Chess will never be solved, here's why

[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]

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.

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.

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.

... you start with an intuitive notion of a mathematical object - eg the counting numbers - then you find some axioms that represent your intuition. ...

In the link I gave those axioms are just the logical axioms. 

Then you are off to the races (as say Euclid was).

Only more or less if you read the Elements, but you'd hardly say it wasn't mathematics.

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.

I'm tired right now, that's a little too abstract for me.

Off the top of my head, I'd say there's no such thing as a reality that is self contradicting. A sort of "can God make a rock so heavy he can't lift it" argument... so while maybe there is some sort of arrangement where all equations are 1 (whatever that means) it can't be self-inconsistent... and as long as it's logical, then it can be expressed mathematically, and so math "works" in all potential universes.

Or

Or maybe not, and sometimes math breaks. That's a little too imaginative for me right now though heh.

Sure, and not all math applies to our universe either.

Then you start wondering about what fraction of total possible universes allow for conscious creatures or intelligent creatures. And then you start thinking about boltzmann brains and what not.

Yeah, I'm way too tired for this conversation

But it's a fun topic.

And sure, I see what you mean. Math exists but may not be practical, and even then it may be difficult to discover.

But 2 lefts make a U turn.

Mathematics is the universal language.  This is why Carl Sagan was involved in what went on the gold disks on the voyager probes. 

Science is the quest for truth.  Not fact, but truth.

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.

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.

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

No, we are not.

Solving a game is not science. It is basically a maths problem associated with the theory of combinatorial games. It is of course of very minor interest to the theoretical subject which concerns itself with general results, but is of interest because of the historical status of the game itself (and as a motivation to develop efficient procedures to do such things). 

By contrast, the four colour theorem is natural and fundamental, involving no arbitrary set of parameters (such as the rules of chess), and the same is true of many general theorems of combinatorial game theory.

The task that can be achieved by a "scientific" approach (i.e. inductive reasoning from empirical information) is a different one. Specifically, you can arrive at results that are uncertain (eg according to model M, there is a high probability that the optimal result is R) and approximate (eg strategy S probably loses very rarely), by contrast with a type of mathematical proposition that is certain and precise, achieved by rigorous deduction.

Only an imaginary and non-existent universe. Positing it doesn't make it in any way real or useful.

#12
Here is what solved means:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game

I doubt Go will be solved before chess. Lee Sedol even won a game against AlphaGo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo_versus_Lee_Sedol