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?
Chess will never be solved, here's why
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#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.
Apr 10, 2022
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#2384
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."
Apr 10, 2022
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#2391
Optimissed wrote:
Elroch wrote:
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?
You are perhaps conflating different types of proof. Do you think that if you jump off a wall, your trajectory will be downwards, towards the centre of the Earth? But that kind of proof is inductive, although very strongly so.
Technically correct but not enlightening. It happens that the theory of gravity - especially in the domain near the Earth's surface - has a great deal of inductive evidence. But there is a very subtle point here - that Occam's razor strengthens the belief in the accepted theory of gravity and not the alternative where 1 in a trillion times gravity works backwards.
This is not the case in a combinatorial problem like chess. Just because a trillion strategies fail to win from a chess position is not good evidence that no strategy wins.
Deductive proofs are logical in nature. That means that they consist of rearrengements of previously existing propositions, which are counted as facts, in such a way as to legitimately produce a proposition which supports that which is to be proven.
Not quite. Rather they lead to the EXACT proposition that was to be proven. There can be intermediate results but this has to be the last step in the deduction.
It would be perfectly possible to produce propositions which state that gravity exists, in a defined way, such that it will always cause the normal phenomena associated with it. However, that cannot be done deductively, in the way you mean it. It will always merely be very strongly inductive. It's the same with chess being a draw.
Yes, because doing a thorough job - just like that done for checkers - requires more computation than is practical.
The idea isn't quite as strong as gravity but still, anyone with any sense accepts that chess is drawn with best play.
There are a few excellent chess player who assert they believe chess is a win for white. There are far more (those with a decent understanding of uncertainty rather than just of chess) who acknowledge the appropriate position that it is merely LIKELY that chess is a draw and POSSIBLE that it is not.
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. Certainly, we can't go on the word of a chess player, who clearly didn't understand the problems involved, or; and this is much more likely; who did understand them and who is being grossly misinterpreted by someone who doesn't understand the logical significance of the word "towards" in the claim.
My belief is the Sveshnikov understood the lack of rigour in his programme, but that he was really interested in strengthening belief in chess being a draw based on a lot of conscious corner cutting where he felt the chance of being wrong was low. It seems unlikely he could really have certainty that there is no novel opening line that is best.
#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.
Apr 10, 2022
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#2393
tygxc wrote:
++ Again: Sveshnikov himself in full:
"Chess is an exact mathematical problem.
Correct.
The solution comes from two sides: the opening and the endgame. The middlegame does not exist. The middlegame is a well-studied opening.
Glib. The middle game can extend to move 100 in games that have occurred. That is not 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."
Excessive confidence is common in chess players.
As a mathematician I point out that it is necessary to deal with all 20 opening moves for white, with over 400 opening variations after 3 ply and so on. That's the mathematical truth (see Sveshnikov's - a non-mathematician - first sentence).
#2918
""towards a full solution""
++ That is not what Sveshnikov wrote. He wrote:
"I will trace all variations from the opening towards tablebases and 'close' chess."
#2919
"What??"
++ It is a deep insight. It may be surprising at first, but it shows how well he understood chess.
"As a mathematician I point out that it is necessary to deal with all 20 opening moves for white, with over 400 opening variations after 3 ply and so on."
++ I disagree.
"weakly solved means that for the initial position a strategy has been determined to achieve the game- theoretic value against any opposition" - Prof. em. J. van den Herik.
'Any opposition' does not mean 'any move': the move must oppose, i.e. resist against, achieving the game-theoretic value.
Apr 10, 2022
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#2396
Mistake here:
from this post: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-will-never-be-solved-heres-why?page=146#comment-68810283
"Also, as an aside, 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."
Again - from the same person. 
Has anybody in this forum ever fallen for this kind of assertion?
Apr 10, 2022
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#2397
Elroch wrote:
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.
"Seems your problem is lack of understanding of what a proof is."
That was addressed to @tygxc I believe.
Who can always counter with the phrase: 'weakly' solving.
By invoking the word 'weakly' - he can and does and will continue to circumvent issues of 'proof'.
Then - the issue might become semantics of the phrase 'weakly solving'.
The definition of which isn't Ordained anywhere.
"Weakly solving" could be anything that anyone or his grandmother wants it to be.
And we had:
8 hrs ago
-1
There is no excuse for you ignoring the posts where people corrected your entirely unreliable assumptions. It's dishonest.
There is some validity in what Elroch is saying there.
But there's this next too:
"As for 'weakly solved' - that could mean almost anything."
