Author: Dave Gomboc
Date: 11:37:26 08/11/99
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On August 11, 1999 at 09:21:53, Ratko V Tomic wrote: >> You are misunderstanding.... it is _not_ a mobility issue. >> Because at the next ply, the best move is to take the >> promoted piece, no matter what it is. But if the promotion >> is a check, that drives the entire line one ply deeper >> than it if is not... > > >No, I understood why a typical program makes such decision. >You gave a good initial example. What I was saying is how >a tiny bit of common sense reasoning about causes and >effects, operating at the level above the tree searcher >code, could help program realize that its choice =R >instead of =Q cannot be right (that it is an artifact >of the particular imperfect criteria for the search >cutoff). > >What the chess programs could use is a hierarchical >decision system, such that a higher level decision >modules can guide and check on the lower level modules >(which tend to get buried in the their trees, unable >to see the forest). That's why human organizations are >designed hierarchically, since the low level guy cannot >be counted on to see well the forest while busy with >his little details. > >Current programs, seem to throw in the so-called >"knowledge" down at the low level, at the leafs >of the search tree, which means it has to be primitive. >The decisions are made by the hypertrophied tree >traverser, who seems to forget that it is traversing >only a tiny fraction of the full tree. It behaves as >if it knows it all. In real world, this would be like >some data processing nerd in a company making decisions >for the whole company because computer says so. The analogy of minimax search to how human organizations operate is flawed in more than one way. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to why. >Botvinnik (among a few) had the right idea on structuring >the decision making and at which level the chess knowledge >and reasoning should go. Unfortunately, his hardware was >much slower and had less RAM and disk than my kids' spelling >checkers or "game boys", so they couldn't implement it well. >(His dull exposition style didn' help either in bringing in >others with resources.) Hopefully someone will eventually >pick up where he left off. In the computer chess world, Botwinnik was a complete fraud. You'd do well to find a better representative of your case. I recall a funny shot posted here on CCC once, when someone had posted that Botwinnik's son was going to continue his research. Bruce Moreland said something to the effect that it could become the first instance of multi-generational vapourware. :-) If Botwinnik's goal was to build a strong chess-playing program with the computational resources that were available to him, it is in hindsight obvious that he did not have "the right idea", as you put it. Dave
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