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More Marigold Awkward Sex Talk!

6 (8%)

More Claire/Clinton Fighting!

5 (6.7%)

Hannelore Draws Moar Kittehs!

9 (12%)

Marten Is Amused!

9 (12%)

Faye and Angus - The Beginning of The End!

4 (5.3%)

Dora/Tai - The Next Day!

18 (24%)

Emily and Gabby do something weird!

11 (14.7%)

Another New Meme Attempt!

4 (5.3%)

An Old Meme Returns! (Waffles! Spathe Ham! LASERS!)

1 (1.3%)

Hitting the F5 key repeatedly to see if Jeph's updated the strip yet!

8 (10.7%)

Total Members Voted: 68

[Akima]

And are you saying that the young go/weiqi players do not aspire to beat their father/elder brother/sensei/whatever at the game? With or without handicap stones?

Absolutely not! It's just that Go is devoid of the sexual symbolism. Mind you, that symbolism is very Western (just like Freud ). The Queen is the "adviser" or "vizier" in many languages, I believe, and in xiangqi (Chinese chess), the General (the King equivalent) has two advisers, but no girlfriend.

Also, following Sun Tzu's advice "To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape" is a non-starter in go.

"In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory." Sun Tzu.

"The satisfaction of toying with an enemy group – not attacking it directly but circling around it, away from it, and forcing the enemy to concede stones and territory while protecting it – can be just as great as the satisfaction of killing it through brute force." Ishida Akira 9-dan.

It is often desirable to give your enemy a local escape route, or opportunity to otherwise shore up their position in one part of the board, in order to gain sente and develop your territory or influence elsewhere. It is a classic mistake of weaker players to focus on the battle and lose the war. I have often made it myself...

[Is it cold in here?]

Wikipedia cites a figure of 1E123 for leaf count in the tree of all possible chess games. Alpha-beta pruning would allow ignoring almost all of them.

[Hypster]

I love that Marigold grabs her hair when she's stressed. I can't remember what other strips she does it in, but she has. I think it's adorable.

[Near Lurker]

Why wouldn't it be possible?

It literally would not fit in the observable universe.

The point is, we do not teach Chess programs HOW to play Chess. We teach them to solve solutions to the current board state that result in victory for a given side based on a breadth first search of what might happen next and how much that something benefits or harms both sides.

"You don't drive a car, you accelerate, brake, signal, and steer."

[Method of Madness]

It literally would not fit in the observable universe.

That's what she said.

Seriously though, that's an obstacle, but not an eternally insurmountable one.

[PthariensFlame]

Seriously though, that's an obstacle, but not an eternally insurmountable one.

No, just an observably insurmountable one.

[Method of Madness]

Who knows what we'll be able to observe in the future?

[Carl-E]

The point is, we do not teach Chess programs HOW to play Chess. We teach them to solve solutions to the current board state that result in victory for a given side based on a breadth first search of what might happen next and how much that something benefits or harms both sides.

"You don't drive a car, you accelerate, brake, signal, and steer."

I think that's the point.  Certainly, people have a "style" of driving, and similarly, chess players have a style of play (or develop one, or are taught "a few tricks") that can help lead to a stronger position.  A human has not the resources to analyse the game the way a computer can, even if that analysis is limited.  Otherwise, it becomes like tic-tac-toe...

The main difference of course between driving and chess is that driving is even more variable with its constantly shifting end-game of "arriving alive".   

[Mr_Rose]

Robots are getting sufficiently good at it that some states are legalising driverless and autonomous vehicles on unmodified roads though…

[Carl-E]

Computers are very good at taking many variables into consideration and applying rules.  So driving, applying the rules of the road, will likely result in wining the game (arriving at the destination safely). 

In chess, just following the rules isn't nearly enough to win! 

[Near Lurker]

I think that's the point.  Certainly, people have a "style" of driving, and similarly, chess players have a style of play (or develop one, or are taught "a few tricks") that can help lead to a stronger position.  A human has not the resources to analyse the game the way a computer can, even if that analysis is limited.  Otherwise, it becomes like tic-tac-toe...

