Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re:Chess darwinism

Author: Fernando Villegas

Date: 08:28:12 11/30/99

Go up one level in this thread


Hi S:
You are right. That is what has happened. We have here a case of evolution
according strictly to Darwin theory. Being the elo score of the programs the
equivalent of a kind of Survival Quoficient -in the market, to begin with-,it is
clear that full scale competition has produced an increase of the factor
conducting to victories againts other computers and, by the same token, a
diferentiation as "population of chess programs" from the "human population of
chess player". So we are by now different races that use to compete sometimes,
but cannot be compared. You can ever imagine a figt between the most diverse
animals and some of them could get the victory, but from that you cannot compare
his respetive Survival quoficients.
The variation in this issue respect to Darwin theory is that, in this case,
these different populations compete for the same ecological niche. But when this
happens and one race win, who is the best? Darwin never thought that competiton
was a case of open fight, as lay people think it is. It is matter of victory in
reproduction between variations of he same race. Only so there is a common
ground to compare and determinate he very concept of fittness. If not so, it can
happen that the most primitive but better armed competitor can get the ground
without "deserving" it.
It is the case each time a proram beats one of us, say. an exdpert player like
me or maybe you. You understand a lot better chess, you have better ideas, you
have better positional understanding but even so the bloody program can get you
because you did not see a piece in prise. So, what has been teste here? A
superiority of the chess program in Chess or just you have got another proof of
he known fact human commit silly mistakes? Just a thought..
Fernando



This page took 0 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.