Author: Sune Fischer
Date: 03:17:17 05/21/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 20, 2002 at 20:00:21, Albert Silver wrote: >>>In 20 years, the hardware is only 350 MHz (software writers are running short of >>>ideas to continue improving software that exploits the ever DECREASING hardware >>>limits) and the machines must be custom made since no one really makes such >>>absurdly slow processors anymore. Even the latest Casio wristwatch goes faster >>>than that! BUT, we can STILL beat the machines. Ah!... >>> >>>Looks and sounds terribly silly doesn't it? That's where it would lead to. If >>>you limit the hardware to not allow a performance beyond a certain point, what >>>exactly are you achieving? >>> >>> Albert >> >>What I achieve is an improvement in the software and an interesting competition. > >First of all, software improvements will happen independently of handicapping or >not the hardware. Second of all, machines don't compete, they perform. I've been >using this example up and down this thread and I'll reiterate it here: if you >race a motorcycle, you may be competing against the bike, but the motorcycle is >certainly not *competing* agaist you. I don't understand your reason for not wanting to call it a competition. It is a competition between the brute force method of computers and the chess understanding of humans. If you allow the programs to use a very large book, a book mind you that contains lines founded by the greates human chessplayers in history, it is _not_ the computer playing those moves. The computer hasn't "found" these move but are merely playing from a book, even a child of 8 could play a solid opening against Kasparov if you gave him a book. This ruins the race in a sense, because which ever humans playes the computer is actually playing against the greates grand masters of history, and not against the brute force algorithms of a chess program. This means the "competition" is not pure in the sense it was meant to. However, I know all the counter arguments; humans memorize too, computers are just better at it. The whole discussion about why computers shouldn't be allowed to utilize their huge memory, when this _is_ one of their biggest forces is just absurd. What does it mean to write a program, you didn't build the computer, you didn't write the compiler, you are including a lot of libraries you also didn't write, the algorithms you use you didn't invent. What _is_ a program, really, when is it _your_ program playing, etc... (Bob may remember he and I had a lengthy discussion about this some time ago in r.g.c.c.). All I can say is, that if you take a program "written by" person X, and let it use a book written by person Y (and a whole bunch of GMs), it is not IMHO, the program playing the opening moves, the program has nothing more to do with those moves than anyone else looking up a move in a book. So is it the program playing or is it not, I say _not_ (in this case), but I admit the issue is rather complex/boring, espicially for programs like Crafty that will do a search and do statistics and book learning on the opening moves... -S.
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