Yes but I think we all know that. I believe it was probably a genuine misinterpretation of a rather meaningless claim by a well-known, titled player, that he could move things towards a solution in five years, given vast resources, of course. I mean, I'm confident that this week I'll move towards being a billionaire. If I make fifty quid, that's still true.
Chess will never be solved, here's why
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Mar 15, 2022
0
#2283
I suggest - 'heuristics' could be key now. Or already is.
Throughout the 2300 posts.
There's synynoms for 'heuristics' too. Or phrases.
Most people would not use that word - even though its meaning refers very well as to the general nature of many posts here.
Optimissed wrote:
It was claimed that type classifying is impossible because chess is all about the concrete and the specific.
Well, "type classifying" not only is possible; actually any evaluation function, either hand crafted or produced by a neural network, is based on these "classes", whithout defining them strictly. These are the "frames" we all, humans and neural networks, use to represent the big world in our little "minds": we categorize things. Inevitably, though, these representations are biased. It's the bias-variance dilemma @Elroch mentioned. To have less bias and reduce the risk to miss some "outliers", some "monsters", the evaluation function has to be more complex, but one can never know if it really encompasses all the relevant cases for a weak solution (which is a precise thing, not a so-so solution), until the game is weakly solved. Thinking the opposite is a fallacy. Therefore, the closer the evaluation to the real value of the node, the less nodes will be searched, but:
a) a more complex evaluation function usually requires more time to make the evaluation
b) we don't know a priori the value of the node, so the search has to be performed from the beginning of the game (or both backwards and forwards as in checkers) to the end without prejudice, without skipping openings or moves that must be explored (to meet the criteria of a weak solution) because they are "surely inferior". I don't think the scientific community would accept anything else as a "solution".
Optimissed wrote:
Well, if that were true, everyone is wasting their breath, because the project is impossible, given present computing speeds.
It would be possible to start it, but...
Optimissed wrote:
Yes but I think we all know that. I believe it was probably a genuine misinterpretation of a rather meaningless claim by a well-known, titled player, that he could move things towards a solution in five years, given vast resources, of course. I mean, I'm confident that this week I'll move towards being a billionaire. If I make fifty quid, that's still true.
That 
Mar 15, 2022
0
#2285
It could be conjectured - as to what computers might have accomplished regarding 'solving' chess say by 2040.
We could speculate they'll have 'solved' for 8 pieces - maybe even 9 -
and maybe 'tidied up' and provided for castling for 7- piece or less.
Those three projects might be Gigantic.
But they'd hardly make a small dent in 'solving' chess.
Possibly - computers might hit a 4000 Elo or FIDE strength (if they haven't already). And if you input any legal position at all into a dedicated supercomputer - and ask it to solve it ...
well there again ... See the Pitfall ??
How about its the opening position? Its not going to have the answers.
How many pieces have to come off the board before the computer has a ghost of a chance of 'thorough solving' of a single position - in say an hour ?
Maybe some of the researchers know about that.
Maybe 8-piece has already reached that point -
but where it might be forgotten that an hour to solve just one position thoroughly still means millions or trillions of years for all 8-piece positions (even though the computer would have to have also solved all positions arising from that first 8-piece to pronounce thorough solving of just that one 8-piece.) ...
An 8 piece solved in an hour - and all its 'descendants' ?
Maybe that would take many thousands of hours. By itself.
Or more. Much more.
haiaku wrote:
Optimissed wrote:
It was claimed that type classifying is impossible because chess is all about the concrete and the specific.
Well, "type classifying" not only is possible; actually any evaluation function, either hand crafted or produced by a neural network, is based on these "classes", without defining them strictly. These are the "frames" we all, humans and neural networks, use to represent the big world in our little "minds": we categorize things. Inevitably, though, these representations are biased. It's the bias-variance dilemma @Elroch mentioned.
I believe it was Elroch who claimed that only concrete lines are meaningful. It was obviously wrong but that discussion was a long time ago. I've been trying to make the case ever since, to see if the penny drops.
