I rented this DVD the other day called "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine" about his famous chess match against Deep Blue. I'm not a chess expert, so his argument that a computer could not make the move it did in game two means nothing to me. For all I know about chess (which isn't much) maybe it could have.

But what I do understand, and find very suspicious, is that the IBM team kept Deep Blue locked away in another room for the entire match. Why? What exactly were they hiding?

Having Kasparov and Deep Blue on the same stage together while they played against each other would have been even better publicity for IBM. I'm sure they know that, and that's exactly what they would have done, if they had been running a legitimate contest.

But it wasn't a legitimate contest, in my opinion. I think what they were really hiding in that room was a team of grandmasters who collectively decided what moves should be played, and IBM lied to the world by telling us it had been a computer. Not just a computer, but an IBM computer.

I don't care about Kasparov. If he really did lose that match to a computer, it doesn't bother me one way or the other. But I don't think he did. I think it was all a hoax.

I`m not sure if it was a hoax or not or when this took place but older equipment was very sensitive to outside interference maybe that was why it was in another room?

If this was the case IBM should have said so and had a camera set up to film the machine in operation and also an independent source of respected people to oversea it.

If there's one thing I could take into the wilderness to ensure I could start a fire it would be the friction between a group of chess grand masters trying to determine what the next best move in a chess game should be. Kidding... I've only seen a few chess players lose their cool in tense games...

Did Big Blue win?
That's what I read/heard on the news. Don't know more than that. about the match.

I can say that I once got to see a genuine supercomputer at a NASA facility about eight or ten years ago. Looking through an observation window my impression was that they are computationally impressive but not much to look at.

What I saw was a large but otherwise standard mostly white computer room. A typical raised floor with its distinctive white tiles. And, as I remember it, three rows of four machine blue boxes with very few features. There was one CRT and keyboard at a standard computer work station with a few cables going down into the floor arranged by the door. Each of the big boxes had a couple of blinking lights. Nobody was inside and other than the few blinking LEDs nothing moved or showed any action at all.

For a few hundred dollars you could recreate the scene out of light wood frames, hot glued foam board and paint. A nine volt battery, LED driver IC and a couple of LEDs make the lights.

Kind of like a "Blake's Seven" set. It could have been theatrical props and I wouldn't know the difference.

I doubt you could beat Kasparov with a team of Chess masters. Portions of the game played at grandmaster level have a large component of intuition and gut feeling. This is an aspect that can't be accomplished by a team IMO.

Of course Big Blue plays a different sort of game. It has no intuition or gut feeling. It has no ego and can't be psyched out or intimidated or rattled. It is all brute force computation.

That would have been their advantage. They knew they were playing Kasparov, but Kasparov didn't know who he was playing. It's sort of like a poker game, where the other players can see your face, but you can't see theirs.

Along the same line, did NASA really land on the moon?

I dont' see a conspiracy. I see a big honking rack with a LOT of loud fans. Chess players, like golf players, like it quiet. Deep Blue would have been a hyperventilating heavy breather- gets stuck in another room. The only "conspiracy" is that Deep Blue was made to beat Kasperov, not be a general chess player and that most other grandmasters would probably mop the board with DB.

I'll instead make a counter challenge- name this kabal of grandmasters. Prove that they was there, or at least were not any place else. Then I'll take it seriously.

Yes


I find it hard to believe people think we didn’t land there.

MythBusters just did a show on this 3 or 4 days ago. They ripped apart all the CT arguments.

And we all know everything we see on TV is true... right???

No but I can reason things out and think and maybe have an understanding how impossible it would be to have as many people as would have had to be in on such a cover-up that it would have been impossible to keep all them quiet.

Not to mention those with high power telescopes, and those in foreign countries that had access to radar.....

Seeing as how Kasparov was the one playing, don't you think it should be his decision as to what constitutes a distraction? But no one, not even IBM, said that was the reason why they kept Deep Blue in another room. They kept it hidden so no one could see what they were doing.

Perhaps the central question then becomes how would seeing a big steel box with flashing LED's have made this any more plausible/credible/believable for you?

