My failed attempt to change TCEC NN clone rules

[MikeB]

+1 Two high quality posts back to back - thank you Matt and carldaman!

[Ovyron]

So is this kid someone that reads a title and a post and believes everything that she reads without critical thinking? I think this kid should learn to research a subject first before believing everything she reads, otherwise, I don't care about the fake news that this kid believes.

The kid comes from a space where there are thousands of kids, and it is not senseful to solve the problem by addressing the kid. It is possible by addressing the root.

There will always be misinformation around, so it'd take less time to teach the kids to stop believing everything they read and go deeper into the topics they want to believe in, than to change the name of every single thing that could mislead them.

Imagine that TCEC existed long ago and that they allowed Glaurung and Stockfish in the same season, and the kid watches TCEC and posts the wild title “Stockfish smashes Glaurung at TCEC!!!! End of an era!!!!” - How is this fake news? how is this different from the current case? The kid believes Glaurung and Stockfish are different engines, it's the kid's problem and fault, not the engine's name.

But you didn’t back up what you think with anything that could be called a rational argument. I don’t see, I don’t care and I don’t think are not arguments.

My argument is that I don't see the difference between basing a program on Alpha Zero and renaming it Leela and basing it on Leela and renaming it Allie (if that's what happened). The "I don't see" is there because I can't just say "there's no difference between basing a program on Alpha Zero and renaming it Leela and basing it on Leela and renaming it Allie" because if there is and I'm being obtuse then my statement would be wrong, bur I really don't see the difference.

My other arguments hold because this is a normal thing that happens in the software and hardware world, for instance, Xerox was the first GUI that demonstrated how to use a mouse to interact with a computer, according to you the name Xerox should remain in anything that uses a mouse, lest the kid is misled. In reality, it's obscure information that is not relevant for anyone wanting to learn how to use a mouse.

[Robert Pope]

So is this kid someone that reads a title and a post and believes everything that she reads without critical thinking? I think this kid should learn to research a subject first before believing everything she reads, otherwise, I don't care about the fake news that this kid believes.

The kid comes from a space where there are thousands of kids, and it is not senseful to solve the problem by addressing the kid. It is possible by addressing the root.

There will always be misinformation around, so it'd take less time to teach the kids to stop believing everything they read and go deeper into the topics they want to believe in, than to change the name of every single thing that could mislead them.

Imagine that TCEC existed long ago and that they allowed Glaurung and Stockfish in the same season, and the kid watches TCEC and posts the wild title “Stockfish smashes Glaurung at TCEC!!!! End of an era!!!!” - How is this fake news? how is this different from the current case? The kid believes Glaurung and Stockfish are different engines, it's the kid's problem and fault, not the engine's name.

But you didn’t back up what you think with anything that could be called a rational argument. I don’t see, I don’t care and I don’t think are not arguments.

My argument is that I don't see the difference between basing a program on Alpha Zero and renaming it Leela and basing it on Leela and renaming it Allie (if that's what happened). The "I don't see" is there because I can't just say "there's no difference between basing a program on Alpha Zero and renaming it Leela and basing it on Leela and renaming it Allie" because if there is and I'm being obtuse then my statement would be wrong, bur I really don't see the difference.

My other arguments hold because this is a normal thing that happens in the software and hardware world, for instance, Xerox was the first GUI that demonstrated how to use a mouse to interact with a computer, according to you the name Xerox should remain in anything that uses a mouse, lest the kid is misled. In reality, it's obscure information that is not relevant for anyone wanting to learn how to use a mouse.

I think it comes down to a question of provenance and genealogy, and whether you care about recognizing that.

Suppose a teacher said "Watch Schindler's List and write a summary" and three kids all watched the movie and wrote a summary. All's well.
But what if kid 2 watches the movie, then takes kid 1's paper, fixes up the grammar, rewrites some of the paragraphs and turns it in? And kid 3 doesn't even watch the movie, but downloads the summary off Wikipedia and updates the font.

If what we care about is the quality of the summary, Kid 2 has definitely improved the quality of the paper and put work into it, so that's good. Do we care about recognizing what kid 1 did? Maybe, maybe not. But Kid 3 might have the best paper of all. Thanks, Wikipedia.

