3 ms·
The greatness of an achievement may be in and of itself. The Mona Lisa is great purely based on its appearance, not that anything useful comes of it. The "7 Wo
by ctdonath 12y ago
The greatness of an achievement may be in and of itself.
The Mona Lisa is great purely based on its appearance, not that anything useful comes of it. The "7 Wonders of the World" are noted for their scale vs the ability of then-modern construction, not their ability to move water or house dead bodies. Great exploration often leads to laudable yet largely unproductive dead ends (Everest, Antarctica). In this case, cramming a viable AI playing the quintessential expression of human intelligence (playing chess) into less than 700 bytes is astounding, and at least a candidate for greatness.
The first widely used assembler may vie for "greatest tool", but it did little of interest in and of itself.
- j2kun 12y agoAnd yet, when you ask what is the greatest thing or idea ever created by humans, the reply is not usually any of the Wonders of the World, or the Mona Lisa, or a chess program. It is usually language or writing or something which was similarly a sea change in the development of humanity as we know it today. My argument is that these are the better criteria for "greatness" than the relative ease of performing a specific task, though that task may implicitly represent the great thing. E.g., one may call the printing press the greatest invention ever, not because it was great but because it ushered in a new age.
- x0x0 12y agoAnd this ushered in the age of chess on your home computer :) So it was practical while simultaneously being an engineering challenge, which is what (I guess?) most of us find so appealing.