Machines can throw objects faster, further, and more accurate than humans, but field sports are still popular. It's interesting not because the object goes far, but because it's being done by a human.
> Chess is a game of symbol manipulation. It isn't played in the real world and its rules don't require human bodies the way field sports do.
I didn't mean "humanoid" as in "C3PO sitting across from the player at a table", I meant humanoid thought processes.
As far as I know, none of the chess engines are humanoid in the way they determine the next best move.
For one, they are all using far, far more instant-recall capacity than any human, ever.
> its rules don't require human bodies the way field sports do.
Which rule in football, tennis, american football, baseball, basketball or hockey requires humanoid players?
They may preclude robots as players, but that's a post-hoc fallacy - "they require all players to be humans, so therefore robots cannot replace humans like in Chess".
> I didn't mean "humanoid" as in "C3PO sitting across from the player at a table", I meant humanoid thought processes. As far as I know, none of the chess engines are humanoid in the way they determine the next best move.
Sure, and if you had android basketball players or soccer players, they would probably play the game differently as well.
> Which rule in football, tennis, american football, baseball, basketball or hockey requires humanoid players?
The totality of the rules put together tend to require that. For instance, in the NFL, whether or not a player carrying the ball is considered "down" depends upon their elbow or knee touching the ground, which implies that they need to have elbows and knees. Whether or not a catch is considered in bounds depends upon both feet touching the ground in bounds, which implies that they need to have feet. And so forth. Soccer has specific rules about the hands, feet, and head, while basketball's rules around dribbling specify hands and footsteps.
Obviously you could build a robot that looked like a dalek with a pneumatic cannon and design the robot to shoot a ball, and that robot would probably be better than human players at shooting baskets or completing football passes, but it wouldn't actually be able to play the full game according to the same rules that apply to human players.
From what I've read on this exact topic w.r.t. robotics, there are a few select places you could probably replace humans with a robot using current technology, and achieve almost perfect results. Kickers in American football, free throws in basketball are two such examples.
Kickers have to sometimes tackle, run fakes, kick onsides, deal with mishandled snaps or holds, and adjust for the conditions, like wind or how the opponent is trying to bother the kick. Plus the kick is from different parts of the field, unlike a free throw. But it doesn't matter, since someone taking a free throw has to be already in the game playing. There's no designated FT shooter.
At some point, being able to score 3 points from unlimited range just breaks the game of football to the degree that an increased risk of mishandling a bad snap/hold doesn't really matter, and you won't ever need to kick onside, either.
I don’t really think you can compare those though; robots are crap and easily beaten at most physical sports. I mean, as far as I can find, there is not even a bipedal robot that outruns humans (there is the cheetah robot but it has 4 legs ; that’s like having a dog or, you know, cheetah compete against Usain).
But yes, people will continue to play chess, go and spear throwing because it doesn’t matter if something non human is better.
It’s not required, we just don’t allow anything else because it would no longer be interesting at all. That’s the point. Same why we don’t watch grandmasters play computers; they lose. But humans vs humans is still a good watch.
Are they? The throwing sports? How many people do you know who regularly follow shotputting or javelin (outside of possibly the olympics). How much do the top 20 javelin throwers in the world earn in sponsorship and prize money and how does that compare to other actually popular sports.
I have no doubt that chess will remain at least as popular as javelin or shot-put for the foreseable future. I'm just not sure that counts as 'popular'.