Author: Serge Desmarais
Date: 16:38:05 09/06/98
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On September 06, 1998 at 19:04:32, Robert Henry Durrett wrote: >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? If I remember right Hitech was using a kind of pattern recognition to play chess? Maybe just for the endings? Serge Desmarais
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