Jim

Maybe it still wouldn't be able to prevent a hoax, but it would be a lot more credible than not even letting Kasparov into the room to see Deep Blue after the match.

I mean, c'mon. After the game is over they still wouldn't let him in there. Why not? And why did they disassemble Deep Blue immediately thereafter? We're talking about the first machine in history to think like a human being, and they take it apart? Without even letting anyone else look at it?

The whole thing reaks of deception.

If this had been a genuine test of scientific acheivment, surely they would have gone out of their way to remove doubts, not create them.

I was sitting around just yesterday with Elvis and the old guy who really shot JFK discussing this.

We think that Deep Blue won because it was networked with an Alien computer in Area 51.

That's just our opinion.

Of course, this comes from someone who cannot even beat a laptop at Solitaire.

Bingo

Speaking of crazy stories...

If someone claims to have the frozen body of Bigfoot, everyone's first instinct is to want to examine the body to see if it's real. But if someone claims to have a computer that can think like a human being, everyone's first instinct is to pat IBM on the back even though they disassembled the evidence before you could examine it.

"Beat Kasparov at chess" does not equal "think like a human being".

In any case, to prove that the computer is doing all the work on its own would not be a simple task. How do you rule out, say, a tiny Bluetooth wireless link? Pick up the whole room full of hardware and put it inside a Faraday cage?

Kasparov's main argument is that the computer made a move in game two that only a human being would have made. The IBM team responded by saying that their computer was just that advanced. That's a hell of a claim to make, and then disassemble the computer. Don't you think?

A simple rematch would have been in order. Put an independent third party in charge of the computer. People with no vested interest in either side. Let them play referee. But it will never happen because they disassembled the computer right after the first match.

While I love Mythbusters, they too are hardly without reproach.One episode refuted sinking SHIPS sucking people down when sinking.The test involved a rather small boat of @ 30feet length.

I would tend to ask some noted survivors; IE of HMS HOOD and IJN YAMATO what exactly was pulling them down until they broke free via an escaping huge air bubble or vigorous swimming.

As to chess, anyone knows it's not true chess unless played in parks on sunny afternoons.

If IBM's Big Blue was a harbinger of the future, kindly some one have a 'intelligent' brute coomputational discussion with the majority of PCs who seem to go down on mere whims.

Several years ago Texas Instruments matched a calculator vs a chinese grandmother with her abacus.She cleaned TI's circuit boards everytime.

*snickers* Or that a human would have programmed into a computer. Which particular move was it that Kasparov claims that only a human would have made? I've heard his claim, but I've never heard WHAT actual move it was. Now, here's the thing- you program a computer to win, and tell it how the pieces move. How many possible moves are there are on a chess board? It is a big database, but not insurmountable. That was just one more possible option, and the computer computed it had the best probability of a positive outcome.

I hear everyday "the computer screwed up" from people who can't bring themselves to admit they did it wrong and the computer did it right. And Kasparov has an ego that makes mine look tiny. Hmmm...

Oh, and some of the design, both hardware and software, was done about five miles from where I'm currently sitting. The word I've always heard around bars and restaurant tables about why Deep Blue was pulled apart was because it was too heat sensitive and had detectable performance degradation towards the end of the match. However, I will concede that that is a point in support for the conspiracy theorists. But if the thing was going to fry itself in under a thousand hours, IBM would bury it to save face. This is what the people inside IBM whom I know are saying, nothing about stuffing a bunch of chess masters in a box and not letting them out if they don't win. With custom components, I'd keep the stupid thing in a clean room-type enclosure to, with minimal EM interference.

If we are going to have a grassy knoll, let's find the trigger man. Or at least a smoking gnome. I will reiterate my first point- who were these chess masters?

Yes, I saw that. I was being a snot.

I smoked a gnome once. The smug little fella had it coming, all smirky in his big red hat.

-Blast, because someone had to be the voice of reality in this thread (or maybe just the voice of really high-powered cold medicine. )

Blakes Seven, now that's when TV was watchable. Ahh Saturday mornings in the 1970s watching Blakes Seven , Space 1999 , Captain Scarlet , UFO, Dr Who and The Tommorow People