Chess will never be solved, here's why

There's another issue there - 
and that is - could it be 'proved' that something could be solved ...  without actually solving whatever it is ?
Depends on what the thing is - and what definition of 'solved' has been proposed or assigned somehow.
Example:  say an equation hasn't been solved - with only one unknown variable.
Extreme simple case:  A quadratic equation.
If the general case has been proven algebraically - do we have to go ahead and solve a relevant equation that has known coefficients - to prove it could be solved?
No.  That's neither extrapolation nor induction I believe.
Its simple straight objective mathematical logic and proof.
Which in turn means 'Yes'.  Some things can be known or proven to be solvable - without actually solving them.
In fact - there are Infinite sets of such things.

If one really did have a legitimate proof that chess could be solved in five years - then what would some legitimate proofs look like?  Real proofs.
In other words - not 'taking the square root' of a 40 digit number and other non-proving things. 
Not doing those things.

So far - I don't think anyone has come up yet with what a real mathematical proof regarding the forum topic might even look like.
Hypothetically that is.  
But that could be because nobody here has tried that yet.
But that might happen.  Attempts to do that.
That and other things might take the forum well past the 3000 post mark - including not counting a particular person's unimportant disapproval of discussions here that he does not control and has not been able to prevent.
Maybe the more he 'disapproves' of others posting here - the more postings there have been ?  Regardless - the discussions continue.   

Anyway - and to get on with it ...
what would a real proof look like?
It would have to refer to the hardware speed of the computers involved - but in clear math fashion ..  no dancing around 'nodes' and 'consider'.
And in addition to real proof - there could be proofs of things relevant too.  Or instead.
And what those proofs might look like.  Hypothetically.

#2890
"@tygxc needs his claim to be 100% reliable for it to be part of something close to a proof"
++ No, there are 2 different things:
1) weakly solving chess, and
2) assessing the feasibility of weakly solving chess.
Before embarking on 1) it is necessary to do 2) first.

1) must be 100% reliable, or more exactly no more than 1 / 10^20 unreliable.
It must be as reliable as the weak solutions of Checkers or Losing Chess.

2) does not need to be 100% reliable. An order of magnitude is enough.
If it is 5 years or 4 years or 6 years does not matter.
500 years of 5000 years makes a difference in feasibility.
Schaeffer originally projected to investigate 10^9 positions to weakly solve Checkers in his elder paper and ended up with 10^7 * 10^7 = 10^14 after it was done.

#2868
"why you keep quoting Capablanca, Fischer, Sveshnikov, and using ICCF games and all the cumulated experience of centuries"

When you try to prove the Riemann Hypothesis, you can use all accumulated knowledge from Euclid, Thales, Pythagoras, Eratosthenes, over Euler, Gauss, to Conway, Ramanujan, Perelman.

"Next to brute-force methods it is often beneficial to incorporate knowledge-based
methods in game-solving programs." - van den Herik
So weakly solving chess benefits from incorporating the accumulated knowledge of Capablanca, Fischer, Sveshnikov and others: Steinitz, Lasker, Lucena, Philidor, Kling, Troitzky, AlphaZero.

As for ICCF WC games I have demonstrated that 99% of ICCF WC draws are ideal games with optimal moves, i.e. perfect play. These examples are most relevant as they refute the objection that we would not know what perfect play looks like. We do: it is like in the ICCF WC draws.

I have presented 4 such ICCF WC draws. 2 ended in a draw by agreement in humanly known drawn positions > 7 men. 1 ended in a forced 3-fold repetition. 1 ended in a 7-men endgame table base draw. Each ICCF draw game lasts for years. One ICCF WC finals counts 136 games. So a ICCF WC finals represents centuries of engine calculation. That is a major available resource to tap into. The 'modern computers' (multicore engines) and the 'good assistants' (ICCF grandmasters) have already done years of work. 

In other words - nobody yet has presented any picture of what a proper proof that chess could be solved ... would look like.
As for 'weakly solved' - that could mean almost anything.
With a lot of range in that word 'weakly'.  

It doesn't appear there'll ever be a proof that chess can't be solved.

#2896

"As for 'weakly solved' - that could mean almost anything."
++ No, Prof. Em. van den Herik has defined it precisely:
"weakly solved means that for the initial position a strategy has been determined
to achieve the game-theoretic value against any opposition"

"It doesn't appear there'll ever be a proof that chess can't be solved."
++ Yes, even more: there is proof that chess can be strongly solved: chess has a finite number of legal positions, thus chess can be strongly solved in a finite amount of time.
A strong solution however is not feasible as the required time and storage would be prohibitive.

