Re: Transactions: good or bad?

"Costin Cozianu" <c_cozianu_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:bct33q$mpgk0$1_at_ID-152540.news.dfncis.de...
> >>Bob's claim however was a straw-man even in the absence of those rules,
> >>because a chess playing game can *prove* if a position is techincally
> >>winnable by white, or by black, or it is draw (therefore effectively
> >>calculating a proof in the formal system established by the rule of
> >>chess), simply by exhaustively applying the min.-max. recursive
> >>algorithm over the *finitely many* positions of chess.
> >
> >
> > Your assumption is that no position will ever repeat. If a position
repeats,
> > the game will loop indefinitely. You still have not proved that all
chess
> > games will halt.
> >
>
> That's complete BS. A game is not a computer. It doesn't serve the same
> purpose in Game Theory as computers do in Theory of Computations.

Game theory is not particularly relevant to the current discussion of the limitations of automated theorem provers and to the similar limitations of the human mind. You introduce it only as a red herring or smokescreen.

For the purposes of the theory of computations, a chess game is a computer. Instead of having an infinitely long tape, it has a finite grid, and it evaluates a transition function with many more values than a turing machine evaluates. Nevertheless, the same concepts apply, and you have yet to supply the proof required to back your assertion that chess games are finite.

> You proved more than enough that you don't know about either.

As I observed earlier, you are only interested in a pissing match. You offer nothing but unsubstantiated assertions, off topic diversions and ad hominem attacks because you lack the balls and/or the intellectual honesty to admit when you are wrong.

> >>Given that they search in a game with an infinite space, programs have
> >>to decide whether evaluating a particular branch will be successful,
> >>without actually going on the branch (because branches are not
> >>guaranteed to be finite). It is there where they hit the halting
problem.
> >
> >
> > As do humans.
> >
>
> Complete BS. Humans are not TM.

It matters not whether humans are turing machines. It matters only that the halting problem is provably unsolvable.

> Humans may just pick a branch that they consider

As a computer may just pick a branch that it considers.

>, and more likely than
> not they will be successful.

You have great faith in luck.

> No fucking human on the planet ever lost any sleep over fearing whether
> his mind will gom in an infiinite loop.

Neither has any computer lost any sleep over the issue.

> Humans are obviously oblivious
> to such considerations.

Oblivion and constraint are two different things. The halting problem imposes the same limitations on the human mind that it imposes on computers. For all you know, some part of your brain entered a loop at birth which it will follow until you die. Your oblivion is only a measure of your self awareness.

> >>Evaluation branches in chess are always finite, even if games may be
> >>infinite,
> >
> >
> > Nobody asked you to prove that an evaluation branch halts. For your
> > assertions to have validity, you must prove that the entire game halts.
>
> Clueless again.

Singe ridicule!

> >>because the minute you encounter a previous position you no
> >>longer need to explore the branch.
> >
> >
> > This, however, won't prevent the game itself from looping endlessly. You
> > still have not met the burden of proof.
> >
>
> That's complete BS. A chess playing program does not have the mission to
> play an infinite game. It has the mission to play the next best move in
> each and every position. That's elementary.

A turing machine does not have the mission to play an infinite game either. It has the mission to evaluate the next move in each and every position. That's elementary too.

Where is your proof that every chess game halts? Your earlier assertions require exactly such a proof or "termination analysis" if you prefer.

> In order to *choose the next best move* (repeat after me: *the next best
> move*), it doesn't have to evaluate infinite games,

I never claimed the function to evaluate the next move in a chess game requires it to evaluate infinite games, and there is no onus on me to prove so.

In order for you to back your earlier assertions, you must prove that *all chess games* (repeate after me: *all chess games*) terminate. Otherwise, your belief that chess is finite is nothing more than conjecture.

> therefore it doesn't
> suffer the halting problem (and that's all I claimed: chess playing
> program don't suffer from the halting problem).

No, that's not what you claimed. You did not claim that the function to evaluate the next move in chess terminates; you claimed that all chess games are finite. I remind you what you said in news:bci44j$j85o4$1_at_ID-152540.news.dfncis.de:

"Read my leaps: chess has a finite model, chess *is* finite. If you're not able to see the obvious, you come borderline to trolling."

My reply was very clear in what I required of you in news:5KnHa.12$WR3.903214_at_mantis.golden.net:

"The board and the pieces have a finite number of states just as my computer has a finite number of states. Where is your proof that all chess games halt?"

Apparently, you want to clarify what you meant when you said "chess *is* finite" to say "the min-max function to evaluate the next move in chess always terminates assuming sufficient memory to recognize when a position repeats". Had you any interest in anything but a pissing match, you would have clarified that ages ago, admitted that chess games might not terminate and apologized for sloppy diction.

