What I think constitutes good research, and why
Now that I have actively started thinking about bringing people together for research, I think I should start by defining what I believe constitutes good research. While my thoughts are primarily geared towards research in Computer Science, I think much of what I believe applies to research in general. I want to start with something that is somewhat unrelated to research: chess (unfortunately, if you do not know how to play chess, you'll have to take this bit of what I say for granted). Around a year ago, I was absolutely shocked by a game that I witnessed between Stockfish and Alliestein over at the Top Chess Engines Competition (TCEC). You can find an (excellent) analysis of it here . Right out of the opening, Alliestein 'walked into' what was (to a human) a moderately deep queen trap, which involved a weird Re1-e5-b5-b3 rook maneuver, which for most humans would have been out of grasp. But this wasn't the amazing part. The amazing part was that Allie saw through t...