Author: José Carlos
Date: 10:01:08 06/13/01
Go up one level in this thread
On June 13, 2001 at 11:49:04, Mark Young wrote: >On June 13, 2001 at 06:30:04, José Carlos wrote: > >>On June 13, 2001 at 03:42:41, Bruce Moreland wrote: >> >>>On June 12, 2001 at 23:56:26, Terry McCracken wrote: >>> >>>>Many IM's and GM's have felt the teeth of these and many other programs like >>>>Fritz, Junior, Tiger etc. >>>> >>>>However, it's true they lose to much lower rated players, even to me >>>>sometimes!;) >>> >>>Humans have a hard time coping with this. >>> >>>A human who plays chess is an apple. A computer that plays chess is not an >>>orange, but it's not quite an apple, either. You can compare them, but not >>>perfectly. >>> >>>A ludicrous example: Compare an unarmed human with a tank. A tank can blow up >>>a house at a range of over a kilometer, and can survive machine gun fire, >>>whereas an unarmed human cannot blow up a house at a range of even one meter, >>>and would fare badly against machine gun bullets. >>> >>>On the other hand, there are ditches that a tank cannot get out of, while a >>>human might have an easy time with these ditches. >>> >>>You can't deny the tank its strengths just because there's a ditch a human can >>>handle better. >>> >>>End of ludicrous example. Computers are getting better at being uniformly >>>strong, but they are not now, and will probably never be, perfect human analogs. >>> There will always be the possibility that a weak human player can say "duh" to >>>one of these machines -- sometimes. >>> >>>bruce >> >> Everytime this kind of argument arises, I have the same impression: There's a >>problem of definition. What do we call 'GM strength'? >> >> A. If we speak of 'quality' of chess (whatever this can mean), most chess >>players will probably agree to one of these possibilities: >> A.1. Computers are not GM strength because they show lack of understanding >>too many times to be considered GM's. >> A.2. Computers and humans do not compare (like the soldier and the tank). >> >> B. If we speak of 'quantities' (namely ELO rating), we can certainly compare >>humans and programs, and say _with numbers_ if programs perform like GM's or >>not. >> >> So, as long as we don't specify the definition of 'GM strengh', there will be >>discussions comparing apples with oranges. > >There can be no other definition then ELO. > >We don’t consider GM Kasparov or GM Fischer the strongest grandmaster because of >the beautiful games they produced, even though they produced many, but so has >many other grandmasters. We consider them the best because of the Elo ratings >they generated, meaning wins, losses, and draws. > >There is on other measure in chess. You don’t get points for beauty, only for >wins and draws. Yes there is. Actually _there are_. In chess, you can measure a lot of things. Tactical ability, endgame mastery, opening knowledge, strategycal smartness, etc... The ELO rating is only one measure, but not the only one. For example, there's no ELO for Lasker, Capablanca, Rubinstein. How then do you know how strong they were? If chess was only a sport, the ELO would be strength measure with no doubt. But chess is... art? science? so many things... :) Seriously, we need to state clearly what definition of 'GM strength' we are using to have reasonble discussions. José C.
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