Will computers ever solve chess?

I have the same problem, my suspicion is that it is more of a randomness barrier or something

Well, if one side can force a win, that is the result. If not, then the evaluation assumes best play by both sides, so the best line (best play by both players) must be a position with some intermediate evaluation.

These lines of intermediate evaluation includes those where a player can force a draw. The simple way to deal with these is that a player who can do would do so unless they can force a higher evaluation than zero by a different choice of line. As a result, they don't complicate the situation much.

Note that search is recursive, so all positions where a player has an option to reach a winning tablebase position, they can be assumed to do so, and all positions where they can avoid a losing tablebase position, they can be assumed to do so.

I'm sorry, but people have been trying to implement the "plan" of making computers learn since the conception of computers, you have not brought forward anything that hasn't been tried already, and all have failed miserably. You are only trying to reinvent wheels of which it is well known for decades that they aren't as round as they seem at first sight...

The only thing that comes close is neural networks as described for example in the article on AlphaGo I posted earlier. Neural nets have proven and practically infinite potential and are most likely the only real future of machines (self)learning.

I am a programmer, I have played around with creating engines for both draughts and chess. As far as the plan is to make computers learn on their own, nothing concrete has been said at all, only fantasies have been put forth that have no relation to actual implementation whatsoever. All the other things can easily be implemented and have existed in vastly improved versions for decades already, you may want to take a look at bitboards for example, a very clever and well thought out way to represent chess positions, which allows very efficient move generation using bit-wise operations, etc:

https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Bitboards

In the context of chess that would be an engine that improves its evaluation by the games it plays, that learns from selfplay so to say. Current chess engines only improve because their programmers add code to the evaluation function etc, they don't learn on their own in other words

I taught myself programming since I had my first computer, learning several programming languages on the way, I did not go to school for it though. I made money programming on a freelance basis, and having been using software I created to make money trading on sports markets for years. So it has been a semi-occupation, although I'm currently studying philosophy full time, but once I'm done I plan to give programming mobile phone apps a go as there seems to be a lot of money and future inthere. I'm currently very interested in neural networks, I hope I can apply these to chess engine programming as it seems this has never been done successfully (there was some attempt with an engine that was called Giraffe if I recall correctly, but this wasn't very strong), but that's something for the future

Philosophy is a great study but it cant keep the chimney smoking.

No, playing against oneself and playing against others would be more or less equal, although neural nets are usually "jumpstarted" by training it with large sets of standard tactical and positional ideas that may come from human games

As I said, I haven't seen any concrete ideas that haven't been tried already. The only way forward that I can see would either be more of the same that everybody has been doing so far (bigger tablebases, better evaluation terms, deeper search) or neural nets

By the way, I think of myself more as a philosopher who does programming, although I have no idea why any combination of the two would be far fetched

Hehe, I started with BASIC as well, QuickBASIC that is

One could not, but one can suppose it like functionalism / materialism does, but that is only empty theorizing as far as I'm concerned. The more interesting question is why you would suppose any more understanding in a chess playing computer than in a rock rolling down a hill

Gerberk, I know I have seen that face before, probably someone who couldn't keep the chimney smoking, but I can't get a name with it....

I never used an Apple, I went from MS-DOS to Windows 3.1 and up

Dat is de onovertroffen Arthur Schopenhauer.

Ah yes, I'll take Arthur Schopenhauer over Immanuel Kant any day

Hij leefde van een erfenis en later van de royalties van zijn boeken.

Ideaal, doe mij dat ook maar zo!

2051 is an impressive score Roepstoep.I would not stand a chance against you but i am relatively new at the game.

I detest Apple to be honest, their policy of artificially limiting the possibilities of their products seems pointless to me, but the worst is that half of the price you pay is for this stupid apple-logo on the side, no thanks.