Re: computer-go: Evaluating positions

[Don Dailey <drd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

   Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 10:21:09 +0100
   From: Nick Wedd <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

   In message <20010620093518.B29699@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Heikki Levanto
   <heikki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

   >Although I agree that in practice, with mere humans (or worse, computers)
   >playing, there indeed is a difference, I am not sure if this holds to
   >perfect players.
   >
   >This is because we less-than-perfect players can not read things to the end,
   >but have to make do with approximations, probabilities, and errors, which in
   >the strictest mathematical sense do not belong in go, except in practice.

   With perfect players, a game of Go goes like this:

     "What's the komi?"
     "Six and a half."
     "Then black wins, ok?"
     "Sure.  Let's go out for a pint."

   This is not very helpful.

   Nick
   -- 
   Nick Wedd


The  "perfect player" is   a conceptual tool for defining  interesting
ideas.  "Let's go out for a pint" is also an interesting idea, but for
a completely different reason.

A point I have made is that to a  perfect player, some (actually most)
of our terminology is silly  and irrelevant, even  if we find it quite
useful.  But just  seeing that puts  things into perspective and keeps
us humble.

A perfect player doesn't see a board the way we see it.  His vision of
a board is  not what it is now,  but what it  will be.   For instance,
what to us looks like a completely uncontested corner of the board may
appear to be clearly colored to a perfect player.

If you show a strong chess player a board with equal material, but one
in which a  queen is about  to be taken, he  will immediately say that
"white is a queen down" or something  like this.  A weaker player will
tell  you what is  on the board and  say something like "currently the
material is even."

We are all weak  players in  this sense.  We   see only what is  right
before our eyes.  We  must take care that  we are not letting  our own
perspective cripple us.   

So I believe  that thinking like this  is very helpful.  It's not that
we would abandon what we know now, but we might always want to keep in
mind that the "reality" is not all  of this baggage  we wrap around it
to please ourselves.

Ok, let's go have a pint ...


Don