A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

And, by the way, on the chess side of things Frederic Friedel of chessbase agrees with me, as do many other people. There are better examples of chess positions that engines struggle with, while humans see the solution rapidly.

Secondly, look up Penrose's research on the 'quantum mind' (more specifically the Penrose-Hamerof hypothesis). This stuff has been mostly regarded as lunacy for two decades. All their proposed mechanisms have been experimentally discredited. And they have been found guilty of misquoting scientific articles in order to prove their point.

How much monies were invested (through grants etc) to get rid of "lunacy"? Some ideas are bad, some are good. Just no need to be stubborn and stuck to a single one.

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

And, by the way, on the chess side of things Frederic Friedel of chessbase agrees with me, as do many other people. There are better examples of chess positions that engines struggle with, while humans see the solution rapidly.

Secondly, look up Penrose's research on the 'quantum mind' (more specifically the Penrose-Hamerof hypothesis). This stuff has been mostly regarded as lunacy for two decades. All their proposed mechanisms have been experimentally discredited. And they have been found guilty of misquoting scientific articles in order to prove their point.

[Peter McKillop]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Paul,

First of all, the problem is titled 'A chess position to defeat computers'. Sorry, but I have to disagree. This position cannot be used to defeat modern engines even running on modest hardware. Penrose claims that even supercomputers don't understand the position. I say bollocks.

Try playing moves from the position with a modern engine running on infinite analysis. I did it with Komodo and Houdini and it's not long before the evaluation falls to 0.00. i.e. as soon as the 50 moves rules comes within the search horizon of the engine.

This whole thing boils down to a very simple fact: in chess, there is the 50 moves rule, which is in fact 100 plys for an engine and this is beyond their search depth. Change the 50 moves rule for a 15 or 20 moves rule and any engine will correctly assess the initial position. Nothing esoterical going on here, as Penrose claims.

I don't own a chess 'engine'. To clarify, because of my ignorance of these engines, does an evaluation of 0.00 always mean that the engine thinks the position is a draw? What about a position where there was dynamic equilibrium? How would an engine indicate that if not by 0.00?

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Overall I think Mathieu's criticism of Penrose here is unwarranted. If the research could lead somehow to better robotic systems, the payoff would be huge.

And disrespectful, it seems to me. But perhaps I feel this way because I'm not familiar with Mathieu's accomplishments; i.e. perhaps Mathieu's successes in the fields of physics and mathematics are of sufficient greatness that he is justified in looking down his nose and sneering at Penrose.

My criticism of Penrose is that he uses this kind of chess problem to posit that quantum stuff is happening in our brains and that's why we understand said chess problems quite rapidly, while the computers have a harder time. Secondly, he also stated that his problem was 'unsolvable' even for supercomputers and this is just false. Computers can play that position and draw easily for either side.

And he gets funding to pursue that 'research'...

As Paul said, we understand such problems because we 'use' a more flexible neural network (our brain). No need to try to force quantum physics in there.

[Peter McKillop]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

... Overall I think Mathieu's criticism of Penrose here is unwarranted. ...

And disrespectful, it seems to me. But perhaps I feel this way because I'm not familiar with Mathieu's accomplishments; i.e. perhaps Mathieu's successes in the fields of physics and mathematics are of sufficient greatness that he is justified in looking down his nose and sneering at Penrose.

[Kerry Liles]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Yes, Kerry, I wasn't being critical of Egid, just wanted to point that out for this particular case. Sorry if it came across the wrong way.

The one sentence you wrote, "The fact that some pieces are pylons is not something most/any chess programs would specifically have code to deal with" is (I believe) the whole point Penrose is making. We humans can adjust our thinking to the fact that so many pieces, and most of them Black, are not movable. We can very quickly draw the conclusion since Black can only move dark square Bishops that 50 move rule will apply.

The chess engine would know that 12 of the pieces on the board cannot move, but there would be no code to treat those pieces as a group and then add in the fact that Black can only move dark square Bishops and then apply a heuristic that lets it know 50 move rule will apply.

By the way, it was I who mentioned this heuristic and the fact that while it could be added, there would be almost no payoff ever. Perhaps Mathieu mentioned it also.....

