Author: Robert Henry Durrett
Date: 16:04:32 09/06/98
Everybody has read or heard about how the top chessplayers can almost instantaneously spot similarities, in the position on the chess board, with positions they have encountered before and how they can recall the plans that worked before thereby giving them a big head start in the current position. But pattern recognition is not limited to GMs, nor even to chess. Someone once said that pattern recognition forms the basis for language, if I recall correctly. For example, if you hear the word "recognition," for example, and then try to recall the exact dictionary definition(s)of that word, you probably will not remember. But, that doesn't keep one from using that word in a conversation. There is a combination of recalling the thought you are trying to express and recognizing that it is similar to a thought you encountered in the past. You recognize that the word "recognition" was associated with that thought. You then leap to the use of the word "recognition" in the sentence you are verbalizing. This all happens very fast, and mostly at the subconscious level. Compare the two cases. In the first case, a GM is in a chess game, sees a position, and recognizes the need for a "plan.' [In the second case, the person is in a conversation and "sees" the need for a word.] Then, in the first case, there comes an awareness of a similarity. [the same is true in the second case.] Etceteras. So, pattern recognition is used in the above two cases, but in many many other ways in our daily lives as well. Now, recall the problem with defining the word "combination." When you hear this word, the mental process of searching, subconsciously, for memories when this word was used before conjures up images &/or thoughts. But, and this is the important part, these images/thoughts are FUZZY. Only after doing some thinking [mostly consciously]will a verbalized "definition" be produced. But if the idea being verbalized is fuzzy, then so too will be the definition. To generalize, I believe that most of the chess words in our chess vocabularies are inherently fuzzy when we first think about them. If someone says the word "combination" to us, we will probably almost instantly start recalling combinations we have seen in the past. These will be fuzzy as a rule. [Incidentally, this "recalling" is NOT cognitive thought. It is more like a downloading from memory into the conscious mind [the "CPU" if you will.] The fact is that coming up with an airtight definition takes quite a bit of conscious thought. It is not easy. [Assuming we have not rote memorized a definition.] So now, do we impose our fuzzy thinking and fuzzy "definitions" on our chess engine and try to encode them into the computer programs?
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.