Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 10:27:25 02/19/02
Go up one level in this thread
On February 19, 2002 at 09:24:07, José Carlos wrote:
> As it has been brought up again and I didn't give my opinion in the past, I'd
>like to say what I think about all of that.
> In times of Fritz 2/3, Chris was against this fast-dumb philosophy. He
>proposed, and then implemented, something that was meant to be in the opposite
>side, this is, slow-smart. This was his 'new paradigm' then. And it seems
>nowadays that top programs are joining the not-so-fast-but-smarter philosophy,
>so he was right.
> The users have normally a very different point of view than the programmers.
>Programmers _know_ that any program (not only chess ones) is nothing but a
>secuence of mathematical calculations. In the very end, some 1's and 0's and the
>hardware they 'dance' in.
> But the users tend to see the program as if it was a person. Tend to used
>words like 'creativity', 'aggresiveness', 'passiveness', and so on. Programs
>don't have those characteristics, they only _seem_ to have some of them. But as
>I said, in the end, it's nothing but a mathematical calculation that choses this
>or that move. Believing that a program can be 'creative' is like believing that
>it rains because the clouds are sad and cry: poetry, romanticism, creation of
>myths.
> Don't get me wrong, I don't say I like nor dislike poetry, that's not the
>topic I'm trying to discuss (actually, I'm a lover of Tal's art), what I'm
>saying is that that don't apply to computers. That's all.
> After that, Thorsten, with his passionate and human point of view, created a
>myth around this new paradigm, seeing in CSTal games things he had never seen in
>other programs games, and though they happened for reasons they didn't. And I
>understand him for doing that, it's difficult to resist.
> But when I read Chris' post, I read the key words 'tree', 'prunning',
>'search', 'nodes', ...
Are you sure you are talking about the right Chris?
I often use the above words in my posts.
Chris Whittington (author of Chess System Tal) almost never does.
Christophe
> Those words prove he was doing exactly the same:
>searching a game-tree. He might use a different algorithm; he might use
>different heuristics; whatever else. But after all, he's doing the same, find a
>path in a game-tree.
> I think it is good to distinguish between fast-dumb and slow-smart, and that
>they can be cosidered two paradigms in computer chess programming, at least, two
>schools (I don't know if this direct translation is correct in english). But
>magic doesn't exist. It's all about 1's and 0's...
>
> José C.
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