Re: [computer-go] Pattern matching - example play

["Frank de Groot" <frank@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Brown" <rbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [computer-go] Pattern matching - example play



> Peer review, for those unclear on the concept, is where others, typically
> those who share your interests, look at what you've done, all the while
> saying, "I simply don't believe and only if you prove it to me then I will
> believe".

I wish someone would peer-review my sourcecode (as done in XP).
Every time I get better results I am convinced I finally "did it" and can
move on to the next stage, now I just discovered another huge bug that
necessitates re-crunching for a week.

It turns out that my statistics of the harvested patterns are based on
approx. 10 times less data than I thought, so only on 50,000 games. The good
news is of course that the performance will go up again but I wonder what is
wrong with my brain..


> have obtained.  It's nice to see claims backed up by such solid research.

Of course.
But the problem is with commercial Go programmers that firstly it will cost
them a lot of time to publish, secondly they might have great difficulty
publishing anything (I for example do not understand mathematics), thirdly
it is totally against the interest of commercial Go programmers to publish
anything.

So I think when a commercial Go programmer like David Fotland or Mark Boon
actually share ideas, principles and even source code (I am not sure Mark
Boon is still making money with his most expensive Go program (around 150
USD?), that this as only laudable and it's not really fair to "demand" a
publication.

I have never understood the reasons for extensive proof anyway. Just read
the concise explanation of the idea, if you think it will work, use it.. My
pattern system is based on a publication. But since I do not understand
mathematics I only looked at the pictures <g> and I didn't care about the
results either! I thought "This is a cool idea and I can make this work".
That's all. Inspiration.

If a programmer tells me: "I did such-and-such and I have these amazing
results" and I think he's just a clown and his explanation of his idea looks
like the rantings of a madman to me I am not going to ask him to publish
anything because that's basically saying: "You are a liar, I don't believe
you". What difference would a publication make?

Neither would I ask a publication if his story/results were credible because
that would be saying: "I believe you but I do not understand your
explanations and I do not understand the explanations of your explanations
and no amount of comp.go list discussion makes me understand it more, but I
would like to rip off your work anyway so please spend a month of your time
to hand over all your intellectual property to me".

Researchers publish stuff to establish something, commercial programmers
keep things secret. When a commercial programmer dicloses anything, it
means: "I want to cooperate in the community of peers = fellow COMMERCIAL
programmers". When fellow commercial programmers remain silent about their
latest developments or "secret" stuff, of course it was a mistake to explain
about the internals of one's own "secrets", but that is a chance one takes
only once.

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