computer-go: Please stop this pointless and blasphemous discussion !!!

["Roland G." <goprog@xxxxxxx>]

Hello computer-go,

  I'm following this discussion about strength of best players and how
far we are from "perfect" play ...and would like to say the following:

1) first keep GOD and the Devil out of it!!! We are not discussing any
religious issue here(or are we in fact doing so?), and the way of
talking of some people is blasphemous in my opinion. There have been
people claiming that Kramnik would win from God if he has a good
position and others claiming that they would win from God if they have
a pawn advantage at the beginning(how do they dare to say this?). You
must first know that God has more resources than playing perfect: he
could also complicate a position to induce mistakes or manipulate your
mind(even if you are a computer) to make you lose or maybe travel in
time to change a lost position into a winning one... And to some
people here it may be offensive if you talk about God in this way,
especially when you don't really know how far away from perfect play
you are...So instead of referring to God or the Devil why don't use
another term, like an abstract "perfect player" or "perfect
game-play"?

2) Second, I think the discussion is pointless because basically none
of the two sides can prove their statements. The two sides are the
following:

a) players claiming that we are very close to perfect play.

b) players claiming that we are still far away from perfect play.

If you belong to a) prove your statement. If you belong to b) prove
your statement also. Otherwise we will just continue to exchange
arguments for one side and the other without ever ending the
discussion. To me it seems also that the group b) is simpler to prove,
because to do it we just would need a computer program that plays far
better than any of the top players. But then again the question would
arise if that computer program is close to perfect play or not...

3) Maybe we should change the whole question to "How far away are we
from perfect play?" In this case the answer would not be a simple yes
or no but a numeric value. But I don't think that this reformulation
would help us either, because as we still don't know what is perfect
play it will always be difficult to compare our current playing
ability with perfect play.

4) Maybe a more practical approach would be to achieve a mathematical
method of calculating the perfect move in a given position without
having to wade through the entire game-tree. In fact this has already
be done for the very late GO endgame and also for some chess endgames.
The problem is the beginning and middle game. So maybe we should try
to answer the following questions:

-how can we calculate the perfect move in a given position without
having to move through the entire game tree(its possible for the
endgame already).

-can we prove that the above is not possible if we are not in the
endgame? In this case the only way to achieve perfect play would be to
produce a complete game tree which I think will always remain
impossible(?).

-- 
Best regards,
 Roland                          mailto:goprog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx