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> Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated Hard for me to empathize with this argument for his retirement. If we can't outru
by mourner 7y ago
> Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated
Hard for me to empathize with this argument for his retirement. If we can't outrun a car, does that make running competitions pointless? The existence of AlphaGo doesn't diminish the triumph of being a number one human player in any way.
- nemonemo 7y agoBefore cars, there were horses. We humans are well aware of the fact that our physical ability is not our competitive edge. What about Go? No animal or machine could play it as well as humans do.. until AlphaGo came along. I think that is where the sense of loss comes from.
- TylerE 7y agoNot actually true. In a sprint race, yes, but in a 24 hr race the human will outdistance the horse.
- evilduck 7y ago*sometimes
- grenoire 7y agoWhat assumptions are you basing this on, curious to know if horses have a disadvantage over longer durations.
- filleokus 7y agoProbably related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis
- hanspragt 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
- mumblemumble 7y agotl;dr: Annual 22-mile race with both pedestrian and equestrian competitors. Out of the 40 times it's been held, the winner was a human twice, and a horse 38 times. Typically the spread between the fastest human and the fastest horse has been less than 10 minutes.
- twoquestions 7y agoVery cool. I'd like to see a horse vs human ultramarathon, more like the 24 hour time the parent suggested. I was surprised human and horse competitors were so close at that distance!
- Humdeee 7y agoTo note: horses compete alongside humans... while carrying a human.
- jakswa 7y agoMy assumption when I read your parent comment was: Two legs are more efficient than four, and can go farther before exhaustion... but that's full of holes. Horses are huge, bristling with energy, right?
- z3t4 7y agoHaving the weight centered vertically above the legs and a smaller weight is more energy efficient
- frgtpsswrdlame 7y agoIt's true, google it. The combination of two legs and relative lack of hair make humans one of the best long distance runners in the animal kingdom.
- manifestsilence 7y agoNot sure about horses specifically, but humans are uniquely adapted to long distance travel among large land animals and used it for hunting by out-performing most other species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting Edit: it's one of two things I know of that we really excel at besides thinking. The other being accurate throwing, which perhaps explains baseball's enduring appeal: https://what-if.xkcd.com/44/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/44/
- ckosidows 7y agoI would recommend reading _Born to Run_ by Christopher McDougall. Later in the book he addresses this very topic and expands much more upon the topic of humans and long-distance running. Humans sweat, which most (all?) other animals don't. In that way we can dissipate heat through our breath, like other animals, _and_ via perspiration, meaning it takes us much longer to overheat. Additionally, humans stand upright, allowing us to disconnect our stride from our oxygen intake. Other animals' strides correlate (mostly?) 1:1 with the breaths they take. So when a cheetah outstretches in its stride it breathes in and when its legs come together it exhales. Humans stand upright, meaning we can breathe however we want regardless of our stride and speed. We can take deeper breaths because we don't have to exhale every time we stretch our legs. Humans are the ultimate marathon runners, even more so than horses, evinced by the fact that there are some people throughout history who have run hundreds of miles in the course of days or weeks. There's a theory touched upon in the book about how this allowed us to dominate the animal kingdom before we even had tools. Humans could relentlessly hunt and exhaust animals as long as they could keep them in sight or otherwise keep up with their tracks. I'm not doing the book or the topic justice, surely, but if you're interested I highly recommend the book.
- blattimwind 7y agoHorses are part of a not that long list of mammals that do sweat almost all over their body. That is indeed one of the reasons why they are competitive with humans at running long distances.
- nemonemo 7y agoLiterally speaking, I don't know what is not true about my statement above. But your point is well taken; it is also applicable to this article as well: maybe Go is not the game people can beat machines, but StarCraft 6 could be. Or maybe I can fold my laundry more efficiently than any machine available.
- mrmonkeyman 7y agoStategic reasoning is one of the very few things that makes us truly human. Running fast is and never was our thing. We compete, sure, but there's something eerie about a machine entity out _thinking_ us.
- yters 7y agoAI cannot out strategize. It is purely tactical, and can only be such due to the branching factor.