Then there was this reply from @tygxc :
++ 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"
Whatever den Herik's credentials are does not make him Ordainer of what a definition of something is to be for anybody else.
It does not make him Creator of dictionaries not that dictionaries should be regarded as bibles in any case.
Nor does a mini-religion need to be made out of the subject of 'solving' chess.
But looking at ty's post a little more ...
ty is claiming 'has defined it precisely' ... suggesting that it is for him @tygxc to decide what is 'precisely' and also that 'weakly solving' would have a Unique definition. Which doesn't follow.
If the forum title had been 'chess will never be Weakly solved' - then people could disagree right away and even claim chess was 'solved' 100 years ago with no computers necessary.
Coming up on 3000 posts - is the discussion to revolve around semantics of the word 'weakly'?
But other things have come out though - like the two positions that computer engines are erroneously assigning as wins.
That most players would find to be draws. And quickly find to be.
Which is a crippling blow to computers 'solving' chess
(and the reply could almost be predicted 'such positions would not come up in 'normal reasonable' chess' with attempted linkages with 'weakly' and ven den Herik ' ...
tygxc wrote:
[ . . . ] So weakly solving chess benefits from incorporating the accumulated knowledge of Capablanca, Fischer, Sveshnikov and others: Steinitz, Lasker, Lucena, Philidor, Kling, Troitzky, AlphaZero.
I have never denied that; the problem is how and how much you rely on that "knowledge" to solve chess.
As for ICCF WC games I have demonstrated that 99% of ICCF WC draws are ideal games with optimal moves, i.e. perfect play.
As I said, you are the only one who thinks you have demonstrated such a thing.
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"
The problem is the meaning you give to that "any opposition". I provided a paper that explains clearly what authors think is the meaning of that definition. I asked you to provide a paper where van den Herik's definition is interpreted in your way.
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.
You have used the very same argument you criticize, even in the very same post now.
"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.
If you lived in Europe before 1790 you would have concluded that black swans did not exist. You even contradict yourself:
tygxc wrote:
"No number of experiments can prove me right, one can prove me wrong" - Einstein
As for your theory as a whole, science is based on agreement: if someone says s/he is scientific, while everybody else thinks the opposite, s/he can be a misunderstood genius, a fool, or someone who tries to deceive people to gain some kind of advantage (or even just for the hell of it). We can try to fight disinformation as we can, but it is not even our responsibility to prove you wrong; that's an argument used by pseudoscientists. The burden of proof is on the claimant and what you call proofs are not proofs for our standards, nor you can prove they are for scientists' standards outside this thread, because you said you have not published anything on the subject. There cannot be with you any real discussion about a theory to provide a proven solution for chess, if there is not even agreement on the criteria to prove something.
Apr 10, 2022
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#2399
"There cannot be with you any real discussion about a theory to provide a proven solution for chess, if there is not even agreement on the criteria to prove something."
I agree with @Haiaku on that - and I"m thinking that @tygxc doesn't intend to change his mind about any of this ...
but on the other hand the posts of @tygxc have been catalysts for other things.
Various things coming out about subjects related to 'solving'.
Optimissed wrote:
This assumes that the discussion is regarding deductive proof, which is normally taken to be the meaning of "proof" within mathematics and the pure sciences.
Within applied sciences and engineering, maybe a different perspective is possible.
We don't know all the laws of physics, nor the exact structure of the universe, so theories about it are just more or less accurate models. They are in fact approximations and scientists have understood that long ago. You know that QM and GR do not explain everything and likely they will be superseded, as others theories before.
But solving chess is another thing. We know all the laws (the rules) of the game and its structure (64 squares, 32 pieces...), and the number of positions and possible games is finite; thus an exact solution must exist. When a game is announced weakly solved (in the game-theoretic meaning), nobody really expects that some day that solution will be falsified. The only way to be sure of that is to test a strategy (which provides a move every turn) against all the possible opponent's replies, or to provide a general theorem (even by mathematical but only mathematical induction) that encompasses all the possible situations a player can face along the path, no exception. The latter seems impossible, considering the game complexity, so a solution has to rely on computations to provide the first type of proof. Heuristics provide strategies to be tested in an ordered fashion (so e.g. if a strategy wins from a position, no need to search for something better), but if they cut off lines according to a non exact evaluation (that is, not a tablebase hit or a 3-fold repetition), the strategy is not 100% reliable. The greater the number of non-exact cutoffs, the greater the risk the "solution" will be falsified later.
There is no excuse for you ignoring the posts where people corrected your entirely unreliable assumptions. It's dishonest.