Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 15:11:54 02/19/02
Go up one level in this thread
On February 19, 2002 at 17:16:12, José Carlos wrote:
>On February 19, 2002 at 13:27:25, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>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
>
> Yes, we all use those words. But I'm refferring to Thorsten post (below) about
>Chris' article (I'll snip some parts to point to the words I'm talking about):
>
>*************************************************************************
>
>The original Chris Whittington article about the new paradigm,
>alice and the mirror world of the looking glass, von manstein
>and tal (as you can see from the hardware and software used in
>this article, its a long time ago...):
>
>Complete Chess System 2 - TAL
>=============================
>
>Classical paradigm
>==================
>[...]
>They don't even know that they don't know
>=========================================
>[...]
>An intelligent program can calculate as part of its evaluation function
>whether a knight fork is available; thus the intelligent program has
>this knowledge distributed evenly over the entire search tree.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^
>[...]
>
>Dynamic knowledge v. Combinational knowledge
>============================================
>
>[...]
>12. Rxh6 { CCS2 needs only a few seconds thought to find this move }
> ^^^^
>[...]
>This game clearly shows the development and strength of the 'looking-glass'
>paradigm. Genius2, a classical program, seemed to have no idea of what
>was going on. CCS2 had dynamic knowledge of the strength of its attack from
>move 12 on, CCS2 knew from its evaluation function;
> ^^^^^^^^^^
>
>[...]
>Who will be the developer ?
>===========================
>[...]
>Search - the lazy programmer's way to avoid evaluating a position.
>==================================================================
>The new paradigm differs from the classical by one simple conceptual switch.
>The classical paradigm makes fast and simple evaluation at each node and
>generates intelligence from the search tree. The classical programmer
>looks for ways to make his search more efficient and his evaluation
>function simpler and faster. The 'looking-glass' paradigm makes slow and
>complex evaluations at each node and prefers to prune the search tree by
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^
>use of this evaluation function.
>[...]
>I estimate that the difference in nodes per second between and extreme
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>classical program and a 'looking-glass'
>program will be of the order of 20-30 times, sufficient to give the
>classical program an extra two plies of search (albeit with reduced
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>knowledge at the nodes). Thus the increased knowledge of the
>'looking-glass' program has to compensate for this apparently reduced
>search depth.
>[...]
>but our experience shows that
>once breakthrough (a knowledge o f sufficient chess themes to compensate
>for reduced search depth) occurs the looking-glass program begins to
>consistently outplay the classical programs.
>
>[this is interesting since it shows Chris was indeed concerned with results, not
>only with the romanticism of chess]
>[...]
>resulting in more efficient search - more possibilities of accurate forward
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>pruning, resulting in smaller search trees.
>^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>[...]
>
>B-Search or A-B-Search? - NO! Evaluation based or search based!
>===============================================================
>[...]
>The looking-glass programmer condemns this dichotomy as meaningless.
>The new paradigm makes the issue clear: chess programs either have simple
>evaluation and generate intelligence through search, or have complex
> ^^^^^^^
>evaluations and use limited search as a backup to cover oversights
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>and mistakes. All chess programs prune in one way or another, but
>^^^^^^^^^^^^ ==============================================
>looking-glass programs, with complex evaluation, are able to prune more.
>=======================================================================
>
>[...]
>
>***************************************************************************
>
> I think it's enough. My point is that Chris was relying on good eval smartly
>applied to reduce the search tree, on the no-need to see a material advantage to
>realize a 'immaterial' advantage (eval), on dynamic knowledge (eval)... But,
>after all, he searched a game tree like everybody else (almost).
>
> José C.
And he assumed that seeing a fork by evaluation rather than by search was
intelligence.
That's really narrow-minded.
Christophe
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