Author: Terry McCracken
Date: 20:03:57 03/16/01
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On March 16, 2001 at 14:07:43, Dann Corbit wrote: >On March 15, 2001 at 23:13:20, Terry McCracken wrote: >[snip] Dan I agree in part but not in whole. I see it more in an opposite light. I don't believe this is a proper conclusion to a very very advanced scientific project. It reminds me of the Apollo Project cut off as it was just getting interesting. It still will take many more years before we go back, let alone to Mars. FWIW, I think the Hubble project is a trillion times more interesting than a bag of rocks from the moon. And the next generation space telescope even more so. On the other hand, I do think space exploration is interesting. Is it interesting enough to send someone to Mars for another bag of rocks at a cost of 100 billion dollars? I also think that a mission to Mars is something that could possibly exterminate the human race, so I'm not entirely convinced it is a great idea to go there and carry stuff back. If there are Martian microbes, we certainly would not have any immunity against them. The Hubble would'nt exist if there had been no Space Race, No Man on the Moon, and his bag of about 660lbs. of moon rocks in total if I'm not mistaken. Telescopes are great and are important but don't replace space exploration, not even the Hubble or the ISS. Although the ISS may help put us back on the moon and finally Mars. The Hubble is great don't get me wrong, it teaches us much and compliments space exploration, but it does not fill that void which only persuing true hands on space travel can do. JPL has done much with robotics and probes but it cannot and will not replace man in space. It can do much and we can learn from these manless excursions through the solar system, but in the final analysis it really opens doors and paves the way to Manned Space Flight. Yes, going to Mars is worth 100 billion dollars, even a 1 trillion if that's what it takes! As far as microbes from mars wiping us out of existance, that is very very unlikely. First there is little chance that any life exists on mars today, maybe 2 billion years ago life lived in shallow seas on mars but that is long gone. If there is any life at all left on mars it would likely be underground and if we brought samples back and it had life do you think that we would go unprepared for such an event? That would be a great bonus to find and return any extraterestial life, and microbes from the red planet would gives us data for many decades to come on our solar system, and our own home world to examine. There would be stringent protocols to follow and it would be most unlikely these microbes, if they exist and we return them will get into our ecosystem. If they did I agree it could spell great trouble, but this is remote. I'm more concerned on what man is doing to the ecosystem from pollution, to high-tech genetic engineering, which is a far greater threat to our survival. Yes I agree to a point with many of your points!;) But much more needs to be done to bring chess to a true GM and WCC level. This was not accomplished and I'm not in a dream world I assure you. > I have no arguments with this point. But creating 10 million dollar machines is not the answer. We are talking about a game, after all. We're not solving one of the deeper problems of mankind by coming up with an engine that can beat Kasparov and Anand. According to IBM that is _exactly_ what they are trying to prove! Machines that can solve problems too complex for most of us, and to a degree all of us in the future. From new tailored made drugs the total understanding of DNA in man, to resolving complex theorms to building spaceships, and the list goes on. Facts about Deep Blue and strength and how far it could be taken have been left to debate, which means far more work needs to be done to make this "Science" rather than fancy "Technology" with a large array of tricks to succeed in beating Kasparov. That might even be the best part of it. Here it is, 4 years after the fact and it still comes up in conversation on a daily basis. If we had a certain answer to all the questions would is still be like that? I doubt it. On the other hand, I want to know the answers, even if knowing them is not going to promote interest in more research. Yes Kasparov behaved poorly and that truly was a shame, a " Dark Day " for Kasparov and the rest of the chess world. He's the main culprit! Sigh.... He's suppose to be an example after all! But he's human and caved in to suspicions, conjecture etc. I am harsh towards Kasparov, but (on the other hand) I suspect that many, many great chess players might have reacted similarly. I don't think that anyone on the planet can imagine the tremendous pressure he was under. It was a sort of "John Henry" thing with literally billions of eyes watching. He lost due to psychological factors not that Deep Blue could out play him in _normal_ match settings. I don't think anyone knows for sure why he lost. Maybe purely outplayed. Maybe purely freaked out. Maybe some wild combination of factors. At any rate, both Kasparov matches are without question the most famous chess matches ever to have occurred on the planet. They were the most interesting chess matches ever. Yes for man vs machine, but not let us forget Fischer vs Spassky 1972!:) Actually most only remeber the re-match and Deep Blue won. History only remebers the winners for the most part. It *would* be wonderful to have Deep Blue to play with and do whatever experiments we would like. But, from a business standpoint, it really does not make sense for IBM to do that. Remember why they did it in the first place. IBM is a business, and they are in the business of making money. They have stockholders who want to see a return on their investment. Here at CCC, we might not mind if we held $100,000 of IBM stock and they spent millions of dollars fiddling with chess games. But 99.99% of the world's population would not think that way if they held IBM stock. If IBM spends a big plug of money on something, the stockholders (justifiably) want to see some kind of a return. In other words, the board of IBM owes it to those who pay the bills to react in exactly the way that they did. Well it would have been different if Kasparov won would it not? Do you think they would have pulled the plug? Of course not! But they did win and yes they did stand a great chance of losing money with a third re-match. Very unfortunate. Still this article says maybe not? September 2, 1997 IBM announces improved chess-playing supercomputer. After its Deep Blue chess-playing computer defeated human world chess champion Gary Kasparov in a closely watched match in May, the pioneering computer company decided to make the machine even faster and stronger. On September 2, IBM announced that its RS/6000 SP model, a parallel supercomputer, was now 58 percent faster thanks to a new microprocessor and some software refinements. Kasparov was not available for comment. I wish I knew more than that but I don't. Here's the source. http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/september/02/index.page Terry McCracken
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