The post-computer generation

[Arshad Ali]

Some insightful comments by Mikhalchishin on the hazards of chess engines here:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6230

Mikhalchishin is not an advocate of too much computer use. ‘Engines like Rybka, although very strong, can be also very dangerous, because after an hour of a computer analysis the player is completely under the Rybka’s guidance and can’t invent anything, just follow the machine. They can analyse some position, but it is very difficult to get a valuation of a position with Rybka – there is always something unclear, you never know what the real variation is. Rybka takes a lot of mental energy. Computer analysis switches off the brain. I enjoy seeing how the brain works, not computers.’

But, to his pleasure, he feels that an interesting trend is taking place in the chess world presently: a new generation of players, that he calls ‘post-Carlsen generation’, is coming up; young players who are not so much dependent on computers and are more practical, ‘hand players’.... Computers came with their powerful programs and chess players wanted to try them. But I feel this trend is finishing now.’

There's definitely something to what Mikhalchishin says: humans think in terms of themes, ideas and plans even when they're calculating. Of course this means there are blind spots in human analysis -- which an engine post-mortem can reveal. Yet using these engines as a crutch definitely has its downside as well, in particular encouraging a certain kind of intellectual laziness, a thralldom to engine analysis, an unwillingness to explore the position in terms of themes and ideas.

[Alex Holowczak]

Education is going that way.

Freedom of thought is not encouraged anymore. The best academics until the age of about 21 are just experts of regurgitation. They just do past exam papers over and over and over again, until the methodology sinks in.

Young people aren't trained to think for themselves, they're trained to copy and repeat. In chess, using an engine is just doing what they usually do; engine tells them what to do, so if they spend enough time repeating it, they've learnt it. So they know what to do.

Top level chess is often devoid of being under the guidance of the computer. The first 20 moves of some variations have been analysed to death by computers, so the humans who see this know what to do.

[Arshad Ali]

The first 20 moves of some variations have been analysed to death by computers, so the humans who see this know what to do.

Well -- *sigh* -- it does look like an increasing number of TNs are now engine-generated. I know the 2700+ crowd rely on engines heavily for theoretical novelties (both for generating them and for testing human-generated ones).

Agree with you about education. Someone wrote this at one of the leftist forums I frequent:

What schools are becoming under late capitalism are puffed-up games of trivial pursuit; a collection of bits and pieces totally unrelated to each other or to anything that is relevant to a kid's life or to an adult's life.

The same applies to university education.

[Peter Rhodes]

What schools are becoming under late capitalism

Wow ! Out of curiosity what forum did this quote come from ?

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but the last twenty years of Education Reform have hardly been leaning towards the right - have they ?

[Arshad Ali]

What schools are becoming under late capitalism

Wow ! Out of curiosity what forum did this quote come from ?

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but the last twenty years of Education Reform have hardly been leaning towards the right - have they ?

http://www.revleft.com

I think the writer was thinking more of American education but some argument can be made that British education has accommodated itself to the needs of a late capitalist society as well. I'll concentrate on British higher education.

For British education under late capitalism, look around. Physics and chemistry university departments have been closing in Britain for the last several years. There are draconian cuts in university education in the pipeline as public sector funding cuts are going to be used to pay for bailing out scoundrel bankers. The imposition of university tuition fees under Tony Blair has made university education more of a rich man's privilege. Of those who do go to university, the number of graduates in all sorts of trivia subjects has skyrocketed -- and they are working at jobs previously done by school-leavers. Even those graduating in hard subjects -- say the engineers of a school like Imperial College -- are drifting to finance jobs in the City as real engineering jobs have seemingly evaporated. In this sense, British higher education is part of a stagnant late capitalist society of few skilled jobs (mostly in areas like finance and accounting) and many poorly paid semi- and unskilled jobs, while the differences between the prosperous few and the unwashed many continue to increase.

