Chess will never be solved, here's why

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Elroch

No. Mathematics is not part of science.

Mathematics consists entirely of deductive reasoning about abstract objects with defined properties.

Science consists entirely of inductive reasoning from empirical information with nothing given.

The key relationship of mathematics to science is that it provides models that encapsulate general behaviour (often known to be approximate, never known to be precise). This provides a sort of black box service, where information relating to the real world is passed to a mathematical model which produces other information which says something about the real world (usually - to be pedantic, always - statistical).

MARattigan

Solving a game in your sense is less than pretty well anything, but your assumption that mathematics is less than science is questionable.

Incidentally, no show yet for your calculation of the theoretical result and error rates in my games here. Are you still working on it?

Once you've done that we can stop discussing your proposal.

It doesn't work.

You don't have to wait for my KRPPvKRP runs. Your calculation should work for any material.

Elroch

Mathematics is not "less than" science. It is incomparable to science (not a value judgement).

Their domains are entirely separate (even though mathematics provides a valuable service to science, and there is some practical benefit in the opposite direction).

I can say this with some authority, based on two mathematical degrees and 14 years working on applied physical science, mainly on mathematical and computational modelling.

MARattigan

That's why I said it was questionable.

I would say the statement that their domains are entirely separate is also open to question, but that's a different topic.

Mike_Kalish

I always thought of science as "What humans know about the physical universe" and mathematics as the "Language we have devised to describe that knowledge".  And to me, they are two very different things, even though they are closely related.

That's probably a very crude way of looking at it, and likely I'll be corrected....but go easy. I'm old. 

Elroch
MARattigan wrote:

That's why I said it was questionable.

I would say the statement that their domains are entirely separate is also open to question, but that's a different topic.

It's open to question, but a lifetime of relevant specialism means that I have been aware of the answer for the long time, while not everyone has been.

MARattigan
Elroch wrote:
MARattigan wrote:

That's why I said it was questionable.

I would say the statement that their domains are entirely separate is also open to question, but that's a different topic.

It's open to question, but a lifetime of relevant specialism means that I have been aware of the answer for the long time, while not everyone has been.

You say, " The key relationship of mathematics to science is that it provides models ... information relating to the real world is passed to a mathematical model which produces other information which says something about the real world."

I think in some cases the two overlap.

So, if Newton says two bodies attract each other, that's a scientific statement. He refers to a mathematical model when he uses the word "attract", but refers to the concept directly when he says "two".

Mathematics analyses the concept "two" but the analysis is only a clarification of what is already understood by the term. And what the analysis says about the real world is not - to be pedantic - statistical.

Mike_Kalish
MARattigan wrote:

. Mathematics analyses the concept "two" but the analysis is only a clarification of what is already understood by the term.

Analyzes or just gives it a name?

MARattigan

No, analyses. See e.g. https://www.academia.edu/15092554/Whitehead_Russell_Principia_Mathematica_Volume_I (Part II, but you'll need to read at least the preceding text.)

In fact 2 by any other name etc.

llama36
mikekalish wrote:

I always thought of science as "What humans know about the physical universe" and mathematics as the "Language we have devised to describe that knowledge".  And to me, they are two very different things, even though they are closely related.

That's probably a very crude way of looking at it, and likely I'll be corrected....but go easy. I'm old. 

It goes beyond that though. The fun thing about math is it could still be done even if this universe didn't exist. If nothing we know of existed, we couldn't talk about color or shape or time, etc. But all the math we know right now would still exist.

Elroch

Yes.
[post moved to further below, due to heavy editing]

DiogenesDue
tygxc wrote:

@5608
"come to the conclusion that chess is a draw"
++ I gave not one but 6 arguments. At least taken together this evidence
compells the mind to accept the fact that chess is a draw as true.
Argument 5 needs understanding of probability.
Argument 6 is deductive.

