The actual number of moves that are not utterly stupid in chess is tiny and chess will be fully solved one day
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 3, 2026
It’s called the Shannon number. It was calculated in 1949, using pencil and paper.📝 It describes the possible number of chess moves, which is subject to disagreement (Shannon calculated “reasonable moves.” Other calculations include all possible moves, including useless ones.), but the number is far higher than any known system of data storage could store, much less than any computer could calculate.the whole point of chess is that it's a fun, social activity, often with peculiar, offbeat personalities. the idea of "solving" it is very strange to me.
— derek guy (@dieworkwear) September 4, 2026
But I guess this is why we need more AI centers?
Elmo and Trump are the poster children for the refutation of the old challenge: “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?”
I won't bring up the famous incident in which the greatest checkers player of all times - by a long measure - Marion Tinsley was playing the then most complete program "solving" checkers in which at the tenth move Tinsley told the computer, "I think you're going to regret that" and how the programmer went over the game after the computer withdrew to say that Tinsley had seen the one and only move that would eventually defeat the computer in a huge number of subsequent moves. Who cares if two computers play each other? Who cares what Elon says. Look at the crap he pushes. He couldn't even see that his personal Edsel was going to be a flop.
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess I did bring it up.
DeleteNo, you prove the point. Elmo is a stupid person who thinks he’s smart. When he bought Twitter, a Twitter engineer recounted showing Elmo the code, while describing it to him in technobabble. Elmo assured the engineer he understood. And Elmo probably thought he did.
DeleteHadn’t heard that story about Tinsley, btw. Thanks for that.
DeleteI remember when I first heard that a computer had beaten a chess grandmaster, and at first I felt kind of bad about it. But then I realized that a computing machine winning a chess game was no different than a car outrunning a man. The car has a gas engine. The chess-playing machine won the game only because its computational power enabled it to generate millions of possible scenarios over some x number of next moves and run some algorithm of which should be favored. This is how humans play, or can play. It's apples and oranges, like a foot race with a Ferrari.
DeleteChess is fun, is a game, is an art, when it's between humans. When Elon says computers can "solve" chess, he unwittingly means they can ruin it, It will no longer be fun, or a game, or an art. But he's wrong. Chess will always be interesting and challenging when played by two human beings who can't generate millions of futures and who don't operate by algorithms.
The problem Elon has, which he took from his mentor Trump, is his conviction that winning is the only thing. It reminds me how Vince Lombardi was so lionized for his awful "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing" when we were kids. It's such a bankrupt motto for any game--any activity really--when there is a winner and a loser. Sorry to keep multiplying references, but so many of today's losers have adopted the code of Ricky Bobby's father, that "If you ain't first you last." Since in fact most everyone loses as much as wins in the zero-sum games we play, a Trump or an Elon, or those of their ilk, have to go into deep denial, all the time, to convince themselves that they are "winners."
OK, one more reference. Ted Turner once famously said that Christianity was a religion for losers. He was, of course, right, without realizing how much for him it really was.
Correction". That is NOT how humans play."
ReplyDeleteTed Turner? I thought that was Nietzsche? 😸 Either way, it’s true. And I would rather be a Xian than a “winner.” The Xians I’ve known, or known of, were much more admirable for their humility and their servanthood.
ReplyDeleteIt’s your fault for getting me started. 😈