A time machine that could actually deliver and tell us who would win mythical match ups... Is it more of a reality than we think?!

[Anthony342]

As far as I am concerned? When they made the Bionic women they made the perfect teenage male ***** extracting machine...

I take it watching her extracted plenty of ***** from you then?

[billeau2]

I take it watching her extracted plenty of ***** from you then?

What a natural beauty! I had more of a thing for her than Farah Fawcet... And Fawcet was kind of the pin up for a lot of the teens back then lol.

[Anthony342]

What a natural beauty! I had more of a thing for her than Farah Fawcet... And Fawcet was kind of the pin up for a lot of the teens back then lol.

Wagner aged a lot better though.

[Bundana]

It would only be as reliable as the data entered by humans. We all know how unreliable that can be. Especially if math nerds who aren’t boxing fans are entering said data. The intangibles and nuances of each fighter could never be fully captured.

I would have to agree with this!

Even if it were possible to feed a quantum computer with EVERY second of a fighters life, with everything he has seen/done/experienced/decided/etc. from the time of his birth... how is that going to help a computer predict the outcome of a match against another person, whose whole life has likewise been fed into the computer? There's no way even the strongest computer can predict the most likely outcome of a boxing match, any better than a knowledgeable student of the sport!

Yes, I get it... a quantum computer can run through every possible scenario, but how will it have any idea of which would be the most likely? Sure, most of the time it would get it right... but how could it possibly determine that Duran doing the "No Mas" thing, would be the most likely outcome of his second fight with Leonard? Or that Vitali would injure his shoulder against Byrd. Or how about former welterweight champion Andrew Lewis, ahead on all cards, losing a match because he (due to an upset stomach) urgently needed to go to the restroom in mid-fight? Yeah, I'd like to see a computer being able to predict that one!

Even something as simple as a clash of heads, resulting in an injury that causes a fight to be stopped - how is a computer going to determine that as the most likely outcome?

[Willie Pep 229]

I would have to agree with this!

Even if it were possible to feed a quantum computer with EVERY second of a fighters life, with everything he has seen/done/experienced/decided/etc. from the time of his birth... how is that going to help a computer predict the outcome of a match against another person, whose whole life has likewise been fed into the computer? There's no way even the strongest computer can predict the most likely outcome of a boxing match, any better than a knowledgeable student of the sport!

Yes, I get it... a quantum computer can run through every possible scenario, but how will it have any idea of which would be the most likely? Sure, most of the time it would get it right... but how could it possibly determine that Duran doing the "No Mas" thing, would be the most likely outcome of his second fight with Leonard? Or that Vitali would injure his shoulder against Byrd. Or how about former welterweight champion Andrew Lewis, ahead on all cards, losing a match because he (due to an upset stomach) urgently needed to go to the restroom in mid-fight? Yeah, I'd like to see a computer being able to predict that one!

Even something as simple as a clash of heads, resulting in an injury that causes a fight to be stopped - how is a computer going to determine that as the most likely outcome?

As of right now it won't - it will, as you stated, only be able to identify the most likely outcome.

. . . Which works if what you want to do is identify - debate who are the 'true' ATGs. You know, have fun.

. . . Which won't work if what you want is to bet on a particular fight. Then it could well be a pecuniary disaster, a real 'no mas' money.

But I believe what Bill is suggesting is a computer that will be designed a 100 years from now and what that machine might be capable of is hidden behind a wall we can't see over.

In 1890 Hollerith had his adding machine up and running and knew it could do much more if he could just raise the finances for his new company International Buisness Machine.

But I doubt even Hollerith could have imagined a lap top connected to an internet.

[The Old LefHook]

Kurt Godel proved that in any formal system at least as complicated as basic arithmetic it will always be possible to generate questions which are undecidable. In mythical matchups, I suppose some of those undecidable questions for the formal system of the quantum computer might be the very ones we are interested in getting an answer to.

So there is no real answer to who wins between Robinson and Leonard?--there is only a probability. Artificial intelligence and quantum com*****g will be able to refine odds making, fashioning it into nearly an exact science, but will remain unable to answer the specific question with 100% probability until it is allowed to read all physical and mental data of both boxers as they fight. This way it could further refine its prediction while the fight was in progress. Sometimes the physical readouts alone might make an immediate KO practically inevitable, and it could predict this with certainty a short time in advance. We do this ourselves watching live fights, without the readouts, going only on the visible evidence.

