Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:52:57 06/21/01
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On June 21, 2001 at 19:06:54, Tapio Huuhka wrote: >I think cheating and fairness (below) are your terms, not mine. I don't think >I've used them and see no reason to do so. But I applaud to your great memory. >> Maybe I misinterpreted what you said. You said the computer violates some of the rules of chess. That is "cheating" by definition, since it is doing it in a secretive way. My memory is not "great". I know lots of players, rated higher and lower than myself, with better "book memory". I _really_ have problems chatting with Roman as he will give me 30 quick moves and then start talking about the resulting position while I am still trying to "catch up" mentally. If you have never talked with a GM, you _really_ don't understand the concept of "chess memory". :) They are absolutely astounding. They suck up chess moves like a giant vacuum cleaner and they seem to _never_ forget them. >> >As I said, it depends on how we define the boundary of the system. I have no >difficulty in defining the bounds of the human player to include books and the >rest of the culture of mankind, if I choose so. FIDE chose not to include those. No, but notice FIDE does not require a partial lobotomy to remove that part of your brain where you memorize opening theory lines. Which is about the same as removing the disk drive from the computer so that _it_ can't remember opening lines either. Of course we could stuff them in memory, but then we should probably remove those memory DIMMS as well... And then it would not be a computer and you would not be a "human" either... >Well, the computer with zero opening theory would not be much worse off than me, >for example. But I must say that I like my first comparison more. We get a >better perspective, if we try to compare within reason and not just to seek >contradictions. > >I rather like your sawmill idea. How would you teach the computer to know about >the sawmill? And how would you bother a computer with anything, really. A game >of chess doesn't chill it any. Just warms it up some. :) That is the main point. The computer would have no problem with the heat, dust and noise. The human would get killed by the distractions. As far as removing the book to be equal to you, do you play a GM or IM and insist that they don't use the opening moves they know by memory? :) >> >Should I say that you are quibbling? Of course we are talking about >abstractions. My abstraction pairs could be for example: > >books -- opening libraries and endgame tablebases >notes -- hashtables > >I'm sure you could find others. Speaking literally doesn't make much sense, >because chess programs and computers really don't play chess at all. Oh but they do. I can show you a machine that sets up the board, moves the pieces, senses your moves, and needs _no_ help whatsoever. That qualifies as "playing chess" in my book if it good enough to give me competition in a game I have played for a long time... > It's just >an abstraction. Poor things don't even know how to move the (real) pieces on the >board. They have to be operated (today I read that Stefan Meyer-Kahlen himself >is going to operate Pocket Fritz in the upcoming event against Leko and others.) Look at the 1978 match between David Levy and Chess 4.9... Chess 4.9 used a large robot mechanism to move pieces and punch the clock, totally with no human help. Sensors buried in the board (magnetic reed switches back then) detected David's moves.. Novag built a stand-alone chess board with a small robot arm that moved the pieces. Then we had the "phantom" that used a motorized magnet under the board to invisibly move the pieces... > >Yes, computers and humans are very different from each other and I'm glad they >are. I don't see any need for a common set of rules for them; perhaps because I >usually think that computers are just tools like saw and hammer. Useful, if we >know how to use them. > >But when the strength of chess playing computers is compared to that of humans, >I find it more than a little bit awkward to grant the computers "perfect" >opening and endgame knowledge not by learning, but by some external data. I >guess that the programmers themselves have learned more than their programs that >are just using the data available. That leaves just the middlegame to think of >and I presume that's not a very difficult comparison for the time being. I'm >sure that the play of computers will continue to improve and not just because of >better hardware. And they have been tremendous tools for chessplayers for some >time now. You need to talk to the right GM. The now deceased "kolty" was a favorite. He could read a page of MCO10, then recite it right back to you, move by move, footnote by footnote. AFter one reading. I had a junior college math teacher that could also do this. Used to sit at the front of the class, at his desk, close his eyes. and go over theorems and problems verbatim from the book. He would say "turn to page 277" and recite it just like he had a book in front of him. Perhaps by your definition he did... very "computer-like"?? :)
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