Category: Web/Tech

A mini-revolt against computers in chess

by  Tyler Cowen in

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.’

There is more here, for instance:

…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’. Carlsen may even become a world champion, but at this moment, a new generation is growing and training. ‘Richárd is one of them; then there is Nyzhnyk, a very interesting player from Ukraine, Berbatov, a very talented young player from Bulgaria. But the leader of this generation I would say is Wesley So. He is extremely talented and has produced some very interesting games, like his wins against Ivanchuk at the World Cup. These post-Carlsen players have a different style and attitudes. They are not obsessed with the opening theory, like their older predecessors. They are looking for much more practical play and are very aggressive. They are not necessarily a computer generation, as Carlsen’s generation was. Computers came with their powerful programs and chess players wanted to try them. But I feel this trend is finishing now.’

I wouldn't put too much stock in this as a practical development (Carlsen's the guy who's #1), but it's an interesting point about the roots of creativity and independent thought.

The culture that is Norway

by  Tyler Cowen in

Thousands of travellers are stranded throughout Europe as ash continues to rain down from an erupting volcano in Iceland this week. Among them is Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, whose press secretary reports the official to be “running the Norwegian government from the United States via his new iPad.”

The story is here and for the link I thank vANNilla.  Israel, however, has banned all imports of the iPad, for reasons I don't yet understand.  They are even confiscating iPads from travelers.

How politically segregated are the networks of the internet?

by  Tyler Cowen in

For all the complaints you hear, internet reading is much less segregated than the networks of our work, family, and friends (all given formal measurements in the paper).  Jesse Shapiro and Matt Gentzkow report:

We use individual and aggregate data to ask how the Internet is changing the ideological segregation of the American electorate. Focusing on online news consumption, offline news consumption, and face-to-face social interactions, we define ideological segregation in each domain using standard indices from the literature on racial segregation. We find that ideological segregation of online news consumption is low in absolute terms, higher than the segregation of most offline news consumption, and significantly lower than the segregation of face-to-face interactions with neighbors, co-workers, or family members. We find no evidence that the Internet is becoming more segregated over time.

Here are some details:

The average Internet news consumer’s exposure to conservatives is 57 percent, slightly to the left of the US adult population. The average conservative’s exposure is 60.6 percent, similar to a person who gets all her news from usatoday.com. The average liberal’s exposure is 53.1 percent, similar to a person who gets all her news from cnn.com. The isolation index for the Internet is 7.5 percentage points, the difference between the average conservative’s exposure and the average liberal’s exposure.

News consumers with extremely high or low exposure are rare. A consumer who got news exclusively from nytimes.com would have a more liberal news diet than 95 percent of Internet news users, and a consumer who got news exclusively from foxnews.com would have a more conservative news diet than 99 percent of Internet news users.

…Visitors of extreme conservative sites such as rushlimbaugh.com and glennbeck.com are more likely than a typical online news reader to have visited nytimes.com.

This is one of the best papers on on-line media.