If we care about the effort put in and quality added and recognizing that, then applaud Kid 2, but be sure to recognize whose shoulders he stood on. And tell Kid 3 to have fun in summer school.

[Guenther]

But you didn’t back up what you think with anything that could be called a rational argument. I don’t see, I don’t care and I don’t think are not arguments.

...
My argument is that I don't see the difference between basing a program on Alpha Zero and renaming it Leela and basing it on Leela and renaming it Allie (if that's what happened). The "I don't see" is there because I can't just say "there's no difference between basing a program on Alpha Zero and renaming it Leela and basing it on Leela and renaming it Allie" because if there is and I'm being obtuse then my statement would be wrong, bur I really don't see the difference.
...

I think it comes down to a question of provenance and genealogy, and whether you care about recognizing that.

Suppose a teacher said "Watch Schindler's List and write a summary" and three kids all watched the movie and wrote a summary. All's well.
But what if kid 2 watches the movie, then takes kid 1's paper, fixes up the grammar, rewrites some of the paragraphs and turns it in? And kid 3 doesn't even watch the movie, but downloads the summary off Wikipedia and updates the font.

If what we care about is the quality of the summary, Kid 2 has definitely improved the quality of the paper and put work into it, so that's good. Do we care about recognizing what kid 1 did? Maybe, maybe not. But Kid 3 might have the best paper of all. Thanks, Wikipedia.

If we care about the effort put in and quality added and recognizing that, then applaud Kid 2, but be sure to recognize whose shoulders he stood on. And tell Kid 3 to have fun in summer school.

I wonder why no one ever told the kiddies in those threads so far, that you could not 'take AlphaZero' because it did not exist for taking.
Actually it was just a small pdf with a few formulas and hiding a lot. That is completely different than really 'taking LCO with its sources' and base
another program on it.
Even non-programmers should understand this.

[Ovyron]

If we care about the effort put in and quality added and recognizing that, then applaud Kid 2, but be sure to recognize whose shoulders he stood on. And tell Kid 3 to have fun in summer school.

Real life is very different than school. If in real life the goal is:

"Get a summary of the Schindler's List"

Then it'd be stupid for anybody to go and watch the movie and write the summary themselves, if they can search on Google and click and have it.

Effort doesn't equal quality, you can put a lot of effort into some project and get nothing out of it. You can put almost no effort whatsoever in a project and get awesome results. The correlation almost seems random, it'd be great if kids were taught about this in school.

The "secret" of my life's success (having a comfortable life and enough free time to waste discussing stuff like this on Talkchess) is that when you want something, you don't work hard for it, you don't put effort, that takes too long, and it's not worth it. You find someone that has already worked hard and put the effort into learning how to do it, and that wants to do it for you. Sometimes you can find several people to do it and pick the one that brings the best quality. Some things are not even just free, people will want to pay you in some way just so they get the chance to help you.

What school and traditional family values teach is "satisfaction". People don't get "satisfaction" unless they put work time and effort into something, to the point where they don't want easy things, they look for the challenge of achieving something, and the satisfaction doesn't come from the thing, but from doing it themselves. Such people want to feel useful, if they don't find something hard to accomplish they feel empty, so they get on hamster wheels that go nowhere, and get enough money to buy things that they don't need or study to get titles that don't really improve their life and just make them feel "satisfied", until they look for a tougher obstacle to overcome.

What kids should learn is that, if there's a goal, they should aim to accomplish it as fast as they can with the least effort that they can, because that's efficient, and they can accomplish many such goals in a day.

Why do we have kids solving problems different from adults, anyway?

Like, I give you a page full of "BLANK"s, and there's sentences in there, and your goal is to fill in the blanks so the sentences make sense. Would you go and read them carefully and try to figure out how to fill the blanks yourself? What if they were 100 pages? Would you still do that? Or would you just look them up on Google for answers?

Then, if the answers can be looked up on Google, isn't it easier to just look them up and copy and paste them?

Then, why don't we allow the kid to do the same? What's the point in making her memorize the answers so she can retrieve them without looking them up, if 20 years down the line the only use these answers had were solving the exam where they appeared?

When you ask children to make a summary of a movie, you don't care about how good are they about making movie summaries, all you care is for them to get used to following orders, orders that will get increasingly more nonsensical until they get a job and are willing to do whatever their boss demands, for a few peanuts.

