Re: Guessing?

On Jul 14, 10:47 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> JOG wrote:
> > On Jul 14, 9:30 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> >>JOG wrote:
>
> >>>On Jul 14, 6:53 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> >>>>JOG wrote:
>
> >>>>>On Jul 14, 5:45 pm, Marshall <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>>>>>On Jul 13, 9:07 am, JOG <j..._at_cs.nott.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> >>>>>>>>>The greatest weakness in the entire debate, however,
> >>>>>>>>>is the capacity issue. Lack of computing capacity is
> >>>>>>>>>a complete explanation for what computers can't do (yet.)
>
> >>>>>>><splutter/>
>
> >>>>>>>Ok, this one is just ridiculous. Lets take the bastion of good old
> >>>>>>>fashioned AI - chess. In the 90's the chess AI "deep blue" was
> >>>>>>>processing over 200 million board positions a second. That's right.
> >>>>>>>200 millions every single second. Let's compare that to a grand
> >>>>>>>master, who can examine about 8. Yup, that's 199,999,992 less
> >>>>>>>positions per second than the AI.
>
> >>>>>>Hey! You've been complaining about the other side's simplistic
> >>>>>>analyses, but here you're doing exactly the same thing. Deep
> >>>>>>Blue included special purpose hardware for playing chess, as
> >>>>>>well as dozens of general purpose CPUs. And you're claiming
> >>>>>>it's looking at 25 million times as many positions per second.
> >>>>>>Yet, Deep Blue lost to Kasparov, and Deeper Blue only just
> >>>>>>managed to eke out a victory. So, the 25 million number is
> >>>>>>crap, isn't it?
>
> >>>>>C'monnnn, its incredible. Examining 8 positions per second vs 200
> >>>>>million.
>
> >>>>I question your assertion. Perhaps consciously considering 8 positions
> >>>>per second, but obviously processing orders of magnitude more positions
> >>>>unconsciously.
>
> >>>There is nothing obvious about it, and as far as I know you are wrong
> >>>to question it. Both amateurs and grandmasters are thought to consider
> >>>(relatively) few moves, the advantage of the expert lying in memory,
> >>>pattern recognition and generalization (specifically visual-spatial),
> >>>not positions considered per second.
>
> >>But those are just ways to consider many positions per second.
>
> > Bollocks. In what bizarro world does not considering something =
> > considering it. You are confusing coming up with a good solution with
> > the strategy used to get there.
>
> How do you establish they were not considered?

I'll double team this and the other question. First, I'm obviously not a neurologist, so we're pushing the limits of my knowledge. However, I think some of the first evidence in that direction was research that found that if chess pieces were arranged randomly experts turned out to have no better memory retention than anyone else, and their play suffered equally (I think he the researcher was called Groot?). It was identified about the same time that grandmasters didn't view the whole board position but only sections, which they manage to generalize against previous situations. It's also been shown that grandmasters isolate potential moves incredibly quickly, and then spend a long time examining those options in detail. While none of this is proof, it is all evidence against a big search tree in our heads: isolation of potential moves seems too quick, and the need to extrapolate the candidates disproportionately long. The process appears spatial and not to use a descriptive representation at all. Unrecognized positions should not cause experts so much trouble if they are simply brute forcing through a game tree - and yet they do.

The theory also makes the prediction that those who don't have good spatial reasoning, would struggle at chess and this seems to be the case. Some even say this is borne out by the low proportion of female grandmasters.

I am, however, not allowed to have no opinion on this since I got married.

>
> >>>The question that should be asked therefore is how the grandmaster
> >>>manages to ignore the millions of possibilities that the chess
> >>>computer is too stupid to. Grandmasters don't have to process the
> >>>other millions of board positions because they don't even consider
> >>>them, period.
>
> >>Again, I question your assertion.
>
> >> I am happy to expand if you are interested even though
>
> >>>its OT. Regards, J.
>
> >>Sure. But how do you establish that the brain isn't doing processing
> >>unconsciously?
>
> Where is your expansion?
Received on Tue Jul 15 2008 - 00:30:34 CEST