Author: Moritz Berger
Date: 14:25:28 04/14/98
Go up one level in this thread
On April 14, 1998 at 15:38:15, Fernando Villegas wrote:
>On April 14, 1998 at 12:35:44, Thorsten Czub wrote:
>
>>On April 14, 1998 at 02:58:08, Mats Winther wrote:
>>>Your view of chess is reductionistic since you think that every
>>>position can be solved by raw calculation. I am opposed to this view.
>>>
>>>Regards
>>>
>>>Mats
>>
>>Of course a materialist has a reductionistic point of view.
>>They really believe the Tarrasch way and think there is a best move.
>>They don't seem to understand the concept of maths anyway.
>>They still believe that formula's and laws can tell us anything about
>>the world outside. Not to talk about the world inside.
>>I thought "Le petit prince" is thaught in schools in our days. Isn't it
>>?
>>Strange. Even children understand that reductionism is nonsense... :-))
>
>
>Wait a little, Thorsten, before shooting at me so easy. After all, I am
>supposed to be the reductionistic guy...:-) I share with you the
>feeling that laws cannot tell us everything about the world, but here we
>are not talking of a wide, undefinite and infinite entity like universe,
>the dynamics of air or anything like that, we are talking of a closed
>problem with simple rules. We are talking of chess, not of the 41º
>simphony by Mozart. To use the artgument against reductionismo as you do
>is to be a reductionist of the worst kind.
<snip>
I fully subscribe to this last sentence: Thorsten's discrete (in the
mathematical sense of the word) view of the world is pure black and
white - either you're a materialist or you're like him, either you're a
motherson (according to him) or a fatherson (nice labels ...), either
it's a "smart and slow" chess program or a "dumb and fast searcher" [and
nothing in between, as if there weren't enough *slow and dumb* programs
around ;-)].
I think that this problem of polarized perceptions is the main theme of
this thread - we (all of us, speaking for myself) sometimes completely
lose our real world perspective, in the sense that the differences in
the methods employed by Fritz and Chess System Tal are in fact
incredibly small in the general picture of human chess players and
machines built upon a von Neumann architecture.
Funny enough, by striving to distinguish programs as much as possible
(and therefore exaggerating their respective characteristics) most
people seem to fail to provide detailed descriptions of specific chess
related motives which can be observed in the play of different programs
(of course this would be the most interesting but also the most daunting
task). Mats Winter did a good job (hey Mats, please stay!) by pointing
out exactly which moves by Fritz he didn’t like in some games he posted,
this way everybody could unterstand the quality of his statements and
take part in a debate about the actual games. Too sad that for some this
became again a black-or-white question of pro- and contra-Fritz and even
pro- and contra the person of Mats (something completely inappropriate
here if you ask me).
A contradiction in itself is e.g. when Thorsten (sorry Thorsten ... ;-)
- for fairness sake I shall add that most of us are sometimes in danger
of falling into exactly the same trap ...) states that "Fritz plays just
ugly chess" and in the next breath accuses everybody else of "just
counting results like 1-0 1/2-1/2 and 0-1" (and therefore being
MATERIALISTS (sic!)). Both statements ("ugly chess" and "1-0") obviously
do not sufficiently satisfy the goal of our quest to gain some real
insights about the marvelous and challenging chess opponents which I
think our computers have become just during the past decade. Getting
dogmatic and inflexible is always the worst sin and sometimes even leads
up to becoming both intolerant and intolerable to others (talking
strictly about myself). Respecting other opinions is the first step in
avoiding the aforementioned trap and even improving my own insight into
my own position (which might well have been wrong to begin with). Gee –
didn’t I really just do a great job of presenting myself as a 100 year
old grandpa full of biblical wisdom :-)))
An example of the quality of statements I would accept is to describe
the concept of CSTal to differentiate moves of "equal" quality (per
evaluation function) by one higher order term (aka TAL function). This
example BTW is also the kind of stuff we occasionally get from Thorsten
(I am trying make up for the remarks above ;-)). Another (albeit not
very specific) kind of statement I would like to read more often is of
the kind "program x utilizes its knowledge of the strength of good and
bad bishops, as you can see in the analysis of the following 10 selected
positions from GM and computer games".
Let’s go back to the roots of what this place is all about (the MAGIC of
chess), this might well be our key to the next level of enlightenment
;-))))
Your soon-to-be-101-years-old-grandfather-in-spe
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