A computer doesn't have those resources, either.  The way they learn is by playing mock games, against humans and themselves, to figure out what works and what doesn't.  For this reason, the programs of two designers can have appreciably different "styles."

[Carl-E]

OK, granted that the complexity of the game prevents a computer from seeing through to the end, but it can see a lot further down the tree of moves than a human can.  In addition, it can run these mock scenarios much more quickly than a human.  But it can only "learn" in a way that it's programmed to, and that accounts for the majority of difference in the "styles" of the programs. 

A human can learn a new style when exposed to it, combine styles and come up with something new and surprising. 

Unfortunately, that applies to driving, too...

[Is it cold in here?]

Which is why a human can come back from a loss and beat the computer again, even though the computer hasn't gotten any dumber.

[jmucchiello]

A computer doesn't have those resources, either.  The way they learn is by

... doing exactly as they were programmed to do, and only if such code is part of the program. Chess programs do not need to be written such that they learn anything. The entire thing can be just a board position search with a fixed evaluation algorithm.

Seriously, a half-way decent programmer can probably knock out the core of a Chess playing program and hand tune it to play well against "average to good" Chess players in about two to three weeks. Most of that time will be spent on pruning the decision tree and memory leaks and little of the time would involve "playing" Chess. Chess is not complex. It just has a large number of possible board positions. If I were board, I'd attempt this "challenge".

[Pilchard123]

The search tree is probably the biggest problem for chess engines. The bigger it gets, the harder it is to keep memory use in check.

[PthariensFlame]

The search tree is probably the biggest problem for chess engines. The bigger it gets, the harder it is to keep memory use in check.

You can actually run a search over the leaves of an ephemeral rose tree in O(depth) worst-case space, as long as you're OK with O(n) worst-case time.  That might let you have a "perfect" chess engine that was just fairly slow.

[Method of Madness]

If I were board, I'd attempt this "challenge".

[Near Lurker]

... doing exactly as they were programmed to do, and only if such code is part of the program. Chess programs do not need to be written such that they learn anything. The entire thing can be just a board position search with a fixed evaluation algorithm.

I'm sorry, but I know this to be false.  Or at least, to the extent it's true, it's true because the wheel doesn't need to be reinvented - what programs have learnt can be reapplied.  Human players also "do exactly as they were programmed to do," by the laws of nature.  Our intellect isn't special, in any way that a computer can't be.  It really isn't.

Seriously, a half-way decent programmer can probably knock out the core of a Chess playing program and hand tune it to play well against "average to good" Chess players in about two to three weeks. Most of that time will be spent on pruning the decision tree and memory leaks and little of the time would involve "playing" Chess. Chess is not complex. It just has a large number of possible board positions. If I were board, I'd attempt this "challenge".

Go right ahead.  I expect you'll find on your hands a novice, on the level of someone who's just read a book on chess sitting down to his first game; I'm quite confident anyone who's actually worked on a chessbot would tell you the same.

While you're at it, try your hand at writing a go simulator.  After all, simple as chess is, go is far simpler - should be easy!

[Is it cold in here?]

Our intellect isn't special, in any way that a computer can't be.  It really isn't.

It's only a hypothesis that humans are Turing-equivalent.

in fact, our ability to maintain contradictory axioms is something that would cause a logic system to explode.

[Near Lurker]

1: Logic systems in that sense are so not the same thing.  Yes, Virginia, it is possible to code for cognitive dissonance.
2: Turing-equivalence in the sense that's debated is irrelevant.  Most scientists would agree that our minds accord to physical laws, which appear to be within the bounds of computability, at least with a random number generator.  (One should certainly hope they are, or this whole "science" thing's been kind of a waste of time.)  Therefore, our minds can't do anything a computer can't do, barring an immaterial soul.
Checking, that's not actually true; there is serious debate over whether physical laws are computable.  However, our models of quantum mechanics thus far strongly suggest that they are.  It's not proven, but it never could be proven, and by the nature of computability, likely (though not necessarily) can't be disproven if false.  So for now, I would say that it's a safe assumption that our physical brains can't do anything that can't be modelled, at least enough that arguments that amount to "but my intuition I'm better than lines of code!" can be summarily dismissed.