Kids would be better learning how to be the boss, so if they really need a movie summary, they tell their employees to get them one.

[Robert Pope]

When you ask children to make a summary of a movie, you don't care about how good are they about making movie summaries, all you care is for them to get used to following orders, orders that will get increasingly more nonsensical until they get a job and are willing to do whatever their boss demands, for a few peanuts.

I don't know where you went to school, but when we were asked to write summaries, it was to demonstrate understanding of the material being learned, and to improve our writing skills.

[Ovyron]

Nah, if they wanted that you'd have been asked about what was your favorite movie, and if you disliked some parts of it and stuff like that, some creative process, not force you to watch some movie and tell what it was about.

The problem with a movie summary is that there's some expected standard, and kids are expected to follow it as close as possible. The professor has watched the movie and has interpreted what's it about, and kids are judged about how close they can be to this summary on the professor's head. It doesn't allow a different interpretation of the movie.

Also, it'll mostly focus on good orthography and grammar, the professor will be quick to point out any mistake, as if how things were written was more important than what was written. Even though outside school these abilities aren't useful in life.

I really want to ask anybody reading this if improving their writing skills has helped them in their life. In my experience, as someone that had to learn English as a second language by myself (because my country is the definition of failure when trying to do it, with most of my teachers having a poorer English than me), comparing what I'm typing now to what I used to type back in 2001, which would have 3 or more mistakes per paragraph, and stuff like "thanks for read", the only benefit whatsoever I've seen is fewer people correcting me. That's all. From the get-go I was able to communicate, people correcting me were able to do so because they already knew what I wanted to say, and the "correct" way of saying it.

The only thing people with high writing skills can do is correcting mistakes in what other people say, the amount of misunderstandings remain about the same. It's yet another example of school teaching you something that is only useful in school.

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

My argument is that I don't see the difference between basing a program on Alpha Zero and renaming it Leela

Leela Zero was named "Leela" Zero because it was based on Leela's code. A program that already existed since ~2008.

It used the method from the Alpha "Zero" paper and that's indeed where the "Zero" comes from, but I obviously did not get to use any of their code to base that work on, which is a pretty relevant difference.

[Rebel]

My argument is that I don't see the difference between basing a program on Alpha Zero and renaming it Leela

Leela Zero was named "Leela" Zero because it was based on Leela's code. A program that already existed since ~2008.

It used the method from the Alpha "Zero" paper and that's indeed where the "Zero" comes from, but I obviously did not get to use any of their code to base that work on, which is a pretty relevant difference.

+1

[mhull]

Nah, if they wanted that you'd have been asked about what was your favorite movie, and if you disliked some parts of it and stuff like that, some creative process, not force you to watch some movie and tell what it was about.

The problem with a movie summary is that there's some expected standard, and kids are expected to follow it as close as possible. The professor has watched the movie and has interpreted what's it about, and kids are judged about how close they can be to this summary on the professor's head. It doesn't allow a different interpretation of the movie.

Also, it'll mostly focus on good orthography and grammar, the professor will be quick to point out any mistake, as if how things were written was more important than what was written. Even though outside school these abilities aren't useful in life.

I really want to ask anybody reading this if improving their writing skills has helped them in their life. In my experience, as someone that had to learn English as a second language by myself (because my country is the definition of failure when trying to do it, with most of my teachers having a poorer English than me), comparing what I'm typing now to what I used to type back in 2001, which would have 3 or more mistakes per paragraph, and stuff like "thanks for read", the only benefit whatsoever I've seen is fewer people correcting me. That's all. From the get-go I was able to communicate, people correcting me were able to do so because they already knew what I wanted to say, and the "correct" way of saying it.

The only thing people with high writing skills can do is correcting mistakes in what other people say, the amount of misunderstandings remain about the same. It's yet another example of school teaching you something that is only useful in school.

Good writing helps everywhere. It helps at work whether in business communication or writing documentation. The longer the composition, the more important the quality of your writing. If your writing is poor, people's opinion of you will reflect that. It can make the difference between getting a promotion, a pay bonus or a pay raise. It's a reflection on how much you care about the quality of your work, which includes writing. Words fitly written can make all the difference in convincing people regarding important issues.