Bad idea of the community: removal of the classical evaluation function.
It is indeed true that it is less strong than nnue, but, in reference to a human being,
-it is definitely, better
-is exploitable to adapt it to his level of play, since its elements are mappable to those found in traditional strategy books.
Basically, comparing classic Stockfish with nnue, you can see how far a human being can go and where the "inhuman" takes over.
Now, this genius makes that impossible.
This shows that the community members only care about pure game power, moreover, essentially, at ultra-rapid times.
This is of no help to the OTB player, indeed detrimental.
nnue evaluation function is a blackbox.
As such, you can't act on it: you can think of it as a linear combination of thousands of factors and relative weights both unknown.
In contrast, the classical evaluation function, certainly less strong, but better than any human being, has a dozen that can be mapped exactly to the thinking system of a human being.
Thus, such factors can be turned on or off as needed.
What we do and will continue to do with ShashChess with a REAL HANDICAP MODE simulating a human player.
What sense does it make for a human being to play the moves of an entity that often violates the strategic principles it already knows? Instead, the comparison with the classical evaluation function allows him to penetrate the meanders of nnue.
So instead the computer speaks Arabic even for Carlsen.
Research is meaningless unless it makes people's lives better: pure hypertrophic ego.
Now, the evaluation function is not at all dependent on the classical evaluation function.
Up to there, I'm all for it, but why remove it as an additional option?
The current stockfish handicap mode is ridiculous: random errors the more frequent the lower the elo.
Instead, a real handicap mode should simulate the thinking system of a certain elo range, which is impossible now for Stockfish.
amchess
commented
1 year ago
@amchess I appreciate this content. I shared it in mcostalba/Stockfish#324. Can you also share your opinion there?
Thank you very much