What the lay public -- encouraged by media propaganda -- calls "left" and "right" is not used by the real left itself. As the public uses it, "left" denotes politically correct and anemic sentiments and movements that don't challenge the capitalist status quo. It's like calling New Labour under Blair and Brown a left-wing party -- when really these gents are the ideological godsons of Maggie Thatcher and have pushed and pimped an asset bubble economy with all their might and main -- which has benefited a small number of speculators and financiers but not done much for the rest of the population. I'm moving waaay away from chess, which I'm reluctant to do on a chess forum.

[Ljubica Lazarevic]

Playing devil's advocate just a touch here... how is it different having a chess computer help analyse a position to having your (very) strong chess friend/coach go through a game with you? The advantage of having a chess computer is that you can take this approach more often...

[Arshad Ali]

Playing devil's advocate just a touch here... how is it different having a chess computer help analyse a position to having your (very) strong chess friend/coach go through a game with you? The advantage of having a chess computer is that you can take this approach more often...

Big difference. The human coach explains in terms of ideas, leitmotifs, and plans. The engine churns out variations. The engine-generated lines can be translated into ideas and plans but it takes work. For example, see Nunn's book "Secrets of Minor Piece Endings," where he takes the 2B vs 2N ending, which is technically won for the side with 2Bs and tries to translate computer moves and variations into human insights and heuristics. A human chess player wants insight, wants wisdom, not just a torrent of variations. For example a few weeks ago at one of Adam Raoof's tournaments in Golders Green I saw a couple of under-BCF 100 players in a rook ending where one player had three pawns more than the other. All he had to do was to trade rooks, dropping a pawn in the process, and win the pawn ending automatically. But he didn't trade rooks and the chess engine would not have advised that plan either (involving as it did the loss of one of the three extra pawns). The game amazingly ended in a draw. A human coach would have have said in the post-mortem, "Why didn't you trade rooks, you nincompoop?" And the human player would have understood (I hope). But engine analysis would not shed insight on the situation.

[Ljubica Lazarevic]

I appreciate that aspect, but perhaps an understanding of how to assimilate the information you get from a chess engine can assist with seeing a plan. For example if all the variations seem to centre along swapping material or shifting forces to a part of a board, that would suggest a plan?

[Arshad Ali]

I appreciate that aspect, but perhaps an understanding of how to assimilate the information you get from a chess engine can assist with seeing a plan. For example if all the variations seem to centre along swapping material or shifting forces to a part of a board, that would suggest a plan?

Yes, but it takes more work. A human coach will emphasise the idea from which the variations flow naturally. With the engine, one has the variations and one is looking for a unifying idea (if it exists). And often the idea cannot be read from the variations unless one already has prior acquaintance with it. For example the notion of overprotection in defence as giving mobility to one's whole army can't be read from variations alone. And often a key idea -- for example a breakthrough or sacrifice -- will simply not be in an engine's horizon at all and it will keep giving faulty assessments until somewhere along the variation the engine assessments suddenly magically change. Not saying engines aren't very useful but working productively with them is skilled and delicate work.

[Peter Rhodes]

For British education under late capitalism, look around. Physics and chemistry university departments have been closing in Britain for the last several years.... The imposition of university tuition fees under Tony Blair has made university education more of a rich man's privilege....the number of graduates in all sorts of trivia subjects has skyrocketed

Thanks for the reply, I see what you mean.

Although I always considered the rise of students doing "non-serious" subjects (e.g. social care and lifestyle science) as a leftist phenomenae, with the right wanting a return to traditional teaching and subjects such as maths, physics and chemistry.

On the other hand - your point that paying for education being a "post-capitalist" phenomenae, yes you're completely right, I hadn't considered that at all.

[IM Jack Rudd]

For British education under late capitalism, look around. Physics and chemistry university departments have been closing in Britain for the last several years.... The imposition of university tuition fees under Tony Blair has made university education more of a rich man's privilege....the number of graduates in all sorts of trivia subjects has skyrocketed

Thanks for the reply, I see what you mean.

