Author: Alastair Scott
Date: 11:18:37 09/22/02
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On September 22, 2002 at 11:05:47, Peter Skinner wrote: >People just take a step back and think. If _you_ were to write a chess program, >improved it's play to where _your_ program was beating the best this sport has >to offer, would you not "tell it on the mountain"? I sure as hell would, and I >know others would as well. That is something, as Robert said, someone would have >known about. NO ONE seems to know anything but how to say wait for a statement, >biography of the author, or even a release of the engine. That to me smells like >a rat. If it smells like it... It might seem out of place in the era of shouting trivial achievements from street corners with the help of marketers and public relations shills, but some people don't like publicity. >To have a program pop out of no where and suddenly be the #1 program in the >world is just a tad to much. Hense the great amount of doubt surrounding it. >Not only do I find it hard to believe, I find it _very_ disrespectful of those >who are posting results for this _new_ engine that most consider totally false. Unlikely things are not impossible things ... occasionally. For example, Einstein had no university position and was working in the Swiss Patent Office (at a rather higher position than is usually assumed, it must be noted) when 'On the electrodynamics of moving bodies' 'popped out of nowhere'. In fact, if there was a sudden, spectacular advance in algorithms of whatever sort I would suggest there was a reasonable chance it would come from _outside_ the usual suspects, via someone who came new to the job (although generally technically competent) and discovered something which everyone else, through being too close to the problem for too long, had missed. Two other examples to chew on: the Palm Pilot, of which a descendant is a few feet away as I type, is a pretty telling example; probably hundreds of millions or even billions of pounds had been thrown away on various attempts over twenty years or so to produce handheld computers - then a tiny startup company 'got it right' through, in effect, reversing much of the received wisdom (such as perfect handwriting recognition being needed). Andrew Wiles' solution of Fermat's Last Theorem, which he kept quiet for ten years or so. (Some people suspected something was going on, but he was already known in the fields of mathematics which were considered likely to eventually provide a solution). Alastair
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