BOINC and brute forcing

[Liisa]

perfect play

Perfect play is an irrational concept. It is not meaningful to speak from perfect play, because there does not exist any absolute mathematical concepts (such as perfect play) in nature. Everything that exist does exist only as a construction of particular things (such as atoms) that are defined only in probabilistic sense.

This is curious and interesting point and most people assume opposite to be the Truth.

I would like to suggest also returning to earth from higher worlds while discussing. It is sometimes healthy.

[Kirby]

perfect play

Perfect play is an irrational concept. It is not meaningful to speak from perfect play, because there does not exist any absolute mathematical concepts (such as perfect play) in nature. Everything that exist does exist only as a construction of particular things (such as atoms) that are defined only in probabilistic sense.

This is curious and interesting point and most people assume opposite to be the Truth.

I would like to suggest also returning to earth from higher worlds while discussing. It is sometimes healthy.

Isn't it possible, within a closed system to have a strategy that will guarantee the best result?

[Monadology]

perfect play

Perfect play is an irrational concept. It is not meaningful to speak from perfect play, because there does not exist any absolute mathematical concepts (such as perfect play) in nature. Everything that exist does exist only as a construction of particular things (such as atoms) that are defined only in probabilistic sense.

Go is not nature. Go is an artificially constructed finite game and atoms have nothing to do with it. Perfect play also takes the form of a logical conditional so it cannot be invalidated by a negation of the antecedent, which is all your argument against its existence could potentially manage.

I would like to suggest also returning to earth from higher worlds while discussing. It is sometimes healthy.

You're equally guilty of this. Quantum phenomena are just as far away from having anything to do with the game of Go as the effectively indeterminable perfect line of play.

[Liisa]

Isn't it possible, within a closed system to have a strategy that will guarantee the best result?

We live in very closed system (universe) and it it's size is extremely limited compared to solution for go. In other words, perfect play does not fit to this universe or multiverse, what ever. It is too big.

I think that the reason for this is that you need knowledge from end position in order to play perfectly.

[Cassandra]

It would be very interesting if, having a komi of 0, perfect play resulted in a draw for go.

Because Komi has grown over time, it is very, very unlikely that your assumption will become true.

Agreed, but we cannot know until it's been proven, really. The growth of komi may have to do with psychological factors - or simply with the way that humans play the game.
I wonder, in the case of draughts/checkers, was it believed that the first player had the advantage before it was proven to be a draw with optimal play?

I suppose that this in not comparable to Go.

In Draughts / Checkers - as in Chess - aim is (total) destruction of the opponent's pieces. The players want to destroy something. In Go you have to build up.

In Go you cannot reach a draw with only preventing your stones being captured. You have to create territory as well.

Let's assume that Go without Komi would have results with a mean value something about 6 to 8 points for Black. 7 points equal 2 percent of the Go-board.
With this compensation (and with "perfect" play) Tagaisen would not be necessary any more.
Without "perfect" play, the significance of Tagaisen will increase dramatically.

It is said that Shusaku won every game with Black. It is a clear sign that Komi is necessary, because even he did not win every game with White.

Let's compare this with checkers or chess (and leave aside the different nature of the games). Even if the player moving first would win over 50% of the games in the average. What will you do ?
Apparently this difference does not equal the value of one piece in checkers or one pawn in chess. So it is impossible to adjust the starting position to make up for this one-sided advantage (1 piece in checkers is 5% of the players pieces). And after the end of these games there is no room for compensation either.

Compensation in Go is possible, because the aim is so comparatively small - just one of 361 points.

[Kirby]

Well, go is complex for sure. But it is still a finite two person game. And for any such game, it is possible to find an optimal strategy. It just might take a very, very long time with go.

As for whether go can be tied, Cassandra, I agree that it's a different type of game than checkers/draughts. I want to just point out that it is theoretically possible that humans, through suboptimal play, have come to believe that black has an advantage when it could, in fact, not be the case.

However, I agree that this is quite unlikely.

[Magicwand]

so many people are stunned by the number of possibile game go can have but if we can build good program that will eleminate bad moves then it might be possible to solve go. that is just my opinion....

