Innovation that goes beyond this is not cheating.
>
>The human approach is to try to improve your play, or at least avoid
>playing the same losing line N times in a row.
>
>It is an *advance* in the state of computer play when computers do the
>same thing.
>
>With a learner, your domain is the match.  You no longer have this
>utterly unrealistic spell of amnesia after every game, you can adapt to
>what your opponents hit you with.
>
>Add a learner that can handle with interrupted matches.  Furthermore,
>feel free to enhance it so it understands the traits of more than one
>opponent (not necessarily so that it knows that it is playing "Genius",
>but rather that it is playing "Bob" instead of "Fred").  This allows a
>program to go beyond the match domain, and enter the career domain.
>
>A related issue involves how the Swedish list people do testing.
>Perhaps the conditions under which these programs compete need to be
>more fully specified.  If there is a single entry for this wonderful new
>learning (if I convince you) "Rebel 10", there should be a single entity
>called "Rebel 10", and that entity should be able to benefit from
>experience gained by every game this entity plays.
>
>I don't know if it would be practical to do this, but the Swedish list
>folks need to take extra pains to run these matches fairly when there
>are programs that are operating within the domain of the match or career
>instead of the single game.
>
>And perhaps the programmers need to be involved by helping to specify
>the conditions under which their programs compete, and possibly by
>creating utilities that make the Swedish testers' jobs easier (for
>instance, by creating something that allows you to export your learning
>information, so one tester can email it to another tester who wants to
>run a match with your program).
>
>bruce


Thanks Bruce for your clear view on (book) learning.

So everything is allowed?

So maybe we should look in a different way to the SSDF. Quite confusing
for people I fear.

Introduce a new second "error margin"?
An error margin for learning? :))

- Ed -



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