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Parable of Alien Chess

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Re: Parable of Alien Chess

#151

Post by tiborsaas »

subroutine wrote: post #139
tiborsaas wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fun one, thanks for the illustration. If you analyse 5000 board configurations you can deduce with a high certainty that there are 64 fields the pieces can be on. The pressing question is then why can some pieces move only diagonally or only in one direction or any. In the case of chess, going after the why question is pointless, but obviously that wouldn't satisfy any scientist: It works because someone de…

In keeping with the original authors description, the aliens can only see the opening move. I'm confused - how could they determine there are 64 fields (nb: I only know the very basics of chess)? If they could view entire matches, it seems a trivial task to acquire a complete understanding of the underlying game, no?

Oh sorry, I missed that part. But according to the rules of chess a random valid opening should cover all fields on the table so at least you'd know the layout. Pawns can move one or two fields.

Knowing only the first move would limit understanding heavily, that's true.

Re: Parable of Alien Chess

#152

Post by jjk166 »

gxnxcxcx wrote: post #86
FeepingCreature wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, we may develop a society where advancement does not depend on death.

That could prove really difficult without the death of those not in need of any advancement. Power and privilege by their very nature tend to find ways of avoiding being watered down.

A cure for aging is not necessarily a cure for beheading-by-guillotine

Re: Parable of Alien Chess

#153

Post by jjk166 »

lmm wrote: post #41
bruce511 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not _players_ here that matter, just the color. If I play a grand master (or indeed just any moderately competent player) 10 times, I will lose all 10. But assuming we share who starts, white will win 5 times and black will win 5 times. Further, for some random chess tournament, I'm guessing the win ratio for black/white is close to 50/50 (perhaps white is a bit ahead for having first mover advantage - which is…

> It turns out the result of the game has lots to do with the player, and Little to do with the color, which makes the alien first model simple, accurate, and completely wrong. And discovering that relationship between players and winning is important and valuable! But trying to understand how the pieces move before you've even understood that this is a game of skill is putting the cart before the horse, and gives yo…

But how can you propose that chess is a game of skill unless you first propose that there are players doing something at which they could be skilled?

Re: Parable of Alien Chess

#154

Post by arh68 »

I would agree all models are bad, some models are useful even though it goes unstated. I feel like the author’s point is that asking for “the right model” is the wrong question. I don’t mind argument-by-analogy too much, but I think it would help if we knew what the aliens were trying to do with their model. People criticizing "inaccuracy" seem to just have high standards for their models (perhaps you want to simulate 100B chess games in 10 seconds.. how's that coin flip idea sound now?). Just imagine you're dreaming about backgammon: do you know all the rules? no, but you can roughly model what's going on. Your model could be said "worse" than standard rules, but it's good enough for a dream sequence.

More than once have I seen a nice chess set in a home, set up completely wrong. They’ll be close! Their model isn’t too far off from standard, but just so (K & Q reversed, B & N reversed, &c). I presume the owners were quite content. Honestly, I don’t even know if most people would notice, so why point it out (is my model even the “preferred” one)?

Re: Parable of Alien Chess

#155

Post by leto_ii »

mannykannot wrote: post #146
leto_ii wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a rather simple, outdated and largely superseded philosophical notion of what science is To me the idea of treating the chess game as a random process somehow felt like an anti-realist position [1]. I'm not sure how this kind of thinking is currently perceived by philosophers of science, it's possible it's an outdated view. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-realism

That's an interesting way of looking at it, but if that is the intent of the parable, it is being rather equivocal about it. As I pointed out in another reply, unless the amount of information the aliens can possibly get about chess games is severely limited (excluding, for example, information that would allow them to see that games between specific pairs of players are rarely even-odds) then chess does not actually…

I fully agree with your points. I think I may have been sloppy in expressing my criticism of the original article. At a certain level I think my comment was 'sociological' - the aliens, as intelligent creatures, should have a strong intuition that humans as other (somewhat) intelligent creatures can't be spending so much time and attention on something that is nothing more than a coin toss.

This sociological intuition should drive further inquiry into the mechanics of the game.

