Author: Komputer Korner
Date: 13:51:04 08/30/98
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On August 28, 1998 at 11:49:25, Fernando Villegas wrote: > >To Steven et al: >The recent post of a friend here proposing an improvement of 100% with “only” >fathering a chess program armed with two engines has made me think in how enough >lay people -like myself and many more- fall once and again in the old sin to >believe that what they does not know, then nobody knows. This does not happens >in the commons and known areas of science where the college or university >studies has learned us about the elementals, so we know we cannot discover them >again. And what is beyond the elementals, we know it is stuff only for >specialist to develop. >But nowhere chess programming is taught, being more a craft than a science. So, >apart from the smiths dedicated to it, nobody know nothing about it. Then, each >time a smart layman fall in love with this field, he sooner or later confound >his ignorance with a collective one and so also fall in the temptation to >rediscover the wheel and the powder. We tend to think that our ignorance mirror >a kind of waste land and very soon from that mistaken perspective we feel we can >save the industry with a new, genial idea that is old like time. We does not >perceive that it is of necessity that just any intelligent people that gives a >thought to an area of knowledge is entitled to discover the elementals of it, or >at least some of them. We don’t see that and so, amazed by our “intelligence”, >we go in a rush to communicate the discovery to the world. Today is dual >engines, tomorrow is piece tables, etc. >Sometimes this is funny. In my university times, when Marxism was the fashion, I >remember I tried to “refute” the Marxist theory of plusvalue and for that >purpose I dedicate a full evening, lying in bed, to thing economic problem from >scratch and then I wrote all that and I presented to my teacher, that laughed as >a mad: what I have done, he told to me, was to rediscover the principles of >Ricardian economy of the XVIII century, no more than that. And certainly with >that I was not going to refute nothing. I was lucky enough that he gave me a >good qualification after all. Not very differently is the behaviour of those >here that once and again thinks in something so bright as to evaluate with that >or this technique that is being applied since 1965. >So, what can be done to avoid these silly mistakes from all us, non chess >programmers? I propose to create a section, side by side with the poll, name >“catalog of invented ideas” where real chess programmer with a minute or two to >expend can go and write things like these: “dual engines exist since 1976 and >the inventor was Mr.... It did not work...”. Or longer and more detailed >accounts if they wish. At the end we, laymen, would have a long list of already >invented ideas not to be reinvented again and in the process to look at it we >could learn something. Even it may happen that armed in that way we could >expend our energies to something really new and maybe become useful for the >field. >Fernando If Bob Hyatt ever writes the definitive book on computer chess, and everybody reads it, we won't have this problem. -- Komputer Korner
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