I would first just like to say, there have been many times in my life where I have known 1000 times more than someone else and I didn't feel the need to be an ass. I'm sure you are a nice person, but please don't treat me like I am a moron. Some assumptions you made about me that aren't true:
1) you assume I didn't understand what "solvable" means in a mathematical sense. I think in a more important way, solvable means "is able to be solved" and frankly that question is still able to be debated regarding go.
From a mathematical standpoint, any game with a finite set of states is
solvable. 2) You assume that I took 1 billion years literally... Oh my, I would venture to say that I have had a whole lot more physics than you have my friend and I understand how people get those numbers. 3) You assume that I don't know that changing the board size doesn't necessariyl change all the properties of the game. I mean how dumb do you think I am? But, I am going to point out a couple problems in what you said since you seem to be up for being an ass. 1) Multiple dimensions doesn't help at all. Information processing ability as well as informataion storing ability is proportional to a 2D surface surrounding the area that is able to be used for the computation. This is the upper limit given with thermodynamics which is probably the only part of physics that has laws that are well founded. 2) The reason I object to infinity as a concept is not because of my mental inferiority. In fact, infinity is a concept that comes quite readily to me. I learned it early in my youth and when I first saw a graph of velocity versus time (age 12 maybe) I knew that the area under it was displacement. I had taken calc 2 as a sophmore in highschool. The problem I have with it in regards to what you were talking about is that it has never been proven to exist anywhere in the actual world and there is lots of evidence that it doesn't exist. That said, I have seen you post before and I enjoy reading your posts, but please don't flame me. Just because I am new to computer go doesn't mean I am a moron. I might bring something new. If you all had it figured out already, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I have a lot to learn from you and I look forward to that. Please be more respectful. I am sorry that this was a harsh message, but I feel you were unfair to attack me as you did. Sincerely, Nick On 1/12/07, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Fri, 2007-01-12 at 15:43 -0600, Nick Apperson wrote: > yeah, there are upper limits placed on computation rate by > thermodynamics. 19x19 is way beyond those as Dave pointed out. But, > even if you believe that technology will improve and the most > revolutionary change yet will come to understanding of physics and > that change will give us signifigantly more computational power and > time etc... You can always make a bigger board. If life comes to a > point where go could be solved for any size board, you will no longer > be in this world and solving things such as "is go solvable?" will > have no meaning. Yes, you can always make a bigger problem by making a bigger go board but that doesn't change the theoretical properties of the game. The game will always be solvable. The game might be trivially solvable even now to a being not confined to our 3 physical dimensions. I hate to get philosophical like this, but there are theories of other dimensions that (if true) say we live in a multi-dimensional universe. There may be much more here than we can sense and that we can perhaps take advantage of. But it doesn't matter. When Chris said 1 billion years you should have instantly realized that he didn't mean this literally, he just meant a correct procedure exists for solving the game. Since no one has proved how long the universe will last, I don't think you can even prove that in a practical sense it's unsolvable. If you lack imagination you can simply say it's not solvable because you believe it can't be done in your lifetime - as if science and math cares about how long we live or even the universe. If the universe will die in 10 trillion years does that mean the number 20 trillion is an impossible number? The concept of infinity is important in mathematics. It's even useful, but I suppose that it really should be considered meaningless since we all die after 70 or 80 years. - Don _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
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