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Cont: Musk, SpaceX and future of Tesla II


seems like the upcoming documentary on musk isn't going to be very flattering in it's coverage of his foray into politics, doge, and stealing millions of people's data and even election fraud claims

“We are living in a world where one person’s psychopathology and neuropsychological dysregulation is translating into massive consequence in our politics, in our economy, in our geopolitics,” podcaster Sam Harris, a former friend of Musk’s, says in the film. “It’s completely insane we have one person who’s this chaotic — who’s completely unelected — and has this much power.”
 
Elon this week picked a fight with Chess.com


For those not on reddit:

Elon said:
The actual number of chess moves that are not utterly stupid in chess is tiny and chess will be fully solved one day

Chess.com said:
skill issue

Elon said:
Chess is hard for humans, but not for computers. One day, it will be fully solved like checkers.

Between now and then, or even after, have fun. People enjoy many games/sports where machines are vastly better.

Chess.com said:
There are more possible chess games, by about 40 orders of magnitude, than atoms in the observable universe. To solve chess, you'd have to map them all. Good luck.

Elon said:
Wrong, all legal chess positions are ~40 oom less than the estimated atoms in the Universe, and ASI will figure out ways to solve and compress that are far beyond what we could possibly comprehend.

(Here I am arguing with some random intern at a chess website [facepalm emoji]).

Chess.com said:
I'm a full-time employee.

Elon said:
[exhale emoji]

Chess.com said:
even my friends don't text me back that fast

(ASI is "artificial superintelligence" which Elon believes he is on the verge of.)
 
Elon this week picked a fight with Chess.com
No. Chess.com picked a fight with him. I don't object to them doing so, but let's be clear about who went after whom first.

Now, will computers "fully solve" chess? I don't know. But I don't think the chess guy understands Elon's point: to "solve" chess (ie, figure out the best possible move in a game), you do not need to map out every possible move. You do not need to consider the branching tree of possible play that results from you making a bad move. Once you know it's a bad move, everything that flows from that bad move can be ignored. So the set of games you actually need to consider is a tiny fraction of the set of all possible games. The counter-argument would be to say that Elon is underestimating how hard it is to know for sure a move is bad without considering all the possible branches flowing from it. But You have to understand his argument to make that counter-argument, and I don't think the chess.com guy did.
 
No. Chess.com picked a fight with him. I don't object to them doing so, but let's be clear about who went after whom first.

Now, will computers "fully solve" chess? I don't know. But I don't think the chess guy understands Elon's point: to "solve" chess (ie, figure out the best possible move in a game), you do not need to map out every possible move. You do not need to consider the branching tree of possible play that results from you making a bad move. Once you know it's a bad move, everything that flows from that bad move can be ignored. So the set of games you actually need to consider is a tiny fraction of the set of all possible games. The counter-argument would be to say that Elon is underestimating how hard it is to know for sure a move is bad without considering all the possible branches flowing from it. But You have to understand his argument to make that counter-argument, and I don't think the chess.com guy did.
You are mostly correct in your analysis, but I think that you've attempted to spin things in a problematic way. Two things, in particular.

First, what Musk stated was a provocation to those who spend much of their life on chess. Not a new one, of course, but one that they've probably been annoyed by many times over and have been much more intimately familiar with the efforts to do so. Whether it was intentional or not doesn't really matter. Whether it was true or not doesn't really matter. Chess.com took the bait in this case, yes, but saying that Chess.com picked the fight here is misleading, at very best.

Second, the chess person may or may not understand such. Chances are quite high that the person understands what you elaborated upon just fine, though, especially if their livelihood is tied to it. Far from certain, of course, because there are always people with various issues who are willing to make fallacious arguments for various reason. Hence, there's a good chance that other motives were in play - publicity being an easy probability, but far from the only one.
 
No. Chess.com picked a fight with him. I don't object to them doing so, but let's be clear about who went after whom first.

Now, will computers "fully solve" chess? I don't know. But I don't think the chess guy understands Elon's point: to "solve" chess (ie, figure out the best possible move in a game), you do not need to map out every possible move. You do not need to consider the branching tree of possible play that results from you making a bad move. Once you know it's a bad move, everything that flows from that bad move can be ignored. So the set of games you actually need to consider is a tiny fraction of the set of all possible games. The counter-argument would be to say that Elon is underestimating how hard it is to know for sure a move is bad without considering all the possible branches flowing from it. But You have to understand his argument to make that counter-argument, and I don't think the chess.com guy did.
I don't know who is right in the argument but there are a few flaws in your argument and Musk's.

The first is, how do you know if any given position is legal? To be sure, some are obviously illegal e.g. two black bishops on the same colour square, however, many positions may ostensibly look legal but not actually be reachable using the normal rules of chess.