[Is it cold in here?]

There would still be the "it's just a simulation" argument, but I reject that one myself.

[Sidhekin]

How about: "It's only a model"?

[Pilchard123]

(n fact, our ability to maintain contradictory axioms is something that would cause a logic system to explode.

I cannot, but I must!

[Is it cold in here?]

The only way chess could be more Freudian is if the goal were to kill your own king and capture your own queen.

"It's just a model" has the same problem as "It's just a simulation". Critics of strong AI like to say "You can't get wet in a simulated rainstorm". OK, but that means if you do get wet then the rainstorm is not simulated, and if something displays the results of thinking then it IS thinking.

[Sidhekin]

"It's only a model" has the advantage, though, that if you paste it into a Google search box, the results are awsome.

[Is it cold in here?]

Whatever Momo is doing, I'm comfortable calling it "thinking".

[Method of Madness]

Yeah, but Momo is sentient, unlike any computers today...as long as we're acknowledging that the word means anything, which we might not be anymore.

[jmucchiello]

... doing exactly as they were programmed to do, and only if such code is part of the program. Chess programs do not need to be written such that they learn anything. The entire thing can be just a board position search with a fixed evaluation algorithm.

I'm sorry, but I know this to be false.  Or at least, to the extent it's true, it's true because the wheel doesn't need to be reinvented - what programs have learnt can be reapplied.  Human players also "do exactly as they were programmed to do," by the laws of nature.  Our intellect isn't special, in any way that a computer can't be.  It really isn't.

You don't understand computer learning. Computers could be taught to figure out how to play chess using neural network techniques. Sure. But the training time would be measured in years. Before that they would just suck. When IBM made Deep Blue, they didn't do that. They made special CPUs designed to evaluate a chess board position, rank it, and file it away for later comparison against other chess board positions. The only heuristics they employed was in tuning the board evaluation algorithms toward Kasparov's play style. And heuristics aren't "learning" they are statistics gathering and processing.

Humans do not play chess like computers are programmed to. Humans set intermediate goals and play to achieve them. Computers don't plan. Writing a chess engine that could plan would take a long time. Writing any program that could plan would take a long time.

Seriously, a half-way decent programmer can probably knock out the core of a Chess playing program and hand tune it to play well against "average to good" Chess players in about two to three weeks. Most of that time will be spent on pruning the decision tree and memory leaks and little of the time would involve "playing" Chess. Chess is not complex. It just has a large number of possible board positions. If I were board, I'd attempt this "challenge".

Go right ahead.  I expect you'll find on your hands a novice, on the level of someone who's just read a book on chess sitting down to his first game; I'm quite confident anyone who's actually worked on a chessbot would tell you the same.

There are hundreds of public chessbot programs. They have extensive code for tree maintenance, tree pruning, and board manipulation and pruning. That is exactly as I would expect.

Here are some links. Plan my next few moves is not an algorithm found in these links. They all have trees of board positions that they sift through to some depth limited by time and/or space:
http://www.tckerrigan.com/Chess/TSCP 2000 lines of code
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_%28software%29 read the technical details. It only talks about tree traversal
http://verhelst.home.xs4all.nl/chess/programming.html Notice that the three "programming techniques" listed, one is how to evaluate a board, one is how store a tree, and the third is example source code: notice that none of them involve "learning", "planning", or "thinking".

Chess programs are very dumb. They do one thing, tree searches for a good chess move, and that's it. Really, I know what I talking about. I left out only a few details (opening "book" libraries and end-game libraries) to make it easier to discuss.

While you're at it, try your hand at writing a go simulator.  After all, simple as chess is, go is far simpler - should be easy!

Go is simpler only in terms of rules. In terms of its decision tree it is one of the most complex games man has ever created and makes Chess look like tic tac toe in comparison.