Quantum computers and chess

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by pluto2, Feb 26, 2008.

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  1. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    It's from "Farscape." The characters heard each other speak their own languages through the translator microbes implanted in their brains. So we heard what Crichton the sole human heard, an arbitrary English translation suitable for an alien Empire. Oh yeah, and suitable for a PG-rated TV show. "Drenn" was the faux-alien version of the S-word, and "Frelling" was the F-word.
     
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  3. kmguru Staff Member

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    Farscape rocks!
     
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  5. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Billy T: Your Essay on free will is interesting & informative. I agree with your views on mammalian visual systems. In particular, I agree with your view of the processing required to successfully catch a ball or hit a moving target.

    I am not convinced that your arguments provide a strong argument for free will, but do not want to argue against them. It is a subject I have not spent a lot of time pondering.

    I would not call the perceptual image generated by our brains a simulation, but that is merely a bit of verbal quibbling. Whatever one calls the process, you seem to have described the essence of it.

    Consistent with your essay, I agree there is strong evidence that our visual system does not have the processing power to create the accurate visual images which it seems to provide to our conscious mind. Consider viewing brick walls.
    • I live in an apartment complex with quite a few 3-story brick buildings. When I go out my back entrance, I can see the walls of three buildings.

      My conscious mind seems to be viewing an image precise enough for me to actually count the individual bricks in any wall I face. Furthermore, the preciseness of the image is retained if I quickly turn to look at a different wall. The images seem to be created in real time.

      I doubt that the retina of my eye has as much information as that of the image I think I see. Even if the retina can collect all that data, I doubt that the band width of the optic nerve and the processing power of my brain is sufficient to create the image in real time from the incoming data.

      I strongly suspect that a similarly precise image cannot be constructed by the visual system of a very young child or the system of a primitive person who has spent all of his life in a jungle environment. I am sure that much of the apparent preciseness is due to the memory of other brick walls.
    I think it has been established by researchers that the required data is collected at slightly different times and processed to create consistent perceptual images, which seem to be equivalent to those provided by a projector showing a Hollywood production.

    20 or so years ago, there was an SciAm article describing experiments with perception which included the following.
    • A motion picture was shown to many viewers. It included what appeared to be a flock of birds flying from right to left in the background. There were various more interesting activities in the foreground. The flock of birds was missing for several seconds. Even when instructed to pay attention to the birds and shown the film several times, most viewers did not notice that the birds disappeared for a few seconds, insisting that they saw them fly continuously across the background.

    • The following was recorded on an audio tape when Ronald Reagan was governor of California.
      The name Reagan was not heard due to a cough by the speaker. Almost all who heard the tape insisted that they heard the name Reagan and placed the cough elsewhere. Since the clue to the name came at the end of the sentence, this experiment indicates that perceived speech is almost half a second out of synch with real time, although we are not aware of this offset. It also indicates that we do not really hear what we think we hear when processing verbal input. We probably could not readily understand people with strong accents in the absence of processing which makes changes to the actual input sounds.
    The above provide evidence of processing unknown to the conscious mind which provides perceptions consistent with reality, but not necessarily consistent with the actual data provided by our senses.

    I am a bit schizoid about free will. Emotionally, I would like to believe that I really make decisions. Intellectually, I am not convinced that my decisions are based on my mental processes. I do not believe in a deterministic universe, so I consider free will a possibility, but suspect that quantum capriciousness might be more responsible for my decisions than my emotions and intellect.

    I have made some bad mistakes trusting family members, costing me much money, but I consider myself happy & successful. I like to attribute my good life to my making basically good decisions. Compared to alcoholics, day dreamers, lazy people, instant gratification personalities, et cetera, I have a good life in spite of not being affluent any more. Those who I view as worse off than myself seem to have caused most of their problems by making bad decisions (with exceptions for those with unfortunate environments).

    If free will is not responsible for creating a good or a bad life, the cause must be some quantum quirk which occurred very early. It does not seem reasonable to believe that my apparent success over a long life time is due to a long string of lucky tosses of the quantum dice rather than being due to basically good decisions.
     