Anyway, I think Penrose has a valid point even if as Mathieu says his research might be a little over the top in terms of potential payoff. But there are companies trying to create robotic systems, and the ultimate vision of that would be a robot that could do everything a human could do, something on the path to the Data character on Star Trek NG. Or let's even consider self-driving cars. An engine that drives your car for you would need to adjust to weird situations that the designers might never that thought of. I personally don't think that can happen without a neural net, some fantastic hardware, and a LOT of training. Any attempt to just write such an engine from scratch and cover all scenarios is doomed to failure, imo....

....although "failure" in this case might mean only that some scenarios are going to come up that the engine can't handle, and the same can be said of humans. I guess the question is, can they make from scratch a system (no neural net, no training) that can outperform humans in avoiding accidents. That might be possible.... remains to be seen.

Overall I think Mathieu's criticism of Penrose here is unwarranted. If the research could lead somehow to better robotic systems, the payoff would be huge.

Interesting points Paul... I am not entirely certain of Penrose's intentions (and newspaper articles or media interviews OFTEN (inadvertently) misrepresent things by using alternative wordings (hehe)
I would not be so presumptuous to criticize Roger Penrose... (apologies for not attributing the idea to you - it gets confusing in here...) :)

[Paul Bonham]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Well, Egid *did* say "with proper progamming" ... the tablebases are only usable (in normal circumstances) when the number of pieces on the board drops to less than 4,5, or 6 - whatever level of tablebases are employed. The fact that some pieces are pylons is not something most/any chess programs would specifically have code to deal with. I haven't tried myself, but I would have to believe that the tablebase includes checks for the 50 move rule of course.

I think Mathieu pointed out elsewhere that specific cases *like* this could be programmed but the payoff for that would obviously be so low that it isn't worth the effort. Including blockades, there must be many such positions...

Yes, Kerry, I wasn't being critical of Egid, just wanted to point that out for this particular case. Sorry if it came across the wrong way.

The one sentence you wrote, "The fact that some pieces are pylons is not something most/any chess programs would specifically have code to deal with" is (I believe) the whole point Penrose is making. We humans can adjust our thinking to the fact that so many pieces, and most of them Black, are not movable. We can very quickly draw the conclusion since Black can only move dark square Bishops that 50 move rule will apply.

The chess engine would know that 12 of the pieces on the board cannot move, but there would be no code to treat those pieces as a group and then add in the fact that Black can only move dark square Bishops and then apply a heuristic that lets it know 50 move rule will apply.

By the way, it was I who mentioned this heuristic and the fact that while it could be added, there would be almost no payoff ever. Perhaps Mathieu mentioned it also.....

Anyway, I think Penrose has a valid point even if as Mathieu says his research might be a little over the top in terms of potential payoff. But there are companies trying to create robotic systems, and the ultimate vision of that would be a robot that could do everything a human could do, something on the path to the Data character on Star Trek NG. Or let's even consider self-driving cars. An engine that drives your car for you would need to adjust to weird situations that the designers might never that thought of. I personally don't think that can happen without a neural net, some fantastic hardware, and a LOT of training. Any attempt to just write such an engine from scratch and cover all scenarios is doomed to failure, imo....

....although "failure" in this case might mean only that some scenarios are going to come up that the engine can't handle, and the same can be said of humans. I guess the question is, can they make from scratch a system (no neural net, no training) that can outperform humans in avoiding accidents. That might be possible.... remains to be seen.

Overall I think Mathieu's criticism of Penrose here is unwarranted. If the research could lead somehow to better robotic systems, the payoff would be huge.

[Kerry Liles]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Egidijus, I thought of a reason why this can't be reduced to a 4 piece tablebase. All 4 piece tablebase positions require the Black King be included. But the Black King is locked in, so you would have to include all the pieces that are locking it in. You end up having to include all the pieces!

Well, Egid *did* say "with proper progamming" ... the tablebases are only usable (in normal circumstances) when the number of pieces on the board drops to less than 4,5, or 6 - whatever level of tablebases are employed. The fact that some pieces are pylons is not something most/any chess programs would specifically have code to deal with. I haven't tried myself, but I would have to believe that the tablebase includes checks for the 50 move rule of course.

I think Mathieu pointed out elsewhere that specific cases *like* this could be programmed but the payoff for that would obviously be so low that it isn't worth the effort. Including blockades, there must be many such positions...

