Author: Rolf Tueschen
Date: 09:50:08 04/17/05
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On April 16, 2005 at 10:50:01, Mike Byrne wrote: >For an uninteresting topic , you posted long reply. It is interesting idea that >you mention this "scintific experiment" belief that you believe Kasparov held >about the match. I attended Game 6 in Phildadelphia in 1996. After the winning >the game and match , he talked at length to the 500_ attendees about his feeling >regarding the games and the match. He repeatedly refer to the match as an >"experiment" and as a science endevaor. > >But he would be naive to think that the IBM team was not interested in winning. >Note I refernce the IBM team and not the IBM Corporation. IBM was getting >tremendous corporate PR from these events. They were covered worldwide , their >Deep Blue webpages were getting millions of hits per day during the matches. >They were "winning" whether Deep Blue won or lost. But as soon as Kasparov >accused the IBM team of potentially cheating in the match, that would have >turned the IBM Corporate executives and PR types totally against any further >involement with Kasparov period. The one thing worse than no PR is bad PR. The >accusations were bad PR for IBM and that is what killed any possible rematches. >They had a great thing that could have gone on for years if Kasparov was not so >careless in his unfounded accusations. I see what makes it so difficult to get why Kasparov's accusations weren't unfounded at all. Simply because the meaning of the term science is almost unknown in sport and hobby fields. In sports it doesn't matter how you win. It's only important that you win. In science however we know such terms as artefakt or insignificant results. In science it plays a great role if the result can be linked with the causing variables you could control as leader of the whole experiment. A result caused outside of your realm isn't meaningful. In other words, in this specific experiment about the strength of a machine playing chess, you can't win anything by just confusing the human opponent with all kind of tricks and secrecies. Because then you didn't prove the superiority of the machine in chess, but the inferiority of the human chess player in front of tricky designs meant for a short 6-games event. The letal stroke to the whole concept of endless shows between MAN and MACHINE wasn't Kasparov's accusations but the overactivities of the human team behind the machine. Instead of winning ugly the team could have better taken the challenge for a slow evolution of the machine's strength. SUch a design would STILL be highly fascinating the whole chess world. The effects of an "ugly" win are clear. Everybody knows that even DB II wasn't a chess monster but a dumb crafty machine. And a player like Kasparov should beat such a machine left-handedly. His loss doesn't speak for the machine but against his suspicious mind. But that doesn't falsify Kasparov's true convictions (see the reports in several ChessBase Magazines). The weaknesses of the machines (in 1997) normally were important enough so that super GM should have won. Kasparov however granted the machine several handicaps and to his surprise he lost the match. THat's all. The original question "Who's stronger" is still open even today. I have a good metaphor for this: MAN always has a QUEEN more on the board but almost always MACHINE wins in human ZEITNOT. This is the same cheating as in the famous wrestling shows in the USA. There the question who really is stronger doesn't matter either. So, no, you are wrong - it was IBM itself, who destroyed the everlasting golden series of fun events and a huge mass of dollars. IBM and Hsu will always be remembered for the cheating and ugly winning in chess. Not for the best chess. Even in show events chess players have a basis of honor. A chessplayer can grant a point to the VIP in simuls but he doesn't want to lose his "face". The point is that you can lose your face in winning (ugly). That is a lesson, IBM couldn't understand. And many supporters in the USA with them...
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