I wonder how this would change if you only looked at highly rated chess engines. For example, is a rook pair really not as good as a queen or is it just that _humans_ aren't as good at using the rooks effectively?
Every time I see this project, I think it looks awesome and useful, but I hate that it's written in python. I love python and I use it all the time, but I hate to see so much effort and innovation going into something that can only be used by this one language. If this had been written in C, Zig, Rust or some other language that produces easily embeddable binaries with a C API, then you could have idiomatic APIs for lots of languages instead of having to repeatedly reinvent the wheel.
I don't mean that as any kind of insult to the people who work on this project -- I'm sure writing it in python is way more pleasant than writing in C. I'm just bummed that projects I have in mind that I intend to write in a language other than python can't use this.
>Folks would rather feel good and virtue signal than really solve the problem.
The idea that people are using reusable shopping bags because they want to virtue signal and not because of any actual desire to do good is a completely baseless and needlessly pessimistic viewpoint. A much more reasonable and likely explanation is that most people can't fully assess the environmental impact of their decisions, so they make the entirely reasonable assumption that if they can avoid throwing away a dozen plastic bags every week, then that's probably a good thing. That assumption may turn out to be incorrect, but that doesn't mean they have the harmful motivations you are accusing them of.
I see this question getting downvoted, and some of the responses are strangely hostile strawman attacks based on what those posters are guessing this person "really" means. I think this is a perfectly reasonable question.
A few years ago, I got a PhD in pure mathematics (low dimensional geometry and topology). As someone who loves pure math and spent many years devoted to it, I've had many conversations with mathematicians about whether we should be concerned with practical applications. One common argument, which several people have made here, is that there's been a lot of math that found practical application long after it was done. That really only applies to a very small proportion of math. The vast majority of math done has still never found application. So arguing that we should do that math because it may have applications later is kind of like arguing you should play the lottery since there's a greater than 0 chance that you'll win. Also, from the (admittedly biased) group of mathematicians I've spoken to about this, very few seemed to actually do math in the hope that it would be useful later.
Instead, people do math because it's interesting, beautiful, and challenging. I would argue this Mersenne Prime search is almost more like recreation. I could be wrong, since I never did much number theory, but I don't think this is advancing any research. It's just a fun hobby for people who enjoy math. I think doing math for the sake of its beauty is generally fine. I do have concerns about the climate aspect of this particular project though. This is a lot of power being consumed just for recreation. This project may not be big enough to have much of an environmental impact, but in general, I think we should be more mindful of not wasting large amounts of computing power just for fun.