Ovyron wrote: ↑Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:56 pm
Dann Corbit wrote: ↑Wed Jun 12, 2019 6:29 pm
And finally, there is a huge difference between "I am convinced." And , "It has been proven."
What's the difference? Really, I keep saying "Magnus Carlsen", "Magnus Carlsen" like a parrot, but it hasn't been proven to any degree that he's the strongest chess human on earth, yet "people being convinced" that he is is enough in the chess world.
Unless you can name someone else that is stronger than him (and human), what he has done should suffice, and people could do the same with chess engines to get convinced that Leela or Stockfish is the strongest chess entity. And with a very small fraction of the resources that is being used by TCEC, the CCRL and the CEGT for these purposes.
What's this obsession with "proving" something and why are only computer chess enthusiasts affected and common chess enthusiasts not? (I've never heard someone say it hasn't been "proven" that Magnus is the best human chess player.) Is it because people can play hundreds of thousands of games with chess machines but they can't do it with humans? If so, being unable to do it with humans seems like an advantage, as we can find who is best with much less time and effort (even though we can't "prove" it.)
Magnus Carlsen might be the strongest player in the world.
Magnus Carlsen is the strongest player in the world.
This is the difference between being convinced and being proven.
If you have 20 people in a room, 50 times out of one hundred two people will have the same birthday.
If you have 70 randomly chosen people in a room, 999 times out of one thousand two of them will have the same birthday.
In both cases, we "probably" have a match. In neither case is it decided unless we actually test the conditions for a given instance.
So what is your acceptable level of proof? Is a coin toss good enough? It might be right. It might be wrong.
If you examine a collection of trials mathematically, you can say what the certainty is that something you imagine is correct is really true.
Is it unlikely? Is it fairly likely? Is it extremely likely? Is it nearly certain? Is it certain?
Some people are easily convinced. Some people are hard to convince. Is there a different truth for these categories of people?
Now, let's suppose further that we have enough games to show that within two full standard deviations Carlsen is better than Caruana. Does that mean that if they meet head to head in a ten game match it is certain that Carlsen is going to win?
Consider this list of Fide Champions:
Anatoly Karpov (1993-1999)
Alexander Khalifman (1999-2000)
Viswanathan Anand (2000-2002)
Ruslan Ponomariov (2002-2004)
Rustam Kasimdzhanov (2004-2005)
Veselin Topalov (2005-2006)
How many of those were the best players in the world at the time they were champions?
That is an important illustration between what a champion is and who the best player is.
They are most certainly not the same thing.
Since the world champion of chess is not certainly the strongest player in the world, we should also conclude the same things about short contests involving engines that we conclude about short contests involving people.
TCEC does not name the strongest chess engine in the world. TCEC names a champion.