[amnal]

perfect play

Perfect play is an irrational concept. It is not meaningful to speak from perfect play, because there does not exist any absolute mathematical concepts (such as perfect play) in nature. Everything that exist does exist only as a construction of particular things (such as atoms) that are defined only in probabilistic sense.

This is curious and interesting point and most people assume opposite to be the Truth.

I would like to suggest also returning to earth from higher worlds while discussing. It is sometimes healthy.

As far as I can tell, this post is completely meaningless. Will you tell me tic-tac-toe cannot be sure to end in a draw with perfect play? The same (invalid) logic would apply.

[Liisa]

so many people are stunned by the number of possibile game go can have but if we can build good program that will eleminate bad moves then it might be possible to solve go. that is just my opinion....

That is not so. Most people are like you that they do not have much of sense for orders of magnitudes. Also they do not have clear definition for infinite, and in general they cannot distinguish mathematics and reality. From realistic standpoint, and that is only meaningful standpoint, we cannot have objects whats extent is bigger than universe (infinite equals absurd). And problem is that if you try to strip bad plays away from perfect play, you need much bigger recycle bin than you currently have. This was also commented that it does not do much, if you strip most of the bad variations away. You still have from realistic standpoint infinite amount of possibilities left. The same goes for Chess and every other complex systems, not just for Go. World is full of complex systems. It is exactly as impossible to solve go as to solve weather patterns for the next 100 years.

It seems that Amnal does not like to read much what is the topic of the forum, before writing. Suits her.

[emeraldemon]

so many people are stunned by the number of possibile game go can have but if we can build good program that will eleminate bad moves then it might be possible to solve go. that is just my opinion....

That is not so. Most people are like you that they do not have much of sense for orders of magnitudes. Also they do not have clear definition for infinite, and in general they cannot distinguish mathematics and reality. From realistic standpoint, and that is only meaningful standpoint, we cannot have objects whats extent is bigger than universe (infinite equals absurd). And problem is that if you try to strip bad plays away from perfect play, you need much bigger recycle bin than you currently have. This was also commented that it does not do much, if you strip most of the bad variations away. You still have from realistic standpoint infinite amount of possibilities left. The same goes for Chess and every other complex systems, not just for Go. World is full of complex systems. It is exactly as impossible to solve go as to solve weather patterns for the next 100 years.

I can't help but be a little irked by the many people who invoke system dynamics and chaos theory as a sort of general metaphor for things being strange. There are some great mathematical proofs showing that certain classes of systems, such as systems of differential equations or finite difference maps like the logistic map, are very difficult to predict. This is meant in a concrete way: differences in initial state create exponential divergence in paths over time (read about the Lyapunov exponent if you're curious).

But those systems have a very important property: the state space is INFINITE. NO result from chaos theory could possibly apply to go, because the state space is FINITE. There are no strange attractors in go, no butterflies flapping wings etc. etc. At best one could perhaps imagine a go as a low-fidelity approximation to an infinite space, and try to prove that some chaotic attractor of the underlying infinite space shows itself in some way in the finite approximation. If you could prove something like that, we would all be amazed and you could publish in a very respectable journal.

As many people have pointed out, go is finite, and thus solveable by alpha-beta search in finite time. Many of these people have also pointed out that such a brute force search would take more time and space than we will ever have available. Does that mean there's no hope? No.

I'd like to make an analogy to the Traveling Salesman Problem. The problem is quite simple: you have a set of cities, and you wish to visit them in the shortest total travel distance. There is no algorithm that can exactly solve TSP without needing exponential time (unless P=NP). Not so long ago solving 30 city problems was an enormous task. But approximation methods and heuristics have gotten much better, and now researchers routinely solve problems with thousands of cities. By making good guesses and avoiding the worst case, many problems can be solved quickly.

As an undergrad, a professor told me something very helpful once: If you're trying to prove "This cannot be done", it's not enough to say "I tried very hard and couldn't do it".

[amnal]

so many people are stunned by the number of possibile game go can have but if we can build good program that will eleminate bad moves then it might be possible to solve go. that is just my opinion....