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  7. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks, glad you liked it. Also thanks for reading its 8 or so pages, few do. (Unfortunately, we live a world dominated by 15 second "sound bites" on TV. They even stress the attention span of most.)
    Nor am I. In fact, I tend to think genuine free will is an illusion. I.e. humans are really just very complex biological machines, with some innate programs and many things learned especially in the first two years of their life. I only note that it need not logically* be impossible if we are non-material constructs in a simulation as only material things (and energy flows) are governed by the natural laws.
    Although it was via my effort to understand how a visual 3D perception is created from 2D stimulation of the retinas that lead me to my POV about perception, the "simulation" I suggest that we perceive is about EVERY aspect that we have sensor for. (It does not include the radio waves passing around and thru our bodies as we lack sensors for them, etc.) I.e. I call it a "simulation" for that reason - We internally simulate (in parietal brain tissue, I am certain) the ENTIRE environment we can sense, and extrapolate slightly ahead to compensate for the neural progressing delays (mainly caused by time required for diffusion of neuro-transmitters across the "synaptic gaps.") so it is a "real-time" simulation of the world we sense.
    I do not think that this parietal simulation actually has any representations in it that could be called "images." Even in the primary visual cortex, V1, where there certainly is a "one-to-one" conformal mapping of the retinal stimulation into neural activity, calling that neural activity an "image" is controversial. I have a thick book, called "mental images" from about 25 years ago when this controversy was hotly debated in the cognitive science literature. (I have not kept up with that literature for more than 16 years - since moving to Brazil - so do not know current POV. I bet neither side persuaded the other, but both just grew tired of the discussion.)

    Correct on all this. Usually instead of bricks, and related to the "mental image controversy", one is told to "Imagine a tiger in profile view." "Do you have a sharp image of it?" - "Yes, especially with my eyes shut." "Good, now count the strips for me." - The subject never can.

    The simulation is not as detailed as we think it is. IMHO, there may not even be any image in the real time simulation. Instead we may just have a set of facts "tied together" that we associate with a tiger, with the computer I perceive now, etc. for the whole 3D world I perceive with my eyes open. I do not know, but lean towards this "no image" POV because we do perceive many facts that are not visible. Generally they are called "affordances." For example, when I perceive a red apple I also know the interior is white and it is food I can eat, etc. It does seem perception is more than surface deep but this is getting into a level of detail about the nature of the parietal simulation I wish to avoid comment on as I would just be guessing.

    Yes, the remainder of your post is true - we fill in much with our memory and/or "reasonable expectations." There is a nice simple visual experiment showing this. A piece of graph paper, not too finely divided is best, that you can make two small spots on, perhaps 2 or 3 inches apart and look at with one eye closed. When in the position that one of the two spots is falling on the fovea and the other on the "blind spot" (optic nerve entry point) you will see only one spot and an otherwise complete set of graph paper lines - That is you have filled in with the graph's regular lines all of the region falling on the "blind spot." We do this "filling in" of vision all the time when ever one eye is closed. I.e. with one eye closed there is no perceived black spot in the field of vision. And as you note, we do it for all the senses with possible exception of taste and smell.

    --------------
    *The simulation is taking place in the most capable computer that exists, but still there may be rules of its operation. I.e. the parietal brain computer making the simulation cannot be a Von Neumann machine, not a parallel processor of any type yet conceived by man. It certainly is not rigid rule following "fuzzy logic."
    The main weakness of my argument that being non material creatures living in a simulation provides at least the possibility of genuine free will being real is here. I.e. by what set of rules is this parietal computer operating? I do not know the answer (and that is why I suspect genuine free will probably does not exist.). If there is an answer, I am inclined to think that logic does not have any "truth value" for at least some of its (declarative) statements.

    For an example of such a declarative statement with no "truth value" (neither true nor false) consider:

    "This sentence is false."

    Note this four word example is in the class of "self referencing" statements. I think it likely that if genuine free will does exist, then there will be a lot of mutually self referencing activity of the parietal neurons, too complex for man's current understanding of their logic.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 17, 2008
  8. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    I believe chess is almost solved. The Rybka 112-core cluster plays chess almost perfectly.

    However some games are much more difficult than chess. For example in Go, Gigachess and bughouse chess (also called exchange chess) there are more legal possibilities (legal moves) than in chess. These games are much more difficult for computers to play well because of the much larger possibilities. But of course we can always invent games which will be hard for a computer to play.
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2010
  9. Kernl Sandrs Registered Senior Member

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    No, I want to play Global Thermonuclear War.
     