The second problem is how do you tell if a move is bad (or stupid)? You need to analyse all the games that flow from it to see what happens. Again, there may be some moves that can be dismissed immediately. For example, a move that leaves you with no pieces except the king and your opponent with two rooks is always a losing position. However, the vast majority of movers are not like that and many moves that appear bad at first sight are actually really good.

The third problem is that it really doesn't matter. There are already computers that can beat all humans. It doesn't even have to be a particularly powerful computer to beat a human like me, but humans still enjoy chess.

Musk was just being a twat as always.
 
I don't know who is right in the argument but there are a few flaws in your argument and Musk's.

The first is, how do you know if any given position is legal?
You don't examine positions for legality, you examine moves. And it's very easy to determine if a move is legal. A position with no history of how to get there is useless to solving the game.
The second problem is how do you tell if a move is bad (or stupid)?
Did you miss the part where I said, "The counter-argument would be to say that Elon is underestimating how hard it is to know for sure a move is bad without considering all the possible branches flowing from it"?
You need to analyse all the games that flow from it to see what happens. Again, there may be some moves that can be dismissed immediately.
These statements contradict each other.
The third problem is that it really doesn't matter. There are already computers that can beat all humans.
Whether or not it matters depends on what you care about. There is a difference between being able to beat all humans and being able to solve the game. Not everyone cares about that difference, but some people do.
 
Basic fact is Tesla is bit like ford in it's Huistory.
For about 15 years Ford with it's Model T, had a near monopoly of popular priced autos in the US. There were others, but they could not compete with Ford in the mass market area. Then, circa 1920 some competitors came on the marker with popular priced autos that competitive and in many ways better cars then the Model T. Henry Ford had a hard time adjusting to the fact he lost his near monopoly and only when ford was on the verge of failure did he greenlight a new auto.
Tesla had a near monopoly on electric cars, but now the market is competitive, and I think Musk is having troubles actually having to compete.
 
I don't know who is right in the argument but there are a few flaws in your argument and Musk's.

The first is, how do you know if any given position is legal? To be sure, some are obviously illegal e.g. two black bishops on the same colour square, however, many positions may ostensibly look legal but not actually be reachable using the normal rules of chess.

The second problem is how do you tell if a move is bad (or stupid)? You need to analyse all the games that flow from it to see what happens. Again, there may be some moves that can be dismissed immediately.
For example, a move that leaves you with no pieces except the king and your opponent with two rooks is always a losing position. However, the vast majority of movers are not like that and many moves that appear bad at first sight are actually really good.

The third problem is that it really doesn't matter. There are already computers that can beat all humans. It doesn't even have to be a particularly powerful computer to beat a human like me, but humans still enjoy chess.

Musk was just being a twat as always.
Fun(?) nitpick - it can be stalemate ;) I used to get chess puzzles in my FaceBook feed and sometimes a hopeless position could be retrieved by sacrificing a piece to force stalemate.
 
You don't examine positions for legality, you examine moves. And it's very easy to determine if a move is legal. A position with no history of how to get there is useless to solving the game.
Tell that to Musk. He seems to think you can cut down the search space by considering only legal positions in some magical way. I agree with you that you need the history.

Did you miss the part where I said, "The counter-argument would be to say that Elon is underestimating how hard it is to know for sure a move is bad without considering all the possible branches flowing from it"?
I have to hold my hand up to that.

These statements contradict each other.

No they don't, unless you pedantically insist that by "analyse all the games" I mean "exhaustively play every single one out to mate or stale mate". That certainly isn't what I meant as my example of leaving yourself with no pieces but your opponent with two rooks shows.

Whether or not it matters depends on what you care about. There is a difference between being able to beat all humans and being able to solve the game. Not everyone cares about that difference, but some people do.
Human chess players don't care. They will still play chess and gain enjoyment from the game whether a computer can beat all humans or a computer has completely solved the game.
 
Tell that to Musk. He seems to think you can cut down the search space by considering only legal positions in some magical way.
Yeah, no, that's not what he said at all. More specifically, when he's talking about dramatically limiting the search space, he isn't talking about legality at all. He's talking about no searching the tree that results from bad moves. We already know how to not search illegal moves, that's trivial, but it's not enough to make Chess solvable. Throwing away bad move trees is the hard part, but if you can do it well enough (not a given), maybe it would be enough to solve chess.
Human chess players don't care.
Then there's no reason to take offense from any of Musk's posts.
 
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free speech champion elon musk threatens to sue over documentary he’s calling a hit piece, calling director a dem puppet and accuses him of working for
soros.
lol, Musk is on the Soros conspiracy train now. Pretty soon, he'll tell us who did 9/11
 

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