[Paul Bonham]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Though, which computer will generate a 50-moves rule so quick as humans?

I don't know how these days a blockade is programmed but it's quite obvious that locked pieces have zero moves. If White does not take any of rooks and no move with a pawn on c6, those locked pieces will stay forever in the zero-move state. Thus we left with White king and three Black bishops to dance around for a 50 moves rule. That's in a principle 4 piece tablebase. Should be solve-able for a decent computer in a blink (with proper programming) :)

Egidijus, I thought of a reason why this can't be reduced to a 4 piece tablebase. All 4 piece tablebase positions require the Black King be included. But the Black King is locked in, so you would have to include all the pieces that are locking it in. You end up having to include all the pieces!

[Steve Douglas]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Before I respond to Mathieu, I have a question about this problem that no one has brought up yet:

Why does it require 3 dark-square Bishops for Black? Why don't 2 Black dark-square Bishops suffice to demonstrate the problem? Perhaps Wayne Komer, in your analysis, you have found something that indicates Black does require all 3 dark-square Bishops?

I'm not sure if it was mentioned in Mathieu's reply or elsewhere: the purpose of the 3 bishops is to ensure that the search tree for "all possible moves" will be exponentially larger and thus limit the search depth. Three bishops clog the search tree better than two or one.

Steve

[Kai G. Gauer]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

I wonder to what extent an engine could "understand" those ones or similar to http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1281614 type of endings as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softwa...chess_problems , http://chessexplorer.republika.pl and en.chessbase.com/post/computer-generated-chess-problems-for-everyone talk about specific <composing/solving> engines of puzzles, but perhaps not from the standard way of having a middlegame engine switch at some point in its middlegame to run alone against an ending tablebase look-up ending-engine (usually to improve depth of ply to encourage speed-up during look-up table accesses).

I'm not sure whether or not such an engine would benefit much or slow down too much by having a pointer to a solving/composition ending engine, rather than simply a tablebase look-up table engine.

In the case of a composing engine, does it use its own ending engine composing engine to check the validity of a study which it has constructed, or some other middlegame or tablebase or mate-in-n solver?

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Article now up on chessbase.com and Friedel brings some sense to that drivel by Penrose. And yes, Friedel has the perfect example, dating back to 1912, of a position that can fool chess engines for real.

Penrose is just being the typical old physicist tackling into other fields, thinking he's a universal genius because he worked on black holes. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Mathieu, I am in agreement with your position. If a computer just moves its King around, then it understands the position. It realizes that any pawn move would lose. Penrose has no point to make at all.

Fake news. (Whether or not that mysterious chess tournament on another thread was also fake news I do not know.)

Well, is it fake news when the guy is using government money to conduct research on the pretense that this chess position might be a proof that quantum stuff is happening in our brains and that's why we match well against standard computers for that kind of problems?

I mean, it's not my money because it's in another country, but I still have a problem with that kind of 'research' being conducted in such places as Oxford. As a society, we need to invest in research, but when the money is wasted on such stupid projects, it's not helping anyone.

Any GM or anyone in the chess community called Penrose on his absurd claims? Because the guys at the funding agency clearly won't be able to do so.

[Brad Thomson]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Mathieu, I am in agreement with your position. If a computer just moves its King around, then it understands the position. It realizes that any pawn move would lose. Penrose has no point to make at all.

Fake news. (Whether or not that mysterious chess tournament on another thread was also fake news I do not know.)

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers

Paul,

First of all, the problem is titled 'A chess position to defeat computers'. Sorry, but I have to disagree. This position cannot be used to defeat modern engines even running on modest hardware. Penrose claims that even supercomputers don't understand the position. I say bollocks.

Try playing moves from the position with a modern engine running on infinite analysis. I did it with Komodo and Houdini and it's not long before the evaluation falls to 0.00. i.e. as soon as the 50 moves rules comes within the search horizon of the engine.

This whole thing boils down to a very simple fact: in chess, there is the 50 moves rule, which is in fact 100 plys for an engine and this is beyond their search depth. Change the 50 moves rule for a 15 or 20 moves rule and any engine will correctly assess the initial position. Nothing esoterical going on here, as Penrose claims.