Star Trek: The Next Generation/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
Content added Content deleted
| Line 815: | Line 815: | ||
*** As Tasha discovered. |
*** As Tasha discovered. |
||
** Pulaski, is that you? |
** Pulaski, is that you? |
||
** Information theory estimates that it would take approximately 10^90 years to brute-force all the possible combinations and permutations in chess using modern computing technology. Even assuming that Data's brain is a ''quadrillion'' times more powerful a computer than the 21st century's best (and while he's obviously ahead of current computers by many orders of magnitude, putting him a full 15 orders ahead of contemporary is still a generous estimate), that still leaves us with one thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion (10^75) years' worth of number-crunching to completely solve chess. As a comparision, the estimated remaining lifespan of the universe is somewhere around 30 billion years. |
** Information theory estimates that it would take approximately 10^90 years to brute-force all the possible combinations and permutations in chess using modern computing technology. Even assuming that Data's brain is a ''quadrillion'' times more powerful a computer than the 21st century's best (and while he's obviously ahead of current computers by many orders of magnitude, putting him a full 15 orders ahead of contemporary is still a generous estimate), that still leaves us with one thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion (10^75) years' worth of number-crunching to completely solve chess. As a comparision, the estimated remaining lifespan of the universe is somewhere around 30 billion years. Even granted that a suitably sophisticated algorithm can significantly prune this problem by preliminary discarding of a majority of the possible game states as sub-optimal (i.e., there are a lot more dumb moves in chess than there are smart moves in chess), which is how modern-day chess-playing programs work, that's still not a ''perfect'' solution. |
||
*** Short version: Data might be a science-fiction supercomputer, but being 100% unbeatable in chess is a job that even sci-fi supercomputers don't have the size for, unless you bring in something ridiculous like Deep Thought from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Troi's win is still ''extremely unlikely'', in that she's taking on somebody with at least grandmaster skill in chess while she herself is not a ranked player that anyone knows of, but its still mathematically ''possible''. |
|||
*** It was also likely intended as a callback to Kirk beating Spock in chess despite Spock's far superior logic, memory, and computational ability, because Kirk had intuition. The problem is Kirk was famed for his own brilliance (and luck), and Spock was not actually an android, so it's not as much of a stretch there as here. |
*** It was also likely intended as a callback to Kirk beating Spock in chess despite Spock's far superior logic, memory, and computational ability, because Kirk had intuition. The problem is Kirk was famed for his own brilliance (and luck), and Spock was not actually an android, so it's not as much of a stretch there as here. |
||
**** In conclusion: its still one hell of a long shot, but at least its not violating the laws of thermodynamics or anything. |
**** In conclusion: its still one hell of a long shot, but at least its not violating the laws of thermodynamics or anything. |
||