| |
BGonline.org Forums
An epistomology of Backgammon. Marc Brockmann Olsen. Backgammon: Pure Strategy.
Posted By: higonefive
Date: Thursday, 21 December 2017, at 6:32 p.m.
Marc Brockmann Olsen. Backgammon: Pure Strategy. 1. edition 2017
This is not only a book of backgammon. If we regard backgammon as a simplified model of the world with its contingency (nothing is really necessary, nor impossible; here through the dependence on the involvement of a random sequence, the dices), this book is an epistemology, a theory of cognition on the game of backgammon, ‘as’ a little world. It includes ‘episteme’ (why can we know in the first place, why is knowledge possible) and ‘techne’ (how can we adopt this knowledge in the game of backgammon, how to break it down into concepts, to handle from humans). Human thinking is heuristic (to make an educated guess without complete information, with ‘uncertainty’) and hermeneutic (to ‘read’, interpret pattern recognition ‘as’ a value, without concrete numbers), in contrast to the growing calculating capacity of a machine, to handle a complex function, working with a different speech, formalized through mathematics.
(Remember: Asci option red at the year of 2000 was a top supercomputer, the first going over 1 teraflop. Now, it is possible to build with the latest core i9 and one processor a desktop teraflop machine; this is also important, extremegammon exploited as first program multi-core processors, gaining from this benefit. By the way, Manuel DeLanda saw the computer as a major step for scientific research, evaluating a complex, non-linear field through methodological alteration of a simulation with gaining statistic outputs to compare, finding solutions and making decisions.)
Strong computer models (neural nets) have almost ‘solved’ the game (except ‘snakes’, deep back games for example, which are less common in reinforcement training of the neural networks). The work of a neural net culminates in equity, a statistical sum of the value of a given position, calculated by a complex function. This function weights several inputs from sub functions against each single sub function involved in the estimation of a given position (a network of dependences, the golden point for example is not a value, which can regarded alone, it ‘depends’).
Bill Robertie, in ‘Modern Backgammon’ analyzed at first the way of bot ‘thinking’, coming up with four concepts, ‘as’ compilers for humans, especially for the amorphous middle game positions without a ‘defined state’: efficiency, connectivity, non-commitment, robustness. But he scratched only the surface, not going to deep in the ‘withdrawal’ of the heart of darkness, inside the ‘black-box’ which the machine is, like the brain of a human. And like a human, you can regard a little tiny bot ‘as’ a historic machine, its functions and outputs as a result of the ‘history’ of reinforcement training. The distinction is: the machine stopped, at a certain level, fixed. The human is an open set, capable to expand. But never forget: knowledge of the brain or a look inside a computer will never explain conciousness, it is a process, a translation, not copy and paste, rather adopting a corresponding disposition (‘Anverwandlung’ in german).
(Compared to “Pure Strategy”, “Modern Backgammon” reminds me now onwards to a figure from Danny Kleinman, ‘screwed Sherlock’, a hustler, which is giving only a part away from the secrets he has revealed, coming therefore to the nearness of ‘coffee house talking’.)
The major overall secret is: there are no universal concepts. (If you are a physicist, working with four major forces, there is possibility to dream of a universal theory). The first, who tackled the game of backgammon, were the bridge players, with the knowledge of probabilities. Then, the chess players arrived, pattern recognition, positional thinking. But both of them were a little bit misleading, regarding the game to strong in the way of classic mechanics, linear functions. For example, if you had artfully constructed a prime, you deserved to win. But there is a slime vig, the exceptions also to calculate. This might also explain the ‘biases’ of humans.
The neural nets incorporated quantum mechanics, a little bit of indeterminism, in short: backgammon as the expression of a highly non-linear function. The example of water might illustrate this: the virtuality of water at room-temperature can expressed with two points, two singularities, temperatures, whereas water is going from a fluid phase to gasiform or solid. But the capacity to bring a substance in a dissolved state, in water, can only be watched with a substance, which can be dissolved in water, salt and not solid titanium. It depends. Phase transition. Volatility. And therefore, in backgammon you are a chemist, which is not dreaming of a universal theory of chemistry. There is no universal theory in chemistry. Every year, millions of new substances appear. Like the game of backgammon, regarding even the little cut-out of a 4-ply.
What Olsen delivers, is a framework, a little periodic table and how weighting the elements against each other, in its combinations, creating a position or a set of moves to evaluate for a value. It is an open set; you are free to expand this framework, to analyze or to handle for example ‘anomalies’ of similar positions.
But I think, we have for the first time a true, ‘complete’ framework, to tackle the ‘uncompleteness’ in the recognition of the game of backgammon, playing it. In this way, Olsen describes a set of ‘neural nets’ for humans. It is up to you, after discovering this structure and its non-linearity, to expand and reinforce this structure through work, expanding it with ‘new’ neural nets, sub functions and training it. It is a book that opens up the metamorphosis of Ovid: you can now transmute at the board in a little jellyfish.
Post scriptum: As I am, as a non-native speaker of English, Marc B. Olsen also is. Excuse us. But I think it is possible. America, the land of modern backgammon is a land of the free, built up from strangers. It is not the French of ‘la grande nation’. The layout of the book could be better. I wish the book therefore several editions, in evolution, also of his content, as an open set. We humans are historic machines, but not fixed, the set is open for future.
I also see an approach, which delivers a structure for the ‘Prat’, the creative slacker, which has not the time and the will to power, as Nietzsche would have said. Marc B. Olsen delivered a book, which can be compared with ‘Being and Time’. He changed the little mantra PRaT, a threefold, into a “new fourfold” in his “value equation”. Perhaps he has done for Backgammon, what Heidegger (reread by Graham Harman) has done for philosophy. In this respect he has performed the ‘Zeuganalyse’, the ‘broken tool’ for Backgammon, as a being of tools, in time.
| |
BGonline.org Forums is maintained by Stick with WebBBS 5.12.