Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 12:41:28 05/22/98
This one seem to be an eternal discussion, with some friends here stuck to his first positions without taking a look at the reasonable things that other points. Discussion is also prolonged by the effect of badly defined terms, confusion, etc. So let me clear a couple of things so far my understanding on this matter goes: a) Knowledge is not a universal, homogeneous thing, but a relation between a thinking device and the environment. Depends, then, of the nature of the first. Dogs, cats, monkeys and human beings has knowledge not only different in degree but in kind. And all of them are necessary and efficient for the sake of the purposes of monkeys, dogs, etc. The same for computer chess devices should apply. NOT necessarily our knowledge based in general positional concepts and simple enunciation of past experience -the so called opening theory- is what computer needs. As much as they thinks crunching great numbers, so knowledge for them should be a very different thing that our system of signals post. b) To exclude something in the analysis of a problem, this or that piece of knowledge, is in itself a kind of knowledge, in fact, the essential knowledge. In maths-test it is used a device called “distracting” precisely to evaluate the capability of the student for grasping the essential of the problem and reject the unnecessary data and principles. A guy that is messing around with unnecessary data or trying to use Euclidean theorems to solve a termodynamic problem is showing total lack of understanding. c) The speed of a program is in itself a measure of knowledge in computer terms. Is very simplistic to see speed as a thing-as-such or as a “das ding an sich” in Katinan terms: this is for Thorsten :-) and independent of knowledge. You do with great speed what you know well. That is called “mastery” in any art or craft. It involves that a cluster of efficient proceedings are being used to discard unrelevant issues on the run.. Fernando
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.