To have less bias and reduce the risk to miss some "outliers", some "monsters", the evaluation function has to be more complex, but one can never know if it really encompasses all the relevant cases for a weak solution (which is a precise thing, not a so-so solution), until the game is weakly solved. Thinking the opposite is a fallacy.
That's why I stated that in order to achieve a weak solution, a semi-strong analysis is first necessary. That's the only possible, productive method. As you state, it's impossible to know if a line is relevant until it's been assessed. I made that point months ago but it wasn't understood at the time. "Semi-strong" hadn't been defined by the so-called experts. I saw immediately that the definition of the weak solution is an ideal only. I actually thought it was a joke by a philosophy professor, which had been taken up as if it was real. A bit like the Big Bang being a derisory term for a universal, formative process that contravenes reason, which was taken up by those who believed it was viable.
Therefore, the closer the evaluation to the real value of the node, the less nodes will be searched, but:
a) a more complex evaluation function usually requires more time to make the evaluation
b) we don't know a priori the value of the node, so the search has to be performed from the beginning of the game (or both backwards and forwards as in checkers) to the end without prejudice. I don't think the scientific community would accept anything else as a "solution".
Well, I'm not sure that this is "science", in the sort of way that's meaningful to scientists. After all, it's a rather useless endeavour, except as programming practice and a means to discover new programming and even pseudo-logical techniques. So I believe anything goes and therefore it's possible to be far more creative and try to work out if the results look useful or meaningful. Who's going to fund it, unless it's done as someone's pet hobby project?
Incidentally, the Big Bang isn't viable, because it contains no intrinsic mechanism that would account for acceleration of universal expansion. So that and other things have to be in the form of ad hoc additions .... a bit silly, since Steady State Theory predicted acceleration, dark matter and dark energy, as well as providing a (hypothetical) mechanism to explain gravity, all by 1959. However, Elroch is also a Big Bang fundamentalist and he always argues strongly against anything different, without ever convincing me, at any rate.
Mar 15, 2022
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#2288
You tell them, @Optimissed
To be serious, you never clearly state in a scientific manner what you disagree with. If you are incapable of doing so, you are not even expressing a scientific view, just some sort of emotional state.
Mar 15, 2022
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#2289
Regarding the Big Bang - there seems to be overwhelming evidence that it happened.
And that most if not all of what we see in the cosmos can be ascribed to the Big Bang.
But the part where it 'creaks' is where so many infer or assert or insist that the Big Bang has to be the 'Universe'.
With many 'coattails' coming from that.
Like T=0 or 'the universe is expanding' - finite universe in age and size and mass ... a whole dinner menu of items that whoever is asked to eat.
It would be much better if the Big Bangers simply qualified at the outset that indicators of other Big Bangs elsewhere and elsewhen - would not be visible from our galaxy - or maybe from anywhere within our local big bang.
But that isn't seen. Pun intended. Its not 'getting with the program'.
We're not going to 'see' that. But sometimes - you can dig it out of them.
I think you're projecting, Elroch. You haven't told me what you happen to be discussing at the moment!! A scientific view of what?? Are you really sure you're not describing yourself? 
Mar 15, 2022
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#2291
Getting somebody to acknowledge something they don't want to acknowledge.
Even for a dentist to obtain that ...
Mar 15, 2022
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#2292
Elroch wrote:
You tell them, @Optimissed
To be serious, you never clearly state in a scientific manner what you disagree with. If you are incapable of doing so, you are not even expressing a scientific view, just some sort of emotional state.
@Elroch - as usual - is correct.
Its a mismatch between him and 'the other guy'.
Also relates to @Elroch rightly asserting that a term is meaningless if its not defined. Especially in math. But that can apply to some other things too. Like in science.
In art - you might get away with anything ...
Mar 15, 2022
0
#2293
Is chess 'artistic' ?
I would say great chess often has an artistic or creative element.
What about Tal? Could his masterpiece tactics be considered 'art' ?
I would be inclined to 'No'. Because they did a concrete job.
Winning the game !
But it could be argued 'Yes'.
