71–80 of 126 posts
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." Paul Murphy.
(unknown attribution but I got it from a scotsman)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where in the app do I got to pick themes?
I think this functionality is not available on the app, only on the browser version. The browser version runs great on mobile, though.
I’ve always found Deleuze and Guattari’s comments on chess vs. go to be interesting. Some of the terminology might not make sense if you’re unfamiliar with their work, but I think you can get the general gist: Let us take a limited example and compare the war machine and the state apparatus in the context of the theory of games. Let us take chess and Go, from the standpoint of game pieces, the relations between the p…
Reading this has made me realise that I am nowhere near as literate as I think I am.
That is a great title. For many people, chess is not interesting, now that computers are so good at it. But for me, chess is even more interesting now that we have developed (narrow) AI programs that instantiate more and more parts of what humans do when playing. (I know, humans don't play like computers, but we do things like heuristic board evaluation and heuristic game tree pruning.) So in a game, the player is no…
But why? I can understand that for a small number of people who has the ambition to become the best player, having an unbeatable figure looming over you is disheartening.
Most players are never going to become even close to that, and they know it. The fact that AI has beaten the best of human players should be, theoretically, irrelevant to their interest in chess, other than having a novel teacher to learn from. They are playing against the same pool of players who are on the same level, with or without the the AI advancement.
So I’m genuinely curious, does the chess community see a large number of discouraged average players?
My top tip is to only ever play in silence, with nobody and no distractions around, sitting or standing upright. These three things have added 200 points to my rating. I also find that noticing from intuition (a strange move by your opponent might be a trigger, or a tight position where you want to play strategically might be another) when to spend more time on a move sequence helps a lot. Taking a mental note that y…
That is a great title. For many people, chess is not interesting, now that computers are so good at it. But for me, chess is even more interesting now that we have developed (narrow) AI programs that instantiate more and more parts of what humans do when playing. (I know, humans don't play like computers, but we do things like heuristic board evaluation and heuristic game tree pruning.) So in a game, the player is no…
Examples of time asymmetry:
-recorded media (TV, movies, books) are incredibly time-asymmetric, have 100x / 1000x time spent on creation vs consumption
-legal systems built on examples + exceptions, have mapped out and tested entire decision trees that defendents traverse once
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." Paul Murphy.
That is a great title. For many people, chess is not interesting, now that computers are so good at it. But for me, chess is even more interesting now that we have developed (narrow) AI programs that instantiate more and more parts of what humans do when playing. (I know, humans don't play like computers, but we do things like heuristic board evaluation and heuristic game tree pruning.) So in a game, the player is no…
> For many people, chess is not interesting, now that computers are so good at it. But why? I can understand that for a small number of people who has the ambition to become the best player, having an unbeatable figure looming over you is disheartening. Most players are never going to become even close to that, and they know it. The fact that AI has beaten the best of human players should be, theoretically, irrelevan…
That is a great title. For many people, chess is not interesting, now that computers are so good at it. But for me, chess is even more interesting now that we have developed (narrow) AI programs that instantiate more and more parts of what humans do when playing. (I know, humans don't play like computers, but we do things like heuristic board evaluation and heuristic game tree pruning.) So in a game, the player is no…
> For many people, chess is not interesting, now that computers are so good at it. But why? I can understand that for a small number of people who has the ambition to become the best player, having an unbeatable figure looming over you is disheartening. Most players are never going to become even close to that, and they know it. The fact that AI has beaten the best of human players should be, theoretically, irrelevan…
- And a variant of the above argument, humans are a tool-making species. We make tools to do specific things better than we can with our bare hands. So that we can use the tools to do the things that tools are better at, and then use our own hands/heads on things that humans are better at. So now that we have developed tools that are better at playing chess than a human, lets move on to another more challenging task.
- And since this is HN, a variant of the above is Larry Walls characterization of the virtues of a programmer: impatience, laziness, and hubris. We "solved" chess, time to move on.
Of course, all of the above justifications are, in a way, justifications against chess as some kind of noble pursuit that improves the condition of humanity. If you enjoy playing it as a way to spend your free time, go ahead, don't listen to all the negative sniping from the sidelines!