- SchoolboyBlue 7y agoI would counter with the fact that in physical endeavors it's apparent to us that we are not #1 - our household cats are more agile than us. It's in matters of intellect that humans still believe they are #1. AlphaGO's achievement in another field would have similar effects, e.g.: - An AI that diagnoses sickness better than any doctor - An AI that generates text which humans believe more beautiful than any other poetry created - An AI which creates classical arrangements the likes of which we compare to Mozart I would imagine that in any of those situations some doctors, authors, and musicians alike would be devastated.
- mdgrech23 7y agoI mean I guess but that's more b/c they haven't got use to the concept of a computer beating them yet. Give it a few years and people will adjust.
- rosybox 7y ago> An AI that generates text which humans believe more beautiful than any other poetry created - An AI which creates classical arrangements the likes of which we compare to Mozart Hrm, I do think that AI would be able to create narratives that humans find more enjoyable than the work of other humans, and I agree that AI would be able to create pictures and sound that humans find to be more enjoyable to look at or hear than the raw work of humans. AI can master the technical feats of composition and art. But what I doubt AI will ever be able to do is create art that speaks to us. It wont ever be able to create a Guernica. It wont be able to create a Crime and Punishment. It wont understand what it is to be human and mortal, what suffering is, and it wont be able to look within itself and find what those things mean to it and then share that with us, because in the end it's just a bunch of code running statistical computations. It wont fear death, it wont have children it cares about or a family history to look on and tell us about. It has nothing of emotive value to share.
- hackinthebochs 7y ago> because in the end it's just a bunch of code running statistical computations At a low enough level, our brain seems to be just a bunch of neurons firing impulses at various rates that can be described as statistical computations. Why be so sure that the right neural network wouldn't understand what it is to be human and mortal, understand suffering, have emotive value, etc?
- conanbatt 7y agoPlaying Go differs severely from a sport where the point is to maximize your physical output. A Professional Go player is an explorer of truth in a millenarian board, spelunking in a vast universe of possibilities. The purpose of playing is attacked when there is an automated, effortless way to do that exploring faster and better. Why look for new things when a computer can find 100 in a minute? The professional mindset of a Go player differs vastly from the amateur mindset.
- egypturnash 7y agoA quick skim of his Wikipedia page has him contemplating retiring as far back as 2013, he may have generally come to the point where he has had enough of being one of the top-ranked Go players in the world.
- friendlybus 7y agoHe set out to be number one and he isn't anymore, I get that as a personal story. That's all he was aiming at. Cars and legs are apples and oranges. We have a car racing category, motorsport. Racing categories have very tightly defined specs to keep driver skill in the game. Stock cars and open wheelers limit how much traction control they can use otherwise it becomes too easy. This is like cyborg legs being invented and smashing all the records. It would take some of the shine off running for sure.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lucidrains 7y agoOn the other hand, it must be sobering to realize that even with an entire lifetime of practice, you will never be better than a simple residual network trained for less than a week.
- otabdeveloper2 7y agoIs it sobering to realize that you will never multiply 12-digit numbers as well as a $0.99 calculator?
- lucidrains 7y agoIt's sobering if your culture had over-romanticized the ability to do so for centuries.
- moonbug 7y agoRunning competitions are pointless.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoI also found this to be a weird statement. Chess AI has been beating world champions since... 1996? Yet championship chess tournaments are alive and well, and I don’t recall any players “retiring” in 1996.
- tozeur 7y agoThis is PR mumbo jumbo. The hype machine for alphaGo is strong.
- baddox 7y agoAnd yet you probably wouldn't be interested in dedicating your life to, say, getting as good as possible at multiplying numbers in your head, even though I suspect there are some niche competitive mental arithmetical clubs out there.
- Akababa 7y agoSame. I don't think history will look kindly upon someone who "quit for losing" while other professional Go players keep playing. Just imagine if Garry Kasparov quit after losing to Deep Blue, he would be ridiculed today by the chess community which is still going strong. Instead, he accepted defeat, moved on, and is regarded as one of the greatest chess players ever. I doubt the same will be said of Lee Sedol 20 years down the line if this is how he chooses to end his professional Go career.