RE: computer-go: Good Play (was FPGA)

[Amol Dharmadhikari <dharam2@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is really subjective to the definition.
There are some games which are calculation intensive and by taking care
of more and more possililities you can win the game. 
some games are "pattern intensive". You have to watch out for certain
patterns(visual patterns).

I guess we cant say that all humans have "calculation intensive" minds or
"visual pattern intensive" minds.

So then this definition of the "difficuly" is based on what we think the
human mind is like which is very much open to debate.

I think the definition of "difficulty" should mean something to all
people. Let us say for instance that "addition of 2 numbers" is not a
"difficult" task for most humans. But computing the path integrals
definitely is. Why is it so?

Because addition does not use as many diverse "concepts" as computing
path integrals. 

I guess we will have to base the "level of difficulty" on the number of
diverse concepts involved in the problem. eg - there has to be
calculations, pattern recognition, short term tactics, long term
strategy, memory(these are just general terms which can be applicable to
any game) i.e. how many different portions of the brain are used.(which
again is a controversial topic).

It is silly to say that Go is more difficult as Go masters cant be easily
beaten on the basis of a single mistake they make. That this thing cant
happen is an inherent feature of Go which has nothing to do with how
difficult it is.

Also "human factors" shouldnt be counted as some measure of
difficulty....
otherwise we'll have to start with the card games; many of which are
purely psycological.....

Amol


> 
> I think the difficulty of a game should be measured by its stability of
> ranking.  We can easily think of some easy games that beginners can also
> beat "pros".  I think according to this measure, Go is more difficult than
> chess.
> 
> James Liu
> jliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> Mike Gherrity wrote:
> 
> >> The problem is that people don't do a brute-force, iterative deepening
> >> search.  How do they play so well?  It would be nice to figure out the
> >> answer to this question using a game like Chess or Go.  However, if it
> >> can't beat the brute-force, iterative deepening search machine, people
> >> aren't interested.
> 
> How do they (people) play so well?  Hmmm, good question which got me
> thinking about an assumption we are making.  Computer Chess really is
> simpler than Computer Go for many reasons.  I don't think anyone here
> would argue with that statement.  But is Chess a simpler game than Go?
> If so, how much harder is Go than Chess? It is more than a question of
> degree of difficulty, since the two games are very different perhaps
> requiring different skills, and so might be like comparing apples and
> oranges, but just how hard is Go?  Let's assume it is around a couple of
> orders of magnitude more difficult for the purposes of this discussion.
> 
> Given that thought, the question that popped into my head was How do we
> know people (even at the professional Dan level) are playing the game so
> well? Could it be that even professionals would be devastated by a
> perfect/near perfect Go-playing entity?  If the game is so much more
> difficult than chess, are Go players much more intellectually capable
> than Chess players?
> 
> Taking the opposite conclusion, perhaps Go really ISN'T much harder than
> chess, it is just different than Chess and due to its unique
> characteristics is not amenable to the brute force, iterative deepening
> search machine.
> 
> Questions:
> Is Go inherently more difficult than Chess?
> If so, is there a way to quantify the degree of difficulty?
> Do expert Go players really play near perfectly?
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Matt
> 
> 
> 
>