Re: computer-go: Evaluating positions

[Heikki Levanto <heikki@xxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2001 at 04:18:36PM -0400, Don Dailey wrote:
> This is interesting stuff.  
Yes indeed!

> Any concept we come up with is not "REAL" in an absolute sense.  These
> are just symbolisms  our   minds use in   an  attempt  to bring   some
> structure into our thinking about things.

Yes, of course. And to complicate matters, most of us approach the game
from a different direction. Some are trying to base their thinking on the
traditional theory of go, with all of its symbolisms and approximations.
Others try to start from general game-theoretic basics, with the symbolisms
and aproximations that brings. Others try to start from first principles,
and the rules of the game, and hope to get further that way...
 
> Most games, in my opinion have only a single real concept, usually stated
> by the goal of the game.

That is of course a matter of definition. Is the the concept of life and
death "real" in go? It is not explicitly mentioned in the rules, and one can
imagine games where it will never need to be considered, but still I feel it
has some "real" value in go. And how about a triple ko rule (or super-ko)?
It may be explicitly mentioned in the rules (depending which rules you play
by), but there can be so many games that don't even get near such a
situation. Is this a "real" concept of the game or what?  (btw, what *is*
the opposite of a "real" concept? fake? artificial? )

> What we call "fundamental  principles" should be reworded for accuracy
> to be "reality approximators" or something  like this. 

No, I think there are levels of this. I believe there are "fundamental
priciples" that the game is based on ("owning" points in go, available moves
in checkers). Then there are "derived principles", that follow logically
from the rules (life in go). Then there are "generalized rules of thumb"
(bulky five is not safe eye space, enclused space with two corners taken by
enemy stones is a false eye and does not count). Then there are even more
abstract "rules" (4-4 point does not secure territory in the corner). And so
on to proverbs and folklore (if any player has all four corners, white wins.
Less that eleven stones in danger, play elsewhere)

> You can tell what is fundamental by seeing how a  good program write a
> program.  

This is circular reasoning. Fundamental principles should be the same if I
write a good or bad program (even if my program is good). If my program
depends on the phase of the moon, and happens to be a strong program
anyway, you don't want to conclude that the moon is a fundamental principle
of go, do you?

> You have asked the perfectly valid question, how should we think about
> the    approximators?   Which  things    give the  approxiamately best
> correlation to winning the game?  How much do they overlap each other?

This is a valid question, and a pretty hard one to answer. More importantly,
you have raised the point that most of what we do *is* approximations. Now
we can ask
  - approximations of what, and
  - how relevant approximations

Interesting questions, indeed!

-H


-- 
Heikki Levanto  LSD - Levanto Software Development   <heikki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>