> if they are limited to that extent, then they are not going to determine that it is a game of rules, no matter what their philosophy and no matter how much they suspect that it is

Indeed, in that case the aliens are forever stuck. However, IRL you probably can't be absolutely sure that you're forever stuck, so in this case the 'philosophical' attitude might matter. An anti-realist might say - to hell with it, no worth trying, we'll never get better predictions out of more complex theories. A realist however, might pursue a theory not because it makes more accurate predictions, but because he/she has an idea that the theory is truly closer to the truth than the idea of a random coin toss. This intuition might take you through a dark period towards a higher reward (see moving from a local maximum to a valley, towards a yet unforeseeable global maximum).

PS:

flubert has a nice excerpt from Jaynes' Probability Theory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648965

Re: Parable of Alien Chess

#156

Post by praestigiare »

jjk166 wrote: post #144
karmakaze wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the only part of an otherwise great post I objected to. Science may have a side effect of uncovering truth but it shouldn't be the driving force. We should be striving for better predictive ability that doesn't go against our observations. Arguing which is more real is not science.

Drop some heavy objects and some light objects you have lying around. You will see that the heavier ones tend to fall faster than the light objects. If all you care about is predicting which object will fall faster, you could simply say gravity pulls the heavier one faster and call it a day. But if you were to forego predictive power and seek understanding, you'd eventually see that objects fundamentally fall at the…

You are imagining this situation from the perspective of already having a more powerful / general model and looking backwards, so it seems obvious. But that is not how things work. Without data to support it, you can imagine all kinds of possible theories - that is not science, and it certainly gets you no closer to understanding.

Re: Parable of Alien Chess

#157

Post by leto_ii »

flubert wrote: post #147
leto_ii wrote: post #19

I suspect the metaphor is inspired by Feynman's one about gods playing chess [1]. As it's almost always the case, Feynman manages to immediately inspire and illuminate. On the other hand, the present article seems to me to get some important things wrong. For one, it's not the case that overall white and black win 50% of the time each. More importantly though, if somebody is interested in investigating chess, they wi…

I figured this was a riff on Jayes. From Chapter 10, section 8 of "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science" (starting on page 329). 10.8 Mechanics under the clouds "We are fortunate that the principles of Newtonian mechanics could be developed and verified to great accuracy by studying astronomical phenomena, where friction and turbulence do not complicate what we see. But suppose the Earth were, like Venus, enclose…

Great passage!

You may be closer to the source of inspiration, although I feel that Feynman may have been part of it too. Maybe it was a combination of the two :)

I like that Jaynes' alegory highlights really how difficult it may be IRL to move from a simplistic theory to the next level of depth.

Re: Parable of Alien Chess

#159

Post by mannykannot »

flubert wrote: post #147
leto_ii wrote: post #19

I suspect the metaphor is inspired by Feynman's one about gods playing chess [1]. As it's almost always the case, Feynman manages to immediately inspire and illuminate. On the other hand, the present article seems to me to get some important things wrong. For one, it's not the case that overall white and black win 50% of the time each. More importantly though, if somebody is interested in investigating chess, they wi…

I figured this was a riff on Jayes. From Chapter 10, section 8 of "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science" (starting on page 329). 10.8 Mechanics under the clouds "We are fortunate that the principles of Newtonian mechanics could be developed and verified to great accuracy by studying astronomical phenomena, where friction and turbulence do not complicate what we see. But suppose the Earth were, like Venus, enclose…

It is an amusing story, but the Venusian-Newtons could show that their principles would allow one to calculate the behavior of non-symmetric objects, and that the statistics of both symmetric and non-symmetric projectiles can be predicted by their theory - and it also explains gyroscopic precession!

Re: Parable of Alien Chess

#160

Post by mannykannot »

leto_ii wrote: post #155
mannykannot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting way of looking at it, but if that is the intent of the parable, it is being rather equivocal about it. As I pointed out in another reply, unless the amount of information the aliens can possibly get about chess games is severely limited (excluding, for example, information that would allow them to see that games between specific pairs of players are rarely even-odds) then chess does not actually…

I fully agree with your points. I think I may have been sloppy in expressing my criticism of the original article. At a certain level I think my comment was 'sociological' - the aliens, as intelligent creatures, should have a strong intuition that humans as other (somewhat) intelligent creatures can't be spending so much time and attention on something that is nothing more than a coin toss. This sociological intuitio…

Thanks for bringing that to my attention - I have posted a reply there.

I think you are probably on to something when you suggest this article was influenced by Feynmann's analogy, but I am pretty sure that Feynmann was not suggesting the straw man that this article attacks.

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