[HN Gopher] A Matchbox Game-Learning Machine (1991) [pdf]
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A Matchbox Game-Learning Machine (1991) [pdf]
Author : fho
Score : 31 points
Date : 2023-01-25 11:30 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gwern.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (gwern.net)
| stefncb wrote:
| Making an equivalent of this was one of my first ever projects
| when I started learning programming. I'd read about it recently
| and was amazed when it actually started beating me every time.
| angry_moose wrote:
| There's a version of MENACE online that you can train from
| scratch: https://www.mscroggs.co.uk/menace/
|
| Around the 50th game it starts drawing pretty consistently.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Really interesting! I wonder if there's an implementation
| someone's done on the web for this.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| (1961)
| fho wrote:
| Possible, the file is tagged 1991. Could be a scan from a 1991
| revision of the 1961 book?
| matjet wrote:
| While 1991 does seem too recent for the text, 1961 is not
| possible given it makes several references to later years, up
| to 1965/1968.
|
| I am curious if this article has been scanned by a machine
| that attempts to use OCR to improve quality - at the expense
| of occasional mistakes. "dress" in place of "chess" looks
| close in font appearance, but far to mistype on a keyboard.
| SamBam wrote:
| Are you referring to "(so goes an old joke in modern
| dress)"? I'm pretty certain that is intentional. It's an
| old joke that has dressed up modern.
| iconjack wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this first appeared in Gardner's "Mathematical
| Games" column in the March 1962 issue of Scientific American.
| Gardner later collected some of his columns and published them
| in books, which is what you see in this HN submission.
|
| [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/24937263
| pinewurst wrote:
| Don't forget Adolescence of P-1 by Thomas Ryan too. Matchboxes to
| bootstrap a full AI.
| vmilner wrote:
| I made one of these in 1985 on my parents dining table. I had no
| idea Martin Gardners books were laying the ground for a maths
| science career. Those books (picked up at random from the public
| library) were the Numberphile (etc) videos of the 80s -
| particularly for kids whose family had no science background.
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| Stand up maths did an episode on a similar "machine" called
| MENACE (Machine Educable Noughts And Crosses Engine) that learns
| to play tick tac toe.
|
| https://youtu.be/R9c-_neaxeU
|
| The video description has additional links to resources:
|
| https://www.mscroggs.co.uk/blog/19
|
| http://chalkdustmagazine.com/tag/menace/
| jmmcd wrote:
| This article is mostly about MENACE.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| It's mostly about HER, but does have a blurb about MENACE at
| the beginning
| julian55 wrote:
| I remember reading about Matchbox Game-Learning Machines in a
| book in my school library in the late 1960s. It was partly
| responsible for getting me interested in computers.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Similar, but for me it was Saberhagen, _Without a Thought_
| (1963).
|
| (worth a reread now that the Newts of today are seeking to
| harness LLMs ... but do we have a Del?)
| defrost wrote:
| This is the one ..
|
| Saberhagen knew of Donald Michie's [1] MENACE [2] .. and this
| linked article tells of matchbox driven noughts and crosses
| engines and other variations for similarly simple games.
|
| This was recently broadcast with discussion on the UK panel
| show QI (Quite Interesting) which may point to why this has
| hit the HN zeitgeist.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Michie
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_a
| nd_...
| blacklion wrote:
| Gardner, chapter 8? I've built one in my childhood.
|
| Fortunately, most of Gardner's books were translated to my
| language and my father bought all of them.
|
| I've re-read these books maybe 10 times each.
| exebook wrote:
| What was your language? I read two of his books when I was a
| kid in Russian. Also built the matchbox machine but I think it
| was playing hexapawn which was too simplistic compared to tic
| tac toe and a bit disappointing. I couldn't find enough beads
| and had to use cut matches and pieces of paper as well. And it
| was quite a story to convince adults to buy me so many
| matchboxes, I think it was 21. I think this machine and
| Conway's Life also explained in that book have transformed me.
| blacklion wrote:
| Russian, yes. It is miracle, that these USA books were
| translated in USSR, IMHO.
|
| All these brain-teasers, and, yes, of course, Game of Life!
|
| I didn't have any beads, but I had about 1m of 100 pairs
| telco cable, so I've used small pieces of wire in colored
| insulation as beads :-)
| Pamar wrote:
| I could write the same comment - except that I did not really
| build the machine (also, I am Italian)...
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