3 ms·

"I don’t think we’re able to show our workings for higher level things like proofs." I can't speak for proofs, but this is false in the case of higher level th

"I don’t think we’re able to show our workings for higher level things like proofs." I can't speak for proofs, but this is false in the case of higher level things like chess. I'm not a grandmaster, but I was a chess master at age 10 and I am ranked ~2400 in bullet chess. To the average person my ability to play chess is "magic". But to me it's not magic at all. I can explain my thought process at any time. It's all based on symbolic manipulation at progressively higher levels, i.e. clustering pieces into "chunks", connecting these chunks into higher level patterns like weak pawn structure or forks, and ultimately deciding on the best course of action by weighing all of the different high level patterns. Every step is rule-based logic which I can readily explain to anyone, even a chess novice. The part that appears "magic" is the ability to do all of these calculations in the blink of an eye. But that too is simply due to having trained so many of these patterns extensively at a young age. Anyone who can speak a language is doing the same thing, manipulating complex symbolic objects in real time at progressively higher levels (i.e. letters, words, sentences, paragraphs).

FakeComments 8y ago
There’s chess theory, which is rule based and what you start off describing. But then you admit you don’t work directly with chess theory when selecting moves, there’s a trained black box evaluator that selects candidate moves, which you then select from via chess theory. That’s how you’re finding chess moves in the blink of an eye: you run a fuzzy approximation, then refine the results using higher level reasoning. But you don’t have access to the network doing the evaluation and can’t describe exactly how it operates, just that it was trained on chess theory. It’s that fuzzy reasoning to speed up the process of actually finding solutions that I was calling out as the source of the unknowns in our processing — and at least from my exposure to board games (and their players), it’s often the source of things like innovative moves.
- mindgam3 8y ago
  "there’s a trained black box evaluator that selects candidate moves, which you then select from via chess theory" You're missing my point. There is no "trained black box evaluator." There is indeed a trained evaluator, but it is not a black box. It is fully understandable. If I gave you private chess lessons, I could teach you my heuristics. And eventually you would understand them enough to be able to teach them to others. This would not be possible if it were truly a black box.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
gnode 8y ago
I don't think this refutes the argument. You've just explained that the process by which you play chess is by calculation. In essence, you're doing something you could program a machine to do (without any learning component). The question is: how do you explain how you have an original idea, or learn something you previously had no conceptualisation of. I think chess is a poor example at a professional level, because players have learnt mainly from analysis of other's techniques, rather than mostly making their own inferences. How a novice plays chess, inventing as they go, because they cannot draw on extensive experience, would be a better analogy, in my opinion.
- mindgam3 8y ago
  "how do you explain how you have an original idea, or learn something you previously had no conceptualisation of" This is like "where does your chess intuition come from" - and what I'm trying to express is that my chess intuition isn't actually a black box. There is a set of heuristics which I follow in order to come up with these "original ideas". Some of these I learned from watching other great players. Others I learned through trial and error, by playing tons of games, just like AlphaZero. The difference between me and AlphaZero is I can describe these heuristics conceptually in a way that anyone can understand, without resorting to "it's because this move tended to work in a large portion of the million games I played".

FakeComments 8y ago

There’s chess theory, which is rule based and what you start off describing. But then you admit you don’t work directly with chess theory when selecting moves, there’s a trained black box evaluator that selects candidate moves, which you then select from via chess theory. That’s how you’re finding chess moves in the blink of an eye: you run a fuzzy approximation, then refine the results using higher level reasoning. But you don’t have access to the network doing the evaluation and can’t describe exactly how it operates, just that it was trained on chess theory. It’s that fuzzy reasoning to speed up the process of actually finding solutions that I was calling out as the source of the unknowns in our processing — and at least from my exposure to board games (and their players), it’s often the source of things like innovative moves.

mindgam3 8y ago
"there’s a trained black box evaluator that selects candidate moves, which you then select from via chess theory" You're missing my point. There is no "trained black box evaluator." There is indeed a trained evaluator, but it is not a black box. It is fully understandable. If I gave you private chess lessons, I could teach you my heuristics. And eventually you would understand them enough to be able to teach them to others. This would not be possible if it were truly a black box.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

gnode 8y ago

I don't think this refutes the argument. You've just explained that the process by which you play chess is by calculation. In essence, you're doing something you could program a machine to do (without any learning component). The question is: how do you explain how you have an original idea, or learn something you previously had no conceptualisation of. I think chess is a poor example at a professional level, because players have learnt mainly from analysis of other's techniques, rather than mostly making their own inferences. How a novice plays chess, inventing as they go, because they cannot draw on extensive experience, would be a better analogy, in my opinion.

mindgam3 8y ago
"how do you explain how you have an original idea, or learn something you previously had no conceptualisation of" This is like "where does your chess intuition come from" - and what I'm trying to express is that my chess intuition isn't actually a black box. There is a set of heuristics which I follow in order to come up with these "original ideas". Some of these I learned from watching other great players. Others I learned through trial and error, by playing tons of games, just like AlphaZero. The difference between me and AlphaZero is I can describe these heuristics conceptually in a way that anyone can understand, without resorting to "it's because this move tended to work in a large portion of the million games I played".