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A comment on AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch. Parent comment

Re:AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch by bradleybuda on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @03:43PM (#15502269)
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.

“I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied.

“Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.

“I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

“Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.

“So that the room will be empty.”

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html

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Re:AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch by tedunangst on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @05:26PM (#15503301)
So Sussman was right the first time?
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Re:AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch by zardo on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @06:59PM (#15504021)
A random net has some random preconception. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea to try random preconceptions.
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