> In no way is a fact that they can decide the next best move a sign that
> they are intelligent.

I never claimed that automated chess players are a sign of anything. I only agreed with Alfredo that automated theorem provers do actually exist and have actually discovered novel proofs.

> Claiming that is the same thing as claiming that a
> computer is intelligent because it can perform billions of addition per
> second.

Again, I never claimed anything about the intelligence of computers. I only observed that computers have demonstrated superior ability to humans for proving some theorems just as they have demonstrated superior ability to humans for summing large unpredictable series of numbers.

You are the one who keeps introducing the philosophical mumbo-jumbo about computers that think. Nobody else is doing that. You are constructing your own straw men.

> >>In practice it has been proven that performing an exhaustive search over
> >>the space bounded by a certain depth of analysis (let's say 20 moves,
> >>well beyond the reach of a human player) is statistically more than
> >>enough to approximate the perfect evaluation function in quite many
> >>position. Still human players get to beat chess programs simply by their
> >>better intuition.
> >
> >
> > In other words, your entire position relies on the magic of the ghost in
> > your machine.
> >
>
> You don't know what I have inside my "machine". If you have the leats of
> mathematical background, you would know that you cannot speculate about
> objects that you cannot properly define.

Then why do you speculate about "intuition" ? If you don't know how you arrive at a proof, all you can say is you don't understand how you arrived at the proof. This does not prove a machine cannot reproduce the feat; it only defines the limit of your comprehension.

> Otherwise, here's this mathematical object for you: let there be a set
> of people (a village) and a barber in the village, and the barber shaves
> all the people who don't shave themselves.

A contradiction. Yawn. Been there, done that.

> >>The same way, mathematicians rely on intuition to know where to look for
> >>a proof, just like a 6 year old gets to recognize hand written
> >>character "automagically" (including taking the context of the phrase
> >>into account, the language) while there's no scientific theory to allow
> >>us to conclude that computers can do the same.
> >
> >
> > Again, more magic.
> >
>
> No magic, pure facts. Mathematician solve problems. The 6 year old
> recognizes characters. Computers don't.

Again, your assertion is demonstrably false. A 6 year old recognizes characters imperfectly, and a computer recognizes characters perhaps less perfectly.

> >>Yet, there's this philosophical belief of some people, that we can
> >>encode this "intutition" factor as a computable function. That's insofar
> >>completely unsupported.
> >
> >
> > What's insofar unsupported is the extistence of "intuition" in the first
> > place. You have some faith in its existence, and I do not.
>
> "Intutition" is whatever makes people play good chess, kids recognize
> characters, mathematicians recognize a path to follow towards a
> mathematical results. It exists because it has effects, we don't know
> what that is, but we know it's not a computer.

I disagree that you know it's not a computer. You simply do not know what it is. Intuition is only a word that describes a mental computation whose mechanisms are not understood. Whether stochastic or deterministic, in the end, we have no reason to believe they boil down to anything but the accidents of chemistry.

> My claim is that we have no clue whether this is or is not a computable
> function, therefore reproduceable by a computer. All the evidence we
> have suggests that it is not.

With all due respect, we simply do not have any evidence.

> Your claim is that you know it is a computable function

No, I have never made such a claim. You are welcome to quote anything I have said to demonstrate that I have. I have only recognized that automated theorem provers have discovered novel proofs, which is an empirical fact, and you have denied that automated theorem provers can even exist.

>, and although
> you and Alfredo have no real clue about theory of computation,

Since you have demonstrated an inability to comprehend simple statements of fact, I care little about your opinions regarding my ability. Singe ridicule!

> fundamentals of mathematics or proof theory you took the liberty to call
> names on one of the best expert in these fields whose work is cited by
> virtually all the literature on the subject.

I called him names? I don't remember that, but I'll take your word for it. If he is human, he makes mistakes, and his arguments you presented are nothing but superstition. He's as entitled to his superstitions as anyone else.

> You must be kidding yourselves, if you have the illusion that by
> googling for random content while exhibiting so much basic incompetence
> on the subject you've got any clue, or in your case any claim to
> "intellectual honesty" for that mater. You're just an amateur troll.

After you demonstrate the basic ability to comprehend simple statements of fact, perhaps I'll start caring about your opinions of me. In the meantime, I simply observe that you are a ridiculous little monkey beating his chest and waving his arms about. Nobody will lose sleep tonight worrying over who pisses further or longer. Received on Thu Jun 19 2003 - 23:52:15 CEST