...Ponz, is that you?  Ponz also had the "I gave many arguments, and quantity = certainty" mindset.

llama36

That's a good way to say it... science (well, non-theoretical science) is completely dependent on empirical information while math is completely independent.

llama36
btickler wrote:
tygxc wrote:

@5608
"come to the conclusion that chess is a draw"
++ I gave not one but 6 arguments. At least taken together this evidence
compells the mind to accept the fact that chess is a draw as true.
Argument 5 needs understanding of probability.
Argument 6 is deductive.

...Ponz, is that you?  Ponz also had the "I gave many arguments, and quantity = certainty" mindset.

Funnily I was just thinking the same thing, that they're similar.

It was some post where, within the span of a few sentences, he said something like "this is just evidence not a proof" then ended with "it's a proof."

Ponz did stuff like that all the time.

Elroch

[I'll repost this, as I added a lot to it, but the last part needs the first part as an introduction]

You can loosely think of mathematics as being a black box which takes in axioms (and, if you start late, proven theorems) and generates theorems. These are all abstract, timeless and independent of any empirical information.

Science, by contrast is a black box which takes in observations and generates and tests models which describe patterns in those observations. Mathematics is very useful in the models.

The (slightly) confusing bit is that when some mathematics is part of a scientific model, mathematical facts imply facts about the real world.

The first part about mathematics is disputable, because all mathematicians understand that you start with an intuitive notion of a mathematical object - eg the counting numbers - then you find some axioms that represent your intuition. Then you are off to the races (as say Euclid was). The question is where did this intuitive notion of a mathematical object come from? For some, but not all, it is an abstraction of reality. Eg counting came from counting real objects. Geometry came from the structure of space.
But them later on, mathematicians have no problem changing the rules a bit and generating objects they can see are just as interesting and which may or may not be related to the real world.  For example in geometry, they found spherical and hyperbolic geometry by changing one axiom.  They also found geometry in any number of dimensions by another small change.  And there are many generalisations of counting numbers that are not as intuitive.  So it becomes clear you don't need a real world paradigm to create some mathematics that intuitively has value.

Often, invented maths turns out to have real world connections later. Centuries later, sometimes.  While spherical geometry was easy to understand as being like the surface of a ball, hyperbolic geometry turned out to be the geometry of relativistic space-time. It was just that no-one had a clue that relativistic space-time existed at the time hyperbolic geometry was discovered!

llama36
Elroch wrote:

[I'll repost this, as I added a lot to it, but the last part needs the first part as an introduction]

You can loosely think of mathematics as being a black box which takes in axioms (and, if you start late, proven theorems) and generates theorems. These are all abstract, timeless and independent of any empirical information.

Science, by contrast is a black box which takes in observations and generates and tests models which describe patterns in those observations. Mathematics is very useful in the models.

The (slightly) confusing bit is that when some mathematics is part of a scientific model, mathematical facts imply facts about the real world.

[The first part about mathematics is disputable, because all mathematicians understand that you start with an intuitive notion of a mathematical object - eg the counting numbers - then you find some axioms that represent your intuition. Then you are off to the races (as say Euclid was). The question is where did this intuitive notion of a mathematical object come from. For some, but not all, it is an abstraction of reality. Eg counting came from counting real objects. Geometry came from the structure of space.
But them later on, mathematicians have no problem changing the rules a bit and generating objects they can see are just as interesting and which may or may not be related to the real world.  For example in geometry, they found spherical and hyperbolic geometry by changing one axiom.  They also found geometry in any number of dimensions by another small change.  And there are many generalisations of counting numbers that are not as intuitive.  So it becomes clear you don't need a real world paradigm to create some mathematics that intuitively has value.

It seems like all the time invented maths then turns out to have real world connections later. Centuries later, sometimes.  While spherical geometry was easy to understand as being like the surface of a ball, hyperbolic geometry turned out to be the geometry of relativistic space-time. It was just that no-one had a clue that relativistic space-time existed at the time hyperbolic geometry was discovered]

Yeah, it's fun how sometimes physicists find a use for something mathematicians had lying around for 100s of years.