There is also proof that chess can be weakly solved like has been done for Checkers and Losing Chess. The only discussion is how many nanoseconds that takes, in other words: how many legal, sensible, reachable, and relevant positions there are.
I estimate the number of legal, sensible, reachable, and relevant positions at 10^17.
GM Sveshnikov was right: 3 cloud engines of 10^9 nodes/s can weakly solve chess in 5 years.

It is beneficial to incorporate knowledge in the brute force calculation from the 26-men tabiya of the opening towards the 7-men endgame table base to prune irrelevant openings that do not oppose to the draw and to prune irrelevant endgames that are known to be drawn, like the two ICCF WC agreed draws that I presented.

Examples of knowledge are: endgame manuals,
and opening studies e.g. "Acquisition of Chess Knowledge in AlphaZero"
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.09259.pdf 
Figure 5 on page 17 shows why 1 a4 does not oppose to the draw as well as 1 e4 or 1 d4 and thus can be omitted as not relevant.

Pruning of openings as well as endgames is beneficial to calculate relevant positions only.
That are the two tasks of the 'good assistants', e.g. ICCF grandmasters.

Being hypothetically solvable "in a finite amount of time" does not make something practical to solve.  For example, such a problem might require 10^12 times the annual energy use of the human race. This would make it impractical. "Finite" can be big. VERY big.

#2898
"Being hypothetically solvable "in a finite amount of time" does not make something practical to solve. "
++ Yes, that is what I wrote: 
"A strong solution however is not feasible as the required time and storage would be prohibitive."
That is why only weakly solving with massive pruning based by incorporating knowledge makes it feasible in 5 years as GM Sveshnikov predicted.

There is no excuse for you ignoring the posts where people corrected your entirely unreliable assumptions. It's dishonest.

Straight questions for you, @tygxc. Not rhetorical - please answer them.

Do you understand the difference between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning?

Do you understand that only the former has a place in a proof?

#2901
Yes, and No. Inductive reasoning is just as valid as deductive.
Statistics, astronomy etc. are all inductive.

#2900
Nobody has 'corrected' any of my assumptions.
It is rather: 'I do not understand, so it must be wrong.'
Then people jump to their own erroneous conclusions without any supportive evidence at all.
I seem to be the only one providing evidence. 

Seems your problem is lack of understanding of what a proof is.

This term does not have a place in science or any empirical subject. A proof never involves inductive reasoning. Never.

The word "proof" not have a place in the application of statistics, except in the trivial sense that an example of something proves the existence of an example with its properties.  For example you can never prove that all humans are less than 2.X meters tall by examining a random sample of N humans. No clever statistical argument will exclude the possibility of a counter example you have not seen.

Proof does have a place in the theoretical foundation of statistics, but here it only involves deductive reasoning about abstract concepts, starting with axioms.

The word "proof" also does not have a place in astronomy, an example of a science (except in the trivial sense that seeing an example of a supernova shows that supernovas exist). Just like for people's heights, examples in astronomy do not prove general facts, they merely provide evidence for them, permitting inductive reasoning.

It is not uncommon for something that was believed to be generally true is proved not to be by a counterexample.   For example until 2019 it was known that there were small black holes and giant black holes but believed that there was a range of masses which was excluded because they could neither form from stars nor as the nucleus of a galaxy. In that year two black holes of mass 66 solar masses and 85 solar masses were discovered, showing that what had been believed was false and that there must be some way such black holes could form (it is still unclear what that is).

#2903

"Seems your problem is lack of understanding of what a proof is."
++ No, I have no problem and I inderstand very well what a proof is.

"you can never prove that all humans are less than X meters tall by examining a random sample of N humans."
++ We disagree. We can prove that of 8 billion humans none is taller than 3 m by measuring only 1 million of them. 
The entire fields of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics depend on probabilities.

"It only involves deductive reasoning about abstract concepts, starting with axioms."
++ No, it does not start with axioms, it ends with axioms. It starts with a practical problem in need of a solution. Then the problem get solved. After that people formalise it and formulate a theoretically rigorous framework with axioms, mainly for tuition purposes.

"The word "proof" also does not have a place in astronomy"
++ We disagree. We have a lot of knowledge about stars and other celestial objects: mass, brightness, composition, size, distance, velocity, past, future just from observing a tiny sample. We can tell when and how our Sun was born and when and how it will die.

"It is not uncommon for something that was believed to be generally true is proven not to be by a counterexample."
++ Yes, that is true. Classical mechanics was believed to be true and is still true with certain restrictions, but quantum mechanics and relativity have superseded it in the theoretical sense, though classical mechanics is still practical within its application range.

