From Esoteric to Transcendental Chess Programming?

[smatovic]

Heyho,

I do not follow SF development, but I get here and there a breadcrumb, for
example:

"is LVA as in MVV-LVA useless ?"

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?t=70918

"...Lazy SMP feeds on chaos..."

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 84#p824068


So I ponder if we left the paradigm of esoteric chess programming, one has to
get into the techniques, understand them, implement them, improve them to
transcendental chess programming, "it tested better"?

If we consider that chess engines run on Turing-Machines, we could conclude
that everything what happens in the chess engine is traceable by using pen n
paper, obv. this is not the case anymore? And I am not talking about NNs here,
just the classic approach. Hence the question, did we enter such a kind of
development and when?

--
Srdja

[maksimKorzh]

Heyho,

I do not follow SF development, but I get here and there a breadcrumb, for
example:

"is LVA as in MVV-LVA useless ?"

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?t=70918

"...Lazy SMP feeds on chaos..."

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 84#p824068


So I ponder if we left the paradigm of esoteric chess programming, one has to
get into the techniques, understand them, implement them, improve them to
transcendental chess programming, "it tested better"?

If we consider that chess engines run on Turing-Machines, we could conclude
that everything what happens in the chess engine is traceable by using pen n
paper, obv. this is not the case anymore? And I am not talking about NNs here,
just the classic approach. Hence the question, did we enter such a kind of
development and when?

--
Srdja

I guess this can't be unified for all engines.
SF is a community engine with a complicated testing framework and the way they approach is based on these circumstances behind.
For engines maintained by single authors such an extended test-driven approach is not the case due to the limited resources - not everyone
would invest money into testing like Andrew Grant does.
I thinks what you call esoteric vs transcendental chess programming is the matter of resources being involved.
The "new" era starts for an engine as soon as people start to invest money into it's testing.
So IMO it's all the matter of development scale and goals.

[hgm]

I used to call this 'Voodoo development'.

[Daniel Shawul]

Heyho,

I do not follow SF development, but I get here and there a breadcrumb, for
example:

"is LVA as in MVV-LVA useless ?"

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?t=70918

"...Lazy SMP feeds on chaos..."

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 84#p824068


So I ponder if we left the paradigm of esoteric chess programming, one has to
get into the techniques, understand them, implement them, improve them to
transcendental chess programming, "it tested better"?

If we consider that chess engines run on Turing-Machines, we could conclude
that everything what happens in the chess engine is traceable by using pen n
paper, obv. this is not the case anymore? And I am not talking about NNs here,
just the classic approach. Hence the question, did we enter such a kind of
development and when?

--
Srdja

NN is more of a black box as one doesn’t have any idea how the NN decided to evaluate one move better than the other. Classic stockfish has shown an effective testing framework and tuning methodology is fundamental, which btw was helpful even after Stockfish went NNUE too. Lc0 still lacks that framework and rely on testers to pick nets for example. Some complain recent NN/nnue Evans being “button press” solutions, but in reality this “problem” started when extensive testing was needed to verify if an idea is +1 Elo. You basically need a group of developers to generate ideas and test them on cluster of computers.

That a NN is a blackbox doesn’t matter to me as long as the methodology to train a strong net is understood.

[smatovic]

Interesting, I take this as confirmation that already without NNs in chess 'we'
entered a kind of black-box level (transcendental chess programming) with our
test-driven development methods, thanks.

--
Srdja

[JohnWoe]

NN are just massive PSQT. The "magic mushroom era" started way earlier testing all kind of +1 Elo crap with massive HW power. Looking at the top programs search functions. The same stuff, same order even same comments as in SF search. That's why I'm not reading any top programs sources. So boring. You learn nothing. Entropy is gone when products are alike.