The only case I'm aware of the reverse happening is the dirac function. The story I was told was some physicist or engineer came up with it because it was convenient. Mathematicians has scorn for it until a mathematician came along and formalized it.

DiogenesDue
MARattigan wrote:

We need a tygxc-normal dictionary.

Some entries:

know...guess

solve....guess

perfect player...Stockfish

perfect play...draw a winning KPvK position

legal position....position in KRPP v KRP

illegal position....legal position with ply count > 0

calculation...method for arriving at ludicrous figures

order of magnitude...add 10 (or subtract if you think no one will notice)

proof...what I tell you three times

blasphemy...verification of calculation (see above)

inspection ..... three GMs with umbrellas raised, staring into a goldfish bowl and wondering where the fish went. (courtesy @Optimissed.)

right...wrong (courtesy @tygxc)

deduction...first daft thing that springs into @tygxc's head. (courtesy @Optimissed.)

Uturn...carry on in the wrong direction in the face of all evidence (courtesy of @NervesofButter)

... further entries invited.

Math...arbitrary reductions of multiple orders of magnitude based on conjecture.

Elroch
llama36 wrote:
Elroch wrote:

[I'll repost this, as I added a lot to it, but the last part needs the first part as an introduction]

You can loosely think of mathematics as being a black box which takes in axioms (and, if you start late, proven theorems) and generates theorems. These are all abstract, timeless and independent of any empirical information.

Science, by contrast is a black box which takes in observations and generates and tests models which describe patterns in those observations. Mathematics is very useful in the models.

The (slightly) confusing bit is that when some mathematics is part of a scientific model, mathematical facts imply facts about the real world.

[The first part about mathematics is disputable, because all mathematicians understand that you start with an intuitive notion of a mathematical object - eg the counting numbers - then you find some axioms that represent your intuition. Then you are off to the races (as say Euclid was). The question is where did this intuitive notion of a mathematical object come from. For some, but not all, it is an abstraction of reality. Eg counting came from counting real objects. Geometry came from the structure of space.
But them later on, mathematicians have no problem changing the rules a bit and generating objects they can see are just as interesting and which may or may not be related to the real world.  For example in geometry, they found spherical and hyperbolic geometry by changing one axiom.  They also found geometry in any number of dimensions by another small change.  And there are many generalisations of counting numbers that are not as intuitive.  So it becomes clear you don't need a real world paradigm to create some mathematics that intuitively has value.

It seems like all the time invented maths then turns out to have real world connections later. Centuries later, sometimes.  While spherical geometry was easy to understand as being like the surface of a ball, hyperbolic geometry turned out to be the geometry of relativistic space-time. It was just that no-one had a clue that relativistic space-time existed at the time hyperbolic geometry was discovered]

Yeah, it's fun how sometimes physicists find a use for something mathematicians had lying around for 100s of years.

The only case I'm aware of the reverse happening is the dirac function. The story I was told was some physicist or engineer came up with it because it was convenient. Mathematicians has scorn for it until a mathematician came along and formalized it.

Theoretical physics has more recently generated a lot of new mathematics that pure mathematicians can then formalise. Your example is a great one, because physicists thought of it as something like a function and just manipulated it by trial and error.

The formal version requires the development of measure theory and distributions, which are a very large extension to the space of ordinary functions (as I am sure you know). Then the whole subject of functional analysis and infinite dimensional analysis in general appears, I think generally before it was needed for modern physics.

But a lot of the stuff for modern particle physics was invented by theoretical physicists and then found to be interesting new mathematics. This would merit a lot more investigation.

llama36

Oh neat, I didn't know theoretical physics had been coming up with new mathematics.

DiogenesDue
llama36 wrote:

It goes beyond that though. The fun thing about math is it could still be done even if this universe didn't exist. If nothing we know of existed, we couldn't talk about color or shape or time, etc. But all the math we know right now would still exist.

True, but would it apply to all potential universes?  One can posit a universe where all numbers are 1 and all math equations reduce to 1.