  10. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    I'm sorry Dave, that game's not in my memory.

    As for the topic. "clusters" while indeed work together towards one goal are technically not "one computer", so the rules of engagement in regards to "Man vs Machine" would either have to be ambigiously termed with machine representing computer(s) or there would have to be more than one type of "Man vs" contest. (Computer, Neural Network, dog etc)
     
  11. Kernl Sandrs Registered Senior Member

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    Actually I was making a reference to WHOPR.
     
  12. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Pluto2: I did a bit of searching for Rybka 112-core cluster.
    I did not find any substantiated claims that it plays almost perfect chess. I found descriptions of Rybka winning various computer versus computer competitions.

    It is not clear what you mean by “chess is almost solved.”
    • Does this mean that Rybka or some human is close to proving that (assuming no errors) White has a guaranteed winning strategy, Black can always win, or that the game always results in a draw?

    • Does this mean that Rybka or some improved version is expected to always win against humans and/or other computers?
    Where might I find a description of the basic programming concepts used by Rybka? In the absence of contrary information, I assume that it uses the same brute force methods used by Deep Blue.

    Has Rybka played against the human currently rated as the best?

    BTW: I am almost certain that computers do not play Go well because there are currently no known algorithms or concepts providing a framework for developing a Go-playing computer program. The position evaluating functions combined with Von Neumann Mini-Max (is it Maxi-Min?) Strategy provided a wonderful framework for Deep Blue programmers.
     
  13. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    How come "Deep Blue" is Black?
     
  14. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Interesting question.
    Perhaps Deep blue refers to some phrase. EG: Deep blue sea.

    It is probably a name which relates to software or algoirthms rather than to hardware.
     
  15. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    I knew that, however I thought I'd see that and raise you HAL9000.
     
  16. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    From the IBM website on the subject:


    www.research.ibm.com

    Absoluteastronomy.com


    Further still, perhaps IBM treats the Chess computer as a "Sport".

    IBM Big Blue
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2010
  17. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Deep Blue is history. IBM's Blue Gene/P has 8192 processors and can also play chess.

    Although the game also requires natural human talent, chess is an expensive game because it requires faster computers with more and faster processors for better play. Many people in the world who don't earn much can't afford it.
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2010
  18. DNA100 Registered Senior Member

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    What about plain old mathematics?I am sure a very intelligent person(math minded) can easily figure out a way to play the game in an optimal manner without using all the brute computation.


    It's about imagination,not just brute force.
     
  19. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    False as then the player would need to know the best legal move every time he plays. That implies some way to evaluate the alternatives. No one knows of any such rule, but brute force evaluation of all the possible subsequent moves could allow the optimum, or at least the least inferior, choice to be made.
     
  20. DNA100 Registered Senior Member

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    No,I think we are just assuming too many things about how to solve the problem of chess mathematically.There can be brilliant solutions hidden to us that requires very little computation.There are actually mathematical solutions to many simple games.Chess is just a very complex game.

    But the basic idea behind solving these games mathematically are very simple.

    Suppose we can categorise two kinds/sets of chess board states ->S and T.
    When a player starts with S,he must end up in T.But if a player starts with T,he has the choice of ending up in S or T.Suppose S has the winning move which must be reached after a finite number of moves.Then the person starting with T has the advantage.

    The trick is really about finding out such S and T.

    Of course ,the above example was only a rough idea about how it works,but this idea can be extended pretty far.

    Basically my arguement is that chess can be solved by finding an ingenius algorithm,and not necessarily using a monstrous computing machine.
     
  21. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    But this is not what the OP is asking about. It is asking will the entire set of possible games be understood by the computer. Deep Blue is not remotely powerful enough. It could beat the best player, but that is a much smaller issue.
     
  22. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    DNA100: Do you play chess?

    If so, how do you rate yourself?
    • I beat most of those who play at a coffee house, at my country club, or in my neighborhood.

    • I play in tournaments sponsered by a local chess club. I win sometimes, often, almost always.

    • I win money playing chess

    • I am ranked nationally/internationally
     
  23. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Chess is a bit old (or may I say outdated?) now. Computers are becoming increasingly faster and more powerful and chess software is also becoming increasingly better and smarter. So anyone who has access to this advanced technologies can become a good chess player pretty quickly.

    Besides chess is not life and just moving pieces on the board is not going to make the world a better place.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2010
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