Chess will never be solved, here's why

I'll take that as a "yes".

Sorry for the delay, I didn't at first realise that was meant to be a response to my challenge.

Very good as a first try, but a few nit-picks.

(i) If you add moves and/or change the move order some people might say that changes something by definition.

(ii) You don't prove the accuracy is near 0.

(iii) You don't prove if you add some moves and/or change the move order, the accuracy stays near 0%.

Apart from that - well done!

I look forward to you clearing up those few points - I'm sure as the World's strongest grandmaster it won't take you long.

Apparently you don't understand how computers work.  If you give the system a set of rules to apply to "eliminate" non-sensible positions, the act of evaluating each position and checking the criteria you have set is a significant portion of the effort you think that you are avoiding.    Whether you pre-parse all this and de-couple it from the actual evaluation of the sensible positions make little difference...you're still talking about orders of magnitude that make your 5 years laughable.

10^120 possible games including all legal paths *was already reduced* to 10^44.5 unique positions since the route of evaluating all legal games is even more out of reach.  The cost of this simplification is that you are left evaluating unique positions, not valid game paths.  Checking those game paths will cost you a number of years that are not remotely feasible.  As I said, your reductions are not going to work.  10^120 to 10^44.5 (sound) to 10^36 to 10^17 (unsound)...it's a little much .

yes

The difference is, I have demonstrable credibility on the forums .  Every would-be genius on the forums is the same...they all think that their brilliance is unfathomable and leads to people "ganging up on them" in some organized way.  The answer is much simpler.  You're just wrong, ergo a bunch of people individually attempt point it out to you. 

Optimissed tried to name us all as a group, but Elroch and I don't really interact directly, Playerafar and I don't really get along, Martiggan and I have never interacted that I can recall, and Haiaku is brand new addition to this topic (and a very discerning one, I would say).  Pfren, BlueEmu, and Llama each have their own unique take on things as well.  There's no "gang".  If the average user on the forums understood this problem better, you'd have hundreds and hundreds of posters telling you you are wrong.  How big does the "gang" of posters telling you your premise doesn't work have to get before you even start to wonder if you *might* be mistaken?

The fact that it happens over and over should clue you in, but as we know from other examples, some people are not that good at picking up on clues that they might be off the beam.  

Congratulations.  I accept your premise that this position is not the solution to chess .  Only 10^44.5 more positions to go...

No, I did not start that crap .

Yeah, I seem to be less hostile in this topic. I'm willing to consider how chess may or may not be solved in the future.

The main hurdle for me is one you've brought up a lot (I haven't been reading this topic religiously, so I don't know if @tygxc has answered it yet) and that is saying out loud that a class of positions can be ignored is very different from devising an approach that allows the software to completely skip over them.

From a distance, the argument seems to be that if we let a computer catalogue a large number of positions we can slap a "weakly solved" label on it. I mean sure, ok. As far as I know there's been no strict definition given to "weakly solved." You want to say that an engine plus enormous catalogue would outperform today's engines? Sure. Sounds obvious. If you want to say more than that then let's hear it

Promotions to bishops may be the rarest, but they empirically occur in 1 in 33,000 games i.e. well over 1 in 10,000,000 moves, which is likely not too different to the frequency of positions where such a move is optimal. That is plenty to use the intuitive argument I provided why a substantial fraction (something like 0.1%) of all legal positions with multiple underpromotions are reachable via optimal play.

The argument that promotion to a bishop can only be strictly superior to queening in a winning position sounds correct.  However, I believe eliminating lines where an opponent can win by promotion to bishop could be crucial to analysis of a drawing position (in order to avoid getting into them -  assuming the opponent can only queen could be fatally deceptive). That makes such positions potentially important. The same for positions with 5 underpromotions to bishop to achieve a win.

Yeah, if the idea is that the weak-oracle can't play optimally in every legal position, but it's impossible for it to lose when playing a game from the starting position, then I don't know how you can ignore underpromotion.

If the idea is that the weak oracle will almost never lose, but it would be impossible to meaningful improve its play short of fully solving chess, then I don't know how you can ignore underpromotion.

If the idea is that the weak-oracle will almost never lose, and future improvement is possible... well ok, but that's just a strong chess engine. We're already cataloguing analysis. Analyze a well known position on lichess and the depth is instantly at 40. Load up live book on chessbase and some positions have analysis saved to depth 60+.

"The fact that it happens over and over should clue you in, but as we know from other examples, some people are not that good at picking up on clues that they might be off the beam"

He's already asserted - twice now that he's 'pretty sure he knows more than anybody here' ...
its more than 'not that good'.
Its 'serving notice'.   And it explains his reactions and policies.
You don't tell him something.  He tells you something.
Tell him anything - and we'll get another column of unfounded assertions instead of acknowledgement. 
He'll even try to claim the speed of the computers doesn't matter.
Has.  Vehemently.

Is this all to 'vindicate Sveshnikov' ?
I don't think so.
This is not about 'weak solving' either.
Its about 'heuristics'.   

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.

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. 

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".

It would be possible to start it, but...

That

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.

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.

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.

Getting somebody to acknowledge something they don't want to acknowledge.
Even for a dentist to obtain that ...

@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 ...