Author: Dave Gomboc
Date: 14:05:13 08/11/99
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On August 11, 1999 at 16:10:17, Ratko V Tomic wrote: > > In the computer chess world, Botwinnik was > > a complete fraud. > >Well, it's true he didn't have a full blown program, much >less a competitive one. He was probably too old to learn >enough to do it himself, and the folks he got to help him >weren't perhaps up to task and certainly didn't have an >adequate hardware and software (did you see the fortran >dumps in his book, it's a sad sight). He had adequate software to do something. PARADISE didn't storm the world, but David Wilkins did get some real results, even if in the end he went on to other things. I was reading some of his stuff earlier today. It's still interesting to me. >But his ideas on multilayered control, interactions >and job partition between layers, his field of play >construct, etc are deep and farsighted ideas, well >ahead of their time and the current levels of programming >techniques. When I first read his book on his Pioneer >project some years ago, it seemed like nonsense. But, >the more I accumulated knowledge and ideas on chess >programming, the better his vision looked. It's a kind >of work which grows on you, as you revisit it over years. > >Obviously, someone entangled deeply with the latest >game tree searching tricks, would not appreciate it, >thus I am not surprised at the general reaction he >received in the chess programming circles. Expecting >otherwise would be like hoping that a kid flipping >the burgers at McDonnalds would appreciate an advice >from a world class French chef. He would say that the >chef is a fraud in the fast food business. 1. We're flipping healthy -- if pedestrian -- meals, not greasy burgers. 2. Anyone waiting for him to serve a meal would have starved to death. >But the chess programming field evolves, too, and some >day they and the hardware and the software technology >will catch up with that kind of approach. Brute force >can go only so far, even in such a tiny domain (relative >to the real world) as chess playing. At least for the >domain of chess, his work has mapped out a concrete and >sound long term strategy how one might implement it. I thought his work was cool long before I found out to what extent it was a forgery. In fact, I still think that it's cool. But given its lack of success, I don't think it is sensible to extoll its virtues and simultaneously denigrate ideas that actually have been shown to work effectively. Dave
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