Objectively Speaking, Is Magnus a Patzer Compared to StockFish and AlphaZero?

I'm rather illiterate on the subject of computers, but I do know in the 1950s, developers were hoping that chess could be the construct for understanding AI, and visionaries such as Mikhail Botvinnik, saw computers learning to play chess like humans, only better. But rather quickly number crunching became the way to go and AI development -in relation to chess at least - fell by the wayside.  Pure calculation did however prove to be impossibly strong especially as computers themselves also became faster along with improved algorithms and better elvaluations. 
Is this so-called AlphaZero a sort of vindication of the early computer-chess ideas?

Yes, most definitely a vindication.  

What's mind -boggling to behold is combining machine learning/machine intelligence with ridiculously fast number crunching.

That day is coming.  Soon. 

But I don't think machines will develop consciousness.   

Let's hope not - otherwise not only would they beat us at chess they would then gloat about it afterwards!

Not even AC?  Artificial Consciousness? 

"But now, it's kinda stirring back again. Magnus, the strongest human player of all time (as measured by ELO) is a freakin' patzer!!"

You have to put it in perspective.

Mickey Mantle hit the longest measured home run in baseball over half a century ago and no one says, "He was a baseball patzer because a hitting machine can hit the ball twice as far."

The human Pole Vault record is 6.16 m (20 ft. 2 1/2 in.) by Renaud Levillenie and no one says, "He is a track and field patzer because even ancient catapults could throw objects much higher than that."

We need to look at chess engines in the same way: we are able to construct machines that can make simple calculations at speed and accuracies far beyond human ability and that's what chess engines do.

They play chess in a different way than humans do. They evaluate principally by grinding out sets of moves but when they evaluate our games they can't say helpful things like, "You should have posted your Knight on the strong c5-Outpost and Pawn Stormed up the middle rather than try to attack your opponent at h7."

So machine chess is almost as different from human chess as a pole vault is to a catapult.

Compared to computers, we all are patzers.

Humans can occasionally see something they can't, but those  positions are extremely rare, and may now be extinct with the advent of AlphaZero.

Don't oversell AlphaZero too much. Stockfish was playing without its opening database. That is a serious handicap, as GMs Nakamura, Fishbein, and many others have pointed out. Even so, AlphaZero still is miles ahead of any other engine and marks a revolution in computer chess. And computers in general. 

As some have said, Nobel Prizes and other honors are the least of what the creators of AlphaZero can expect. This is truly revolutionary stuff! Skynet and DATA (STNG) are just around the corner!

What is Artificial Consciousness?  I'm not familiar with that.

As an aside, I occasionally engage in polite debates with atheists, and one of the avenues that I sometimes engage them with is the issue of a mind, of a consciousness. 

It's a challenge for atheists when it comes to the brain and consciousness/mind.

Those 59 moves, M59, are tablebase output, which is precalculated.

Komodo saw 10 moves, and the tablebase added the rest, at best.

It is, because you can surpass him, and you can surpass Alpha too, if you wish.

There is nothing stronger than the human mind, we just are using less than 5% of it, and this is well known.

+10, Alpha is 2850 currently on single core.

You mean an android who spends half his time banging on about wanting to be human and the other half mal-functioning and trying to kill everybody? Oh Good!

Mick, Smyslov Fan, MickyNJ, Debistro, et al,

I bought quite a few chess books, and I am/was planning to storm the mountain of 2000 and 2200 after a 30 year layoff.  I'm not yet 60, and I wanted to make it by age 65.

Now I'm wondering if OTB chess is dead if/when AlphaZero "solves" chess.

If so, then I'd like to make an early determination on whether to stop this Don Quixote quest to attain 2000/2200.

Moreover, I have a 3rd grader who just got into chess.   It would be cool if he made NM but if AlphaZero "solves" chess what's the point of going further?

Indeed it is, that is why I will never confess Stockfish is stronger than me and am frequently thrashing it.

Chess isn't dead, and isn't going to die even when engines do play perfectly. Humans won't compete against engines, they compete against other humans.

I haven't created an artificial definition (AD) for it yet.

I think it's a good goal to keep yourself mentally active even at that age, so by all means carry on. James Tarjan is over 60 but look at him. Treat chess as a mental gym. No need to set as a do or die goal.

Computers can carry on playing with computers, and humans with humans. I think in the near future your robot driver or robot rubbish collector would be playing chess "perfectly" if you asked them to. But meh, we surely got bigger things to worry about than chess playing robots when it gets to that stage....

See #42 above.

Q:  Will humans, people still be interested in chess to play competitively, and study patterns, and memorize opening ideas, and pay coaches despite this paradigm-shifting advance by DeepMind's AlphaZero engine?

Sorry for sounding like Eeyore, but .... as you can tell, I'm a bit discouraged (despite the intellectual elation over this tremendous AI breakthrough).

No, this is just a myth.

Computer chess has always followed the same path, that of gradually increasing the sophistication of both the evaluation and the search. The current top engines have the most sophisticated evaluation and the most advanced search.

We don't know much about Alpha's code/specific algorithms, but with its current level of 2850 on single core, this only indicates how basic its algorithms/evaluation are next to the current top.

I simply can not believe people are really buying into this: it was all the much stronger hardware.

Google will state Alpha learned its current knowledge in 4 hours.

Do you believe it? That means in 400 hours, 2 weeks' time, they will have the perfect player at 6000 elos. You really believe it?

This was just a media stunt to promote their products related to TPUs and artificial intelligence, anyone taking a bet we will not see an improved Alpha in 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 months' time, probably even much much longer.

SP, my comment about chess not being dead was a direct response to your post #42. 

I'm reading comments by GMs on Facebook saying that this is a great day for chess because of how much AlphaZero could teach us about the game!

For every Eeyore shaped cloud, there's a silver lining.