The game of checkers has roughly 500 billion billion possible positions (5 × 1020). The task of solving the game, determining the final result in a game with no mistakes made by either player, is daunting. Since 1989, almost continuously, dozens of computers have been working on solving checkers, applying state-of-the-art artificial intelligence techniques to the proving process. This paper announces that checkers is now solved: Perfect play by both sides leads to a draw. This is the most challenging popular game to be solved to date, roughly one million times as complex as Connect Four. Artificial intelligence technology has been used to generate strong heuristic-based game-playing programs, such as Deep Blue for chess. Solving a game takes this to the next level by replacing the heuristics with perfection.If you're a supercomputer, there's no reason to play checkers anymore; the game will always end in a draw. The abstract's part about "no mistakes made by either player" suggests a Captain Kirk-like "illogical" move could still work, but reading the whole paper dashes that hope. If you're a supercomputer, stick to Go, or Solitaire.
Similarly, an omniscient God has no need to create us; our lives are a question he already knows the answer to. So why are we here?
The answer, of course, is that Augustine and Aquinas were WRONG. You simply can't graft Greek philosophical concepts onto the Biblical god, who is powerful and wise, but not "perfect" in the sense we westerners have come to understand that word.
ReplyDeleteMind you, their mistakes had good outcomes, such as science and technology, but they were still wrong.