What reasonable support do you want? Grandmasters *have*
been questioned and observed. It *is* know what they do
(examine just a few number of moves), we don't know how
exactly they select the moves to examine. What they certainly
do know is that they don't examine all the positions a computer
examines. And there's a simple proof: take a random grandmaster,
playing a random game. Measure the time it takes to make a
move. The average of those times is less than 50 years. qed.
There's no magic, handwaving or naysaying going on.
Just because you don't know everything doesn't mean you cannot
exclude everything. Suppose I know X was in a house. I don't
watch the house, but I do watch the road going south from
the house. Now, X is no longer in the house. According to
your reasoning saying "I don't know where X went, but I know
he didn't go south" is not a proof or reasonable support,
but merely naysaying of something, because I don't know where
X went.
But have you presented any proof or reasonable support that
how computers play chess has any similarity to how humans do?
Abigail | [reply] |
we don't know how exactly they select the moves to examine. What they certainly do know is that they don't examine
How do we know this? We don't. We know that they are not concious of the operation going on -- but neither are we concious of the operation of walking. This does not mean that walking somehow occurs without some form of decision making. Whether this decision making is subconcious, proto-receptors, muscular memory, etc it does occur and is still a set of heuristic rules for what to do.
These rules are easily observable in a computer as well as the processing of them.
Just because you don't know everything doesn't mean you cannot exclude everything. Suppose I know X was in a house. I don't watch the house, but I do watch the road going south from the house. Now, X is no longer in the house. According to your reasoning saying "I don't know where X went, but I know he didn't go south" is not a proof or reasonable support, but merely naysaying of something, because I don't know where X went
No, you have proof that X did not come south. You do not, in any way at all, have proof that no heuristically based decision making process is going on when a grandmaster immediately prunes his decision tree. You simply have the statement that you don't know what happens.
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I think you two are basically arguing over whether the glass is half full or half empty, while the glass in question sits unseen in a locked box in an IBM research park. It is unquestionably true that humans are not performing a complete and exhaustive search down the tree of possible outcomes. The short-term memory buffer limitations of people (even in grandmasters who have greater STM chunking abilites in this domain due to practice) see to that. To the extent that Deep Thought relies on such an approach, then Deep Thought is "un-AI-ish". Now, as you point out, Deep Thought does use strategies for pruning the tree; otherwise it would be unmanageable, even for a supercomputer. Still, within that tree, it still can run through comparisons to a degree so far above that of humans (e.g., without any such thing as STM loss during the comparison process), that this "innate skill" doubtlessly contributes a lot to its ability to play well. Which doesn't sound like human players. Though the tree-pruning part does.
If Abigail's point is just the second sentence back, then he's right. If your point is the following sentence, then you're right, too.
Personally, I'd be interested in seeing a detailed analysis of the importance of the strategies vs. what I've called the "skills" of D.T. towards its ability to play well, vis-a-vis human data and well-supported theories on human chess performance. Including a comparison of what you might call "memory-handicapped" versions of D.T. vs. human players. I don't know if any of this sort of thing has ever been published, but I kind of doubt it.
-- Frag.
--
"It's beat time, it's hop time, it's monk time!"
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If you're just going to ditch all research and studies done
with good chess players (and it really isn't all that hard
to ask "did you study the position you'd get after playing a3"
to a player), why even bother writing a response?
Abigail
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