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I find people using various tricks to somehow console themselves of the fact that a machine beat a human to be quite funny. What is it exactly that they're try

by placebo 11y ago

I find people using various tricks to somehow console themselves of the fact that a machine beat a human to be quite funny. What is it exactly that they're trying to protect? Perhaps at the core is a fear that if someone or some thing does something better than me than I'm not worth as much, or more generally, if "they" (the machines) do things better than "us" then we're not worth as much, and what wouldn't we do to feel worthy... but I feel this whole nonsense stems from a belief that anything in existence could really be unworthy. I remember a short passage, from one of Raymond Smullyan's books noting two different responses from humans the day it is discovered that it is possible to make machines that are indistinguishable from humans. The first says glumly: "So, we are just machines?" The other says with joy: "I didn't know machines could be so wonderful". It's not a contest of worthiness - it's reality beautifully playing out and there are no unworthy players.

jacquesm 11y ago
> I find people using various tricks to somehow console themselves of the fact that a machine beat a human to be quite funny. I find it quite funny that you'd take what I wrote and that you'd manage to wrangle from it that we need to be consoled. I simply observed that there is another challenge, one that in chess has since the first computer beat a world champion been more than met and that in Go there is still some distance left to cover. Put another way, if the size and energy consumption would not matter do you think that there would have been improvement in the Chess programs post the point where they could beat any chess player in the world? Clearly the Chess programming community thought otherwise and we've seen a major improvement in algorithms and this resulted in a huge decrease in the required computing horsepower. That's smarter programming, not using larger computers to achieve the win through brute force and to me - feel free to disagree - that's an interesting prospect.
- placebo 11y ago
  Ok, I made an unnecessary leap from knowing that many people do feel threatened by the increasing problem solving abilities of computers to assuming you are one of them. so I stand corrected, and in light of your response understand that my sermon was misplaced in this context. I don't disagree with you at all. In fact, I think probably we're headed for the same improvements over time with machines playing Go as was with machines playing Chess. I think that in addition to better algorithms, Chess had the advantage of having Moore's law being in full swing over these years, which will probably slow down, but there's always something new and unexpected coming up, so beyond multiple processors and GPU's with lower energy consumption I'm sure there will be even further improvements in the machine learning methods and other things that I can't yet imagine.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I'm really hoping for a software improvement rather than a hardware one, in reality it will likely be a combination of both.

by placebo 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago

> I find people using various tricks to somehow console themselves of the fact that a machine beat a human to be quite funny. I find it quite funny that you'd take what I wrote and that you'd manage to wrangle from it that we need to be consoled. I simply observed that there is another challenge, one that in chess has since the first computer beat a world champion been more than met and that in Go there is still some distance left to cover. Put another way, if the size and energy consumption would not matter do you think that there would have been improvement in the Chess programs post the point where they could beat any chess player in the world? Clearly the Chess programming community thought otherwise and we've seen a major improvement in algorithms and this resulted in a huge decrease in the required computing horsepower. That's smarter programming, not using larger computers to achieve the win through brute force and to me - feel free to disagree - that's an interesting prospect.

placebo 11y ago
Ok, I made an unnecessary leap from knowing that many people do feel threatened by the increasing problem solving abilities of computers to assuming you are one of them. so I stand corrected, and in light of your response understand that my sermon was misplaced in this context. I don't disagree with you at all. In fact, I think probably we're headed for the same improvements over time with machines playing Go as was with machines playing Chess. I think that in addition to better algorithms, Chess had the advantage of having Moore's law being in full swing over these years, which will probably slow down, but there's always something new and unexpected coming up, so beyond multiple processors and GPU's with lower energy consumption I'm sure there will be even further improvements in the machine learning methods and other things that I can't yet imagine.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I'm really hoping for a software improvement rather than a hardware one, in reality it will likely be a combination of both.