> People in this news group talk about Jelly fish, what is it and what
> does this have to do with backgammon.
Jellyfish: a thin, translucent Cnidarian of the Scyphozoa class,
conspicuous in the medusa stage with an ironically sessile and
miniscule polyp. For some odd reason, it is also the brand name of
one of the world's strongest neural net Backgammon
programs--which is probably why you couldn't guess what it was.
In recent years it has been found that computers are sometimes better
than humans at playing this game, and players often get excited when
a "bot" makes a play that they would never think of yet might be
correct--thus changing how we conceive of the game, which is exciting.
Philosophers are currently debating the symbolic significance of
"jellyfish" as a label for a neural net program. Perhaps the name is
meant to symbolize the beauty and flexibility of the program's brain,
just as a Cnidarian Scyphozoan is beautiful and flexible. But the
jellyfish stings! Does JF sting? Perhaps, when it demonstrates how
dumb we are at this game. But it too is often dumb! What does that
mean? And isn't a computer program run by a silicon brain, which is
stiff? But Scyphozoans are wavy and soft. What about tentacles?
How do they figure sybolically into our conception of a "neural net?"
The debate rages on.
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