Tal's creativity just too much for his opponents.
playerafar wrote:
Elroch wrote:
You tell them, @Optimissed
To be serious, you never clearly state in a scientific manner what you disagree with. If you are incapable of doing so, you are not even expressing a scientific view, just some sort of emotional state.
@Elroch - as usual - is correct.
Its a mismatch between him and 'the other guy'.
Also relates to @Elroch rightly asserting that a term is meaningless if its not defined. Especially in math. But that can apply to some other things too. Like in science.
In art - you might get away with anything ...
I agree. I have by far the higher IQ. But you shouldn't talk about such things. It could annoy someone or even make them feel bad. I'm sure you wouldn't want that so don't do it.
Anyway, how do YOU know who's correct? I thought you consider Elroch brighter than you, so how come you can understand what he's saying?
Mar 15, 2022
0
#2296
IQ - ratings - claims of superiority while actually getting many things wrong. And over and over again. And feeling omniscient while projecting his own negative feelings intensely. It does have its own pathos to it.
Its a sideline in the forum though.
Usually best just to post around it.
Also relates to @Elroch rightly asserting that a term is meaningless if its not defined. Especially in math. But that can apply to some other things too. Like in science.
In art - you might get away with anything ... >>
If you don't mind too much about my taking you to task over this ... your own assertion there indicates that you don't know how language works. Language is basically an agreement to cooperate. Unless it's legal language, in which every care must be taken that there's no misunderstanding, people use words in the sense that they can have a range of meanings and it's up to both sides ... the speaker to be reasonably clear and the listener to make every effort to discern the intended meaning. In this case, it should be obvious even to a rather dull person that I could have no way of knowing whether Elroch was talking about cosmology or chess analysis, when he claimed whatever it was he claimed. So how come you knew? 
Optimissed wrote:
As you state, it's impossible to know if a line is relevant until it's been assessed.
Not exactly, because, as stated in other posts, for a weak solution some nodes (with their descendants) can be skipped, when the analysis of their siblings has already led to an optimal strategy. But you got the point.
playerafar wrote:
<<IQ - ratings - claims of superiority while actually getting many things wrong. And over and over again. And feeling omniscient while projecting his own negative feelings intensely. It does have its own pathos to it.
Its a sideline in the forum though.
Usually best just to post around it.>>
Yes, that's right. Just try to post around it. Better to ignore it ... rather like you should have ignored Elroch's rather "superior" comment. Because he is obviously trying to pretend something. Not me ... I was just being honest. If he wants to make this a contest about who is cleverer, me or him, there is no contest at all. So he shouldn't have and you should have ignored it.
haiaku wrote:
Optimissed wrote:
As you state, it's impossible to know if a line is relevant until it's been assessed.
Not exactly, because, as stated in other posts, for a weak solution some nodes (with their descendants) can be skipped, when the analysis of their siblings has already led to an optimal strategy. But you got the point.
Firstly, I don't read all this arbitrary decision making by experts. Because I don't think there is anyone here with sufficient expertise that I should be listening hard. YOU got the point, which is one I've been trying to make for several months, on and off. If you were already aware of it then I'm glad that the others may be learning from you.
One mistake that is being made is this: in criticising tygxc's belief that Stockfish provides the algorithms and the engine follows them to some database position or other. It's been claimed that assessing each position requires just about as much computing power as reaching such a position does. Actually, it requires far more and this is what makes the project realistically impossible. It is actually better to analyse games rather than positions, because the amount of computer time needed to assess every position is equivalent to following a game anyway and therefore, a game led approach cuts down on computing time, rather than increasing it.
Claimed by whom?
Calculating 10^44.5 positions is currently in the millions of years out. Ergo, there's plenty of room for allowing for vast reductions in time and effort that still leaves us thousands of years away...there's no "just about as much" involved, nor was anything beyond "significant processing time" implied. The thing about predicting humanity's concerted efforts is that a thousand years is effectively the same as million, or a trillion. It's pointless to predict such in such timeframes.
Predicting 5 years at the present time, well...that's just too absurd to discuss, really. It merely calls for refutation, early and often.