That is not so. Most people are like you that they do not have much of sense for orders of magnitudes. Also they do not have clear definition for infinite, and in general they cannot distinguish mathematics and reality. From realistic standpoint, and that is only meaningful standpoint, we cannot have objects whats extent is bigger than universe (infinite equals absurd). And problem is that if you try to strip bad plays away from perfect play, you need much bigger recycle bin than you currently have. This was also commented that it does not do much, if you strip most of the bad variations away. You still have from realistic standpoint infinite amount of possibilities left. The same goes for Chess and every other complex systems, not just for Go. World is full of complex systems. It is exactly as impossible to solve go as to solve weather patterns for the next 100 years.

It seems that Amnal does not like to read much what is the topic of the forum, before writing. Suits her.

I could read your post alone and it would be enough to note your fallacious reasoning regarding chaos theory. And it would annoy me, for exactly the reasons emeraldemon has set out

[Liisa]

But those systems have a very important property: the state space is INFINITE. NO result from chaos theory could possibly apply to go, because the state space is FINITE.

This is exactly what I meant that people do not have ability to differentiate reality and mathematics. I am only talking from objects that has either true or potentially true value in this very universe that where we living in.

There is no such thing as differential equations in nature, because properties of electoron are defined only in limited accuracy. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle prevents to go to infinite accuracy although it is required that any applications for differential equations should be defined in infinite accuracy, or if it is not the case it is just an approximation.

Form realistic perspective figure 10^800 that describes number of real world objects is exactly as meaningless figure as 10^gogol or mathematical infinity such is the case within complex systems.

Thanks for your informative post, but it is not meaningful if you cannot apply theory in practical level. (here I refer what is practical for type 4 civilization) .

As an undergrad, a professor told me something very helpful once: If you're trying to prove "This cannot be done", it's not enough to say "I tried very hard and couldn't do it".

I admit that there is certainly problems that seems to be practically impossible, but later there are found simple short cuts. But my argument for that, that it is not the case with go, is that, in order to play perfectly, some knowledge from end position is required. But this cannot be attained. I am quite confident that it is possible to find an algorithm that gives very good probability for winning, but that is not same as finding exact solution.

[amnal]

But those systems have a very important property: the state space is INFINITE. NO result from chaos theory could possibly apply to go, because the state space is FINITE.

This is exactly what I meant that people do not have ability to differentiate reality and mathematics. I am only talking from objects that has either true or potentially true value in this very universe that where we living in.

There is no such thing as differential equations in nature, because properties of electoron are defined only in limited accuracy. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle prevents to go to infinite accuracy although it is required that any applications for differential equations should be defined in infinite accuracy, or if it is not the case it is just an approximation.

Form realistic perspective figure 10^800 that describes number of real world objects is exactly as meaningless figure as 10^gogol or mathematical infinity such is the case within complex systems.

I didn't know quantum mechanics applied to maths. I'll have to be careful next time I add 2 and 2, just in case this time it does make 5.

EDIT: I thought about it some more, and it makes less and less sense. For a start, what does 'in nature' mean? Differential equations describe the probability distributions which describe electron distributions. Does this not count?

EDIT2: Well, I've said my piece, I disagree with you still (and I don't really understand why you maths should be in any way probabilistic, it seems to miss the point), but I'll let the experts make the case if there is one .

[Liisa]

I didn't know quantum mechanics applied to maths. I'll have to be careful next time I add 2 and 2, just in case this time it does make 5.

I see that there are lots of things that you do not know.

But one thing that is my favorite is that QM is not queer, contrary what is is often thought, if logic is defined as a quantum mechanics. There are two interesting things what we get from quantum logic: A) logic is empirical science. B) mathematics as a science loses meaning.

edit: amnal, it is not count, because QM differential equations such as Schrödinger's wave function gives only probabilities. But it is not meaningful to say that probabilities are exact descriptions of electron. Thus calculated probability is always an approximation from reality or objects that reside in nature. We can of course calculate approximate values with differential equations, but equations represents always just idealized models.

[palapiku]

As for whether go can be tied, Cassandra, I agree that it's a different type of game than checkers/draughts. I want to just point out that it is theoretically possible that humans, through suboptimal play, have come to believe that black has an advantage when it could, in fact, not be the case.

However, I agree that this is quite unlikely.

Especially since black is definitely way ahead on the small boards where we can verify this.