But unless every matchup ends in a KO, the AI/Quantum unit had better know the judges and referee in as much detail as it does the fighters. And I tell you, by buggery, even an act as simple as shielding the identity of the judges until after the fight might confound the machine so badly that it starts smoking and fizzing like a shorted out toaster, duly earning the nickname Old Sparky.

[Bundana]

As of right now it won't - it will, as you stated, only be able to identify the most likely outcome.

. . . Which works if what you want to do is identify - debate who are the 'true' ATGs. You know, have fun.

. . . Which won't work if what you want is to bet on a particular fight. Then it could well be a pecuniary disaster, a real 'no mas' money.

But I believe what Bill is suggesting is a computer that will be designed a 100 years from now and what that machine might be capable of is hidden behind a wall we can't see over.

In 1890 Hollerith had his adding machine up and running and knew it could do much more if he could just raise the finances for his new company International Buisness Machine.

But I doubt even Hollerith could have imagined a lap top connected to an internet.

Yes, I get that Bill means a computer far into the future, far more advanced than anything we can even imagine today. But even so, how can there ever be computer, that can predict how two fighters will react, and what will happen, once they face each other in the ring?

Could such a computer be used to identify, who are the 'true' ATGs - based on what it determines to be the most LIKELY results of fantasy matches? Could it end the 'old vs new' debate? You know, where some people believe boxing has advanced/evolved over the years... while others (like Mike Silver) see today's boxers as pampered sissies, who are far inferior to the brave warriers of goneby years. Could a quantum computer, many years into the future, resolve that question? I don't see, how that would be possible!

[billeau2]

I would have to agree with this!

Even if it were possible to feed a quantum computer with EVERY second of a fighters life, with everything he has seen/done/experienced/decided/etc. from the time of his birth... how is that going to help a computer predict the outcome of a match against another person, whose whole life has likewise been fed into the computer? There's no way even the strongest computer can predict the most likely outcome of a boxing match, any better than a knowledgeable student of the sport!

Yes, I get it... a quantum computer can run through every possible scenario, but how will it have any idea of which would be the most likely? Sure, most of the time it would get it right... but how could it possibly determine that Duran doing the "No Mas" thing, would be the most likely outcome of his second fight with Leonard? Or that Vitali would injure his shoulder against Byrd. Or how about former welterweight champion Andrew Lewis, ahead on all cards, losing a match because he (due to an upset stomach) urgently needed to go to the restroom in mid-fight? Yeah, I'd like to see a computer being able to predict that one!

Even something as simple as a clash of heads, resulting in an injury that causes a fight to be stopped - how is a computer going to determine that as the most likely outcome?

its kind of a hard concept to grasp. Whether one thinks it is plausible or not...It is very difficult to explain. It has little to do with computer data in the conventional sense. But its not about feeding data from every second of a fighter's life. Here is the best way I can explain it: knowledge can be looked at as the outcome of some cause. Every effect has a probability of occuring. The more you rank different probabilities, the more probabilities you can consider in a conclusion, the more accurate you will be. Given enough information and the ability to process the information a computer could theoretically predict a "clash of heads." The most likely scenario comes from taking many many probabilities and ranking all of them and making a conclusion. We are talking a lot of data here... Many times more than a computer can do conventionally.

Most people are thinking backwards when asking how a computer could predict an anomolie like a shoulder injury? the real question is how much information would a computer need to realistically rank such an occurance? There might well be an answer to that question. I don't know this but I do know that as we study Artificial Intelligence, Quantum theory and game theory, it isn't hard to see computers able to teach themselves very fast.

Just to give you an analogy: you have a standard analog computer that wants to predict the toss of a roulette wheel number. This has been done by calculating the machine dynamics, the friction of the wheel, the characteristics of the tosser, etc. but those are not really about artificial intelligence, more about meaningful data. A Quantum computer could watch a series of tosses, teach itself more and more about the odds of a toss, and eventually evolve to predict the right number every time... How much farther can it go in predicting outcomes with no restraints on data amount?

[Eff Pandas]

Can we compute why boxing fans are so obsessed with who beats who from different eras? Thats a question that confuses me to no end & I've never heard a answer that made much sense to me.

[billeau2]

Can we compute why boxing fans are so obsessed with who beats who from different eras? Thats a question that confuses me to no end & I've never heard a answer that made much sense to me.

Some eras are compatible, some, not so much. I think you can compare based on preclassical up until the time of Dempsey (classical). So naturally we want to compare when we can.... Human Nature. Come on Eff Panda! wouldn't you love to see Louis against Ali? or even Frazier? (more interesting fight probably). Come on! (puts a piece of perfectly roasted spare rib under your nose tempting you to try the rest of the buffet).