Although I always considered the rise of students doing "non-serious" subjects (e.g. social care and lifestyle science) as a leftist phenomenae, with the right wanting a return to traditional teaching and subjects such as maths, physics and chemistry.

Now I'd probably - though not necessarily - put that on the orthogonal axis; the libertarian-authoritarian one, with what you classify as "left" as libertarian. (See http://www.politicalcompass.org for what I'm on about.)

Mind you, I'm far-left and far-libertarian and my degree was only ever going to be in maths. *shrugs*

[Peter Rhodes]

Thanks for the link Jack, I also consider myself a libertarian but more to the right than yourself.

I've taken the political compass test before and I'd definitely recommend it as a superior way of approaching politics. I think people forget that when the state attempts to control a capitalist economy you have facism and that we are far closer to it than people realise.

[Arshad Ali]

Although I always considered the rise of students doing "non-serious" subjects (e.g. social care and lifestyle science) as a leftist phenomenae, with the right wanting a return to traditional teaching and subjects such as maths, physics and chemistry.

I'm probably risking a reprimand from some zealous moderator at this stage. Skilled blue-collar jobs have been disappearing for decades. Politicians like Blair have tried to show that "opportunity" exists by becoming a university graduate and have been pushing for 50% of students to go to uni -- regardless of preparation or aptitude. The majority of these new entrants -- being ill-prepared and ill-motivated -- are going into airy-fairy subjects. As the British academics Brown and Hesketh have pointed out (in their book The Mismanagement of Talent), there are only about 20,000 new graduate jobs each year while 400,000 are graduating each year from British universities. That is, 5% find graduate employment (and these tend to be the Oxbridge crowd plus the science and engineering grads of the Russell group of universities). The push for higher university numbers -- and by implication enrolment in non-serious subjects -- is coming from politicians in a late-capitalist environment who are trying to draw attention away from the evisceration of decent-paying high-skill blue-collar jobs. To this extent ther emphasis on silly degrees in recent years is not a lefty thing, an egalitarian thing, at all. My two cents and not necessarily correct.

On the other hand - your point that paying for education being a "post-capitalist" phenomenae, yes you're completely right, I hadn't considered that at all.

Not "post-capitalist"; "late capitalist." We're still in the clutches of the beast. An interesting book along these lines is Ernest Mandel's "Late Capitalism" and perhaps I might also suggest Baran and Sweezy's "Monopoly Capital."

Incidentally, the same phenomenon of the evaoparation of good jobs exists throughout Europe, Japan, and North America. In France and Germany they've coined a new word -- "precariat" (precarious + proletariat) -- to refer to the 30+% of workers who are now in temp and low-paid jobs. In thse circumstances there is pressure on politicians to show a way out by means of higher education -- no matter how illusory.

[Peter Rhodes]

We're still in the clutches of the beast.

Without meaning to be picky, are you familiar with the differences between Capitalism and Corporatism ?

I don't think we've had real capitalism for a long time, sure we've had big government and bailouts - that's not capitalism.

Unfortunately, I think the average man in the street does not know the difference between capitalism and corporatism and the percieved failures of capitalism (which in fact are corporatism and cronyism) will lead to a popular desire for more authoritarian (and bigger) government, when in actual fact we need more liberty (left or right).

[Arshad Ali]

Without meaning to be picky, are you familiar with the differences between Capitalism and Corporatism ?

I don't think we've had real capitalism for a long time, sure we've had big government and bailouts - that's not capitalism.

Unfortunately, I think the average man in the street does not know the difference between capitalism and corporatism and the percieved failures of capitalism (which in fact are corporatism and cronyism) will lead to a popular desire for more authoritarian (and bigger) government, when in actual fact we need more liberty (left or right).

Ah, but that real, ideal "capitalism" of free markets and Smith's "invisible hand" working as the unseen regulator never existed. Modern capitalism co-evolved with the modern state. The East India Company -- and other of its ilk -- were the forerunners of today's global corporations. Cronyism and political influence exerted by the rich existed then also.