"For example until 2019 it was known that there were small black holes and giant black holes but believed that there was a range of masses which was excluded because they could neither form from stars nor at the nucleus of galaxies. In that year two black holes of mass 66 solar masses and 85 solar masses were discovered, showing that what had been believed was false and that there must be some way such black holes could form (it is still unclear what that is)."
++ Yes, that is one good example of many. That does not take away all merit of the earlier theory, which apparently has limits in its applicability.

I do not understand but it's true chess can never be solved

#2906
"Regarding chess being solveable in five years, anyone with any sense, together with an understanding of the numbers and processes that would need to be involved, knows it isn't possible."
++ So everybody who disagrees with your view has neither sense nor understanding?
It is rather the opposite: those who do not understand the numbers or processes that would need to be involved believe it is not possible and then present their belief as knowledge. I presented facts and figures why GM Sveshnikov was right. 

"we can't go on the word of a chess player, who clearly didn't understand the problems involved" ++ GM Sveshnikov clearly understood much more of the problems involved than any contributor to this forum including myself. Chess analysis was his job, and he was quite good at it.

"who is being grossly misinterpreted by someone who doesn't understand the logical significance of the word "towards" in the claim."
++ I certainly understand the logical significance of the word "towards" = "in the direction of" it means starting at the opening and calculating in the direction of the endgame table base. That is in contrast to strongly solving chess as a 32-men table base, which would start at the 7-men endgame table base and then calculate in the direction of 32 men including the initial position.

#2907
"Even the Big Bang is still believed in by many. That's one bit of nonsense that's taking its time to disperse."
++ It was proven by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkinson_Microwave_Anisotropy_Probe 

#2911
"Can you prove it was a proof of the Big Bang?"
++ That is not the topic of this thread. Georges Lemaître thought of the Big Bang to explain certain observed phenomena e.g. the red shift of starlight. The theory predicted microwave radiation and this was indeed observed by WMAP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang 

#2910

"You have not presented facts as to why he was right"
++ I have presented facts and figures, based on the Gourion paper, on the proofs of Checkers and Losing Chess, on AlphaZero autoplay, on ICCF games, expert opinions etc. From that I have deduced he was right.

"given your incorrect interpretation of what he said"
++ I interpreted correctly, you give an alternative, incorrect interpretation.

"a clear understanding of what Sveshnikov actually said."
++ Why would you understand Sveshnikov more clearly? 

"He didn't claim that chess could be solved in five years." ++ He did! 

"He merely claimed he could move investigations forward." ++ No, not merely that.

"That's what the word "towards" means." ++ No, towards is the direction.

"It often turns out that people disagreeing with me are wrong to do so, because I have a good general knowledge and the intelligence to use it well."
++  So people who diasgree with you are wrong, have neither general knowledge nor intelligence?

"For instance, if you don't agree with what I set out in the previous paragraph then you'd be wrong to disagree" ++ Now, this is a convincing argument. "Why?" "Because I said so."

"because what I stated is logically and factually correct" ++ And all who disagree with you are logically and factually incorrect?

"We're talking about something very different from chess analysis."
++ No, weakly solving chess is the ultimate chess analysis.

"You mean the kind of analysis we attempt when we're playing and also attempt in between games."
++ No, I mean analysis like in adjourned games, like post mortem analysis of grandmaster games and like ICCF correspondence, opening analysis, and endgame analysis.

"That's an interpretation rather mischievously placed on it by yourself. Your own interpretation, to support your own beliefs, which were probably not shared by Sveshnikov."
++ I can with more right say the same about your interpretation

"There's nothing in his sentence about that"
++ Again: Sveshnikov himself in full:
"Chess is an exact mathematical problem. The solution comes from two sides: the opening and the endgame. The middlegame does not exist. The middlegame is a well-studied opening. An opening should result in an endgame.... Give me five years, good assistants and modern computers, and I will trace all variations from the opening towards tablebases and 'close' chess. I feel that power."

#2913

"His thesis on his M Math was in the field of astronomy but his PhD in Condensed Matter Physics makes him more qualified than anyone here, wouldn't you say?"
++ No, I would not say that, but that is besides the point.

"So if you believe Sveshnikov over chess solutions, then perhaps you should believe my son over the Big Bang?"
++ I must admit that I was surprised by the Sveshnikov claim when I first read it. I believed it after I checked facts and figures myself.
No, I believe Lemaître and others over your estimated son over the Big Bang. When your son has grounds to reject the Big Bang, then he should write a paper on that and submit it to a peer-reviewed scientific journal.