Philosophy Now Forum

In May 1997, an IBM supercomputer known as Deep Blue beat then chess world champion Garry Kasparov, who had once bragged he would never lose to a machine. Kasparov and other chess masters blamed the defeat on a single move made by the IBM machine. At the beginning of the second game the computer made a sacrifice that seemed to hint at its long-term strategy. Kasparov and many others thought the move was too sophisticated for a computer, suggesting there had been some sort of human intervention during the game. “It was an incredibly refined move, of defending while ahead to cut out any hint of countermoves”, grandmaster Yasser Seirawan told Wired in 2001, “and it sent Garry into a tizzy”.

Fifteen years later, one of Big Blue’s designers says the move was the result of a bug in Deep Blue’s software. Murray Campbell, one of the three IBM computer scientists who designed Deep Blue, said that the machine was unable to select a move and simply picked one at random. (source)

A random move. Regarded as one of the wisest ever.

But what is "random"? How can such a move, conducted by a programmed algorithm be "random" in any way? Someone programmed this chess program, someone built its circuits. Someone trained it. Someone debugged it. (probably not too successfully) Even though the move seems random, it is actually the deterministic result of many actions designed by conscious beings...

What do you think? Do you BELIEVE in random?

Pre-quantum, every "random" result - like a dice roll - was understood to be the outcome of deterministic processes. Randomness can't be demonstrated to exist - all you can do is exhaust your resources in attempts to find a pattern. Software does things more and more that no programmer understood or chose. Routines can evolve to optimize in ways nobody understands.

I consider the famous chess match somewhat rigged. Kasparov was not allowed to train for the event in the way that Big Blue was. Knowing your opponent is a significant part of a high level match. I'm surprised Kasparov agreed to the terms.

The move in question was randomly selected not from all possible moves, but from a fairly short list of good ones, none of which stood out from the others.

skakos wrote:But what is "random"? How can such a move, conducted by a programmed algorithm be "random" in any way? Someone programmed this chess program, someone built its circuits. Someone trained it. Someone debugged it. (probably not too successfully) Even though the move seems random, it is actually the deterministic result of many actions designed by conscious beings...

All reasonable chess programs have randomness built in, especially in early moves, else they could be effortlessly beaten. There is nothing magical about how it works. It simply uses some trivial deterministic algorithm based on the time of day or something. It is not an example of true randomness, something of which a chess program has no need.

What do you think? Do you BELIEVE in random?

Different question. I do and don't depending on your definition. Radioactive decay seems to be a random thing, uncaused. Depends on how you frame the events, and how you interpret the physics behind it.

From what I understand it was selected totally at random due to the bug (see also here) However the question is much more general and philosophical: Can in any case random exist? This case shows that it all comes down to the beliefs a person has for core philosophical issues which are currently unsolved. Fate vs. Free will, Determinism vs. (whatever) etc, they all show that the universe can be understood only through the irrational thinking which accepts all of the above notions at the same time...

It's kind of mind-bending to try to contemplate complete and utter randomness, at least from the perspective I have, which is that everything is connected. There must surely be an extensive network of connectivity in every circumstance (yes?), so can there ever actually be complete randomness? Even though things may SEEM random to us (and therefore "be" random to us), wouldn't connectivity have innate synchronicity... even if it is on levels far too subtle and fantastic for us to fathom?

Does that make sense, or am I just being a trippy hippy?

skakos wrote:From what I understand it was selected totally at random due to the bug

So it seems. It is quite correct to select randomly from good moves, but that was apparently not the case there, and yes, it appeared to throw Kasparov off balance, a move so deep that even he could not see any purpose behind it.

However the question is much more general and philosophical: Can in any case random exist? This case shows that it all comes down to the beliefs a person has for core philosophical issues which are currently unsolved. Fate vs. Free will, Determinism vs. (whatever) etc, they all show that the universe can be understood only through the irrational thinking which accepts all of the above notions at the same time...

A matter of belief, yes.

My favored interpretation is that there is no way to have predicted the current state from data available at some past moment. The current state is thus truly random from the perspective of that past moment. I find no agent that does or does not have fate or free will, so not sure how to qualify those. I'm open to other interpretations that are self consistent, but I seem not to have identified them, so it is pretty much a 'belief' with me.

No *known* way to predict the current state from the prior states. But then, someone might know it, or a way may be found.

We have fate and we have free will. We create the cosmos (and our fate) via our free will! (just thinking out loud)