"Dr A. N. Walker" wrote in message
...

Even though most, if not all, of the criticisms in this thread
are addressed by the authors in a peer-reviewed paper?
Are their "peers" up to our standards here, I wonder?

It's a bit of a stretch to assume that they are not.
ICGAJ may not be "Nature", but it's the leading journal for
computer game theory, and some pretty bright people write
and review for it.

technical badinage eliminated

I think it will be interesting to read both forthcoming reviews of the MAMS
title;

{{both forthcoming at chessville, the first next weekend from Dr. Stephen
Dowd}}

since overall, I feel 2 issues are raised in this Usenet correspondence:

1) I think the first writer above, has a good point, which is not quite my
own, therefore, a-paraphrastically;

does the result make sense to strong chess players?

Perhaps the most obvious factor in my reading of the MAMS title, was that
very often the program didn't have a clue, and the 'Man' intercession
dramatically re-oriented the game and its result. Allowing programs and
programmers to declare 'objective' results is thereby more than a little
problematic.

In watching this correspondence I think it is fair comment to say that when
the program's activities depart from chess terms to enter into the abstract
complexity of programming terms, all claims become more difficult to
substantiate by such desegregation.

2) I thought Adorjan's response [this weekend, Chessville] to Garry
Kasparov, which among other things mention effect of computer use at high
level play, as a direct commentary on creative aspects of the game, is
something well-worth taking in.

As well as Adorjan's overall evaluation of what this has done to chess
playing this past quarter century. Of course, I do not expect programmers to
like what he says, yet intellectually perhaps they will admit it is a fair
point! Adorjan is not so much blaming programs, as commenting on a false
reliance on programs and data-bases by strong-players.

Cordially, Phil Innes