Author: KarinsDad
Date: 08:51:44 01/07/99
Go up one level in this thread
On January 06, 1999 at 18:52:32, Don Dailey wrote: >On January 05, 1999 at 18:56:51, Fernando Villegas wrote: > >>Dear Chris: >>We does not need to speculate about what could happen IF Bill gates decides to >>make a run in the chess field. We already know what happens when you put >>toguether a very great amount of resources: critical mass appears and great >>jumps are the rsult. Manhattan proyect is an example: many phisicyst already >>knew about nuclear reactions et all, but it was needed a huge amount of money, >>personnel etc to make it work. That's the reason Germany was not capable, least >>Japan. >>In fact, even if Bill does not do anything about this, it is already happening, >>as in any industry once it has reached certain level of development. I think >>that Ed and Christophe venture is a sample of that. I am sure they have already >>discovered great ideas and new grounds for progress due to his colaboration. In >>any science or technology, when you put people to work toguether and gives them >>money enough, results begin to flow in mass. To think that the esential thing is >>personal creativity of this or that genius is somewhat naive. Truly genuses are >>badly needed when no organization and many tools and resoruces are present, but >>once organization exist, the accumulative work of high intelligences get more >>things that anything an isolated genius can get. >>besides, do not believe we have already reache a top level in chess programming. >>They are very primitive in the fact that, although they get results, the do that >>trought a kind of accumulated practical wisdom in the same sense alchemist got >>things trought many years of practice. A great research team with money to spare >>could get a fundamental jump in terms of creating a real AI chess engine instead >>of what we have now, just a machine that run a list of specific routines that >>works fine toguether in the most unscientific way, just adding weights and >>testing the mix with thousands of games. Alchemy, again. >>Anf , of course, don be deceived by the apparent trivial meaning of "just" going >>from 2600 to 2700 or even 2650; it is a great jump and you as master know it. If >>a great reasearch team can do it, IT will be a wonderfull jump. >>fernando > > >Fernando, > >I hear what you are saying, but I tend to feel that more people often >just get in the way. Most projects, even great big ones tend to be >the result of a single vision, often by a single person who is able >to inspire the team. When a project requires huge amounts of manpower, >then numbers really count, such as building a new O/S. If I was a >millionaire and could hire any number of people to write the strongest >possible chess program, I think what I would probably do is hire >many people and let them work independantly and under their OWN ideas >and inspiration. Then I would take the strongest one. It's a case >of 2 heads are not really better than one! Actually, 2 heads are almost always better than one. This has been proven. To illustrate it, years ago a quality team at a company I was working at got the quality team (8 of us) and about a dozen high level managers together to take the Artic Survival Test. Lowest score is best. I had a score of 24. The next best score was 63 out of 19 people (which says a lot about the decision making ability of management, but we won't go there). The second part of the test is to have everyone take the test together (this is done before any scoring on the first part of the test). The score dropped to 15. My point is that if you get a bunch of people together (good thinkers or not), you can almost always come up with a better set of ideas than with an individual. Even Bob has said that the good old days were before the commercial chess programs where you would go to a tournament and everyone would brag on how they had improved their program from the year before. That sharing of information is what got Bob and others to the level where they are today (look at the advantages of the Internet). I think that a lot of people are closed minded when it comes to their evaluation of how well other people can succeed. A single individual will almost always stagnate after a while without the stimulous of the ideas from other people. Just look at the middle ages where people purposely kept apart and advances slowed to a crawl. > >I think the numbers will work to increase the odds that you happen to >get the best single individual. Also, if you have more than one head >working on new innovations and discoveries, the more the merrier. But >if you got 100 good microsoft employees together and told them to >write the worlds strongest chess program, you would be sorely disappointed >I'm afraid. > >I have this idea that if you put all the worlds best chess programmers >together in a room, and didn't let them out until they came up with >something that would crush anything else out there, they might never >come out of this room! Most of the best work and ideas would end up >comming from 1 or 2 of the programmers anyway, and most of the sum >total of knowledge would be highly redundant (there will not be a single >programmer in the group that knows much more about computer chess than >the others, assume they are all top people.) > >And if they were forced to write a single program (not the best approach) >then they are all constrained at many if not most steps to use someone >elses idea. I would even bet that the whole project would be a big >compromise kludge and the final product WEAKER than the best single >effort. > >It could turn out however that a single individual would emerge to be >the directing force behind such a project. If this "leader" turned >out to be a great engineer, then he might be able to take all the talent, >and produce a fine product, using the best ideas from the group and >putting some clear direction to the work. This is not easy because >the best ideas may not be recognized and there will be much disagreement >about which approach would work best. > >It may have a lot to do with whether you view such things as science >or art! I think most creative programming is an art, after all a >program is a written work of sorts and takes some of the very same >skills in my opinion. I can't imagine getting 100's of painters >together and expect to get a great work better than anything else >ever painted! > >But the strongest evidence is to look at Windows95 itself. It's like >this huge swiss army knife, not good at anything, but perfectly adequate >at everthing. It's certainly NOT a work of art, and I can imagine that >there must have been thousands of ideas tossed around, rejected, argued >over and eventually voted on and compromises certainly taken. Microsoft >is not really a software company so much as a marketing company and >acquirer of software. The approach microsoft would use would be to >find out who has the best program, and make them an offer. You are comparing an OS with a Chess program? There isn't an OS on the planet that isn't like a huge swiss army knife (although NT and Next were designed fairly well). They are SO complex and SO large that it seems unlikely that anyone will ever get the resources together ever again to create a new one (does anyone see Pink going anywhere?). Microsoft did not acquire NT (nor Windows 95). They acquired the services of OS engineers from other companies (such as Cutler) to create it. Yes, some of the ideas (and even some small portions of some of the code) have come from other companies (via their ex-employees), but the largest portion of NT was created by Microsoft. This concept of "Microsoft buys everything" is vastly distorted. Acquistion is a great way to get into a niche market, but it does not guarantee success all on it's own. That takes work. KarinsDad > >Gnuchess is the same, it's a big common project and a lot of great >programmers have put some work into it, including even Ken Thompson. >But I think most of the programmers that worked on gnuchess have >stronger programs themselves that they authored alone! > > >- Don
This page took 0.02 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.