Could Carlsen beat engine

You cant measure how many wats a human needs to think but you can measure how many calories.

And after it you can make an equivalent.

Yes, if you stretch it, everything runs off electricity.

But until our brains use processors for thinking, hard or solid state drives as storage and cables as means of communications between those, the analogy is pointless.
The two being compared is day and night.

And how exactly would you measure that of those calories how many are actually spent thinking about chess and not anything else?

Humans cannot focuse on one and only task. When you're playing chess, you're also experiencing the room you're in, you're thinking about the food you ate the morning, how comfortable the chair is, you notice a hair on your opponent's face, etc. etc. etc. etc.

The whole comparing is pointless.

Im not an expert on biology and I feel I can end up like a retard by linking non-scientific articles but take a look at these:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-calories/

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5920970/how-many-calories-does-thinking-burn

The first one says 12 watts and the second one says 1.5 calories per minute.

Chess is a draw tho.

I've always believed that Magnus can manage a draw or two in a 5 game match.

Ive always believed that I can run faster than a car.

That's insane, talking of the death of a human beeing, when he isn't dead.
 

Carlsen - 2850

Engine - 3400

Have engines played thousands of long games, as GM have against other GMs ?

I have some doubts about the data allowing one to compute an ELO of 3400, since there are no player with slightly lower ELOs.

Ok, I decided to make the calculation on my own !

A typical brain uses 20 Watts (Joule/second). Here I have to guess, but my bet is that the energy used for thinking of chess is way less than 10% of these 20 Watts (if I remember well, just the visual system accounts for 70% of the energy). That makes at most 2 Watts dedicated to a human brain playing  chess. In fact I tend to think I may miss the true value by one order of magnitude, I would rather put my estimation in the range [0.2,2] Watts.

Now, what for a smartphone? A typical smartphone uses 5 Watts. The processor uses 1 third of that, say 1.7 Watts for chess. This is quite accurate.

Conclusion: if the human brain uses 0.2 Watts (lower-bound in my estimate), then he might still be superior to a machine. If my upper-bound of 2 Watts is the right one, then I agree with GnrfFrtzl: humans are still beaten by smartphones for a given amount of energy.

I would enjoy knowing the output of chess competitions with a given amount of energy! That's an open challenge to programmers.

Cheers

The smartphone's processor doesn't even use that for chess only. The only accurate way to measure that if there was no other processes running in the background, but the only way I can think of achieving that is a separate core being dedicated to the chess software, while another displays the interface and all that. And we don't even know exactly how our brain shares the resources and divides it amongts different processes, only estimations. The variables, especially for a human mind (build, age, nutrition, etc.) are so vast and unimaginable, that we will never know. Do different chess players think the same amount about chess? Surely, not. Is there a difference between the abilities between an expert and an amateur? Of coursr. There is no answer for this, and there are no set numbers of energy spent per hour, and so, an objective comparison is pointless. It's the same comparison as human eyes vs. cameras. The two are so different, that it's simply pointless.

 Dear GnrfFrtzl,

I think you are going nowhere with your comments. My estimates are accurate to a factor 3. This is sufficient to have a rough idea of the conclusion, which is exactly what I aim for.

Cheers

You're comparing apples to airplanes.

You can do that in terms of color, taste, amount of worms... This comparison is sound for some features .

And where exactly these estimates come from? Do they include the passive functions of the body governed by the brain? All the sensatory inputs, outputs, the immune system, etc.? And who is the subject? What's their age, their diet, there personality? How on Earth can you even roughly estimate something like this with a million variables we can't measure in any way?

I actually work with neuroscientists (this is for real). These facts have been evaluated seriously. Here is a popularization article where you'll find this figure.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-11/neuron-computer-chips-could-overcome-power-limitations-digital

I do and can believe that a human brain uses 20 watts, that's not what I disagree with. What I say is that there is no clear number as to how many of those 20 watts you spend solely on chess. That number, we will never know, because there are a million variables and a million 'background apps' in our brains that also come into play. And since we can theoretically put a number of how much a computer processor actually uses, it's pointless to compare the two until we can do the same with a brain as well.