Solving problems by mapping them to other problems that we know how to solve
by piotrgrudzien on Hacker News.
Is there a line of research that looks into solving difficult / intractable problems by finding a mapping that expresses them as different problems that we know how to solve? A fairly surreal and probably overly optimistic example would be, for example, to solve traveling salesman problems using chess engines. What we would need is to find right mappings:
(1) from a traveling salesman problem to a chess position and,
(2) from a traveling salesman route to a chess move (or move sequence) A general solution for a “compiler” that can translate between any pair of problems feels unrealistic but I can imagine developing a mapping between, say, a tic tac toe game and simple chess positions where you could:
(1) translate a tic tac toe position into a chess position
(2) solve the chess position
(3) translate the solution into a tic tac toe sequence Any thoughts or pointers to relevant research would be much appreciated!