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Chess Problems
May. 12th, 2007 08:54 amChess is a deeply flawed game.
Philosophically speaking.
Because it is too perfect, too precise. Stoic pawns and lethal queens glide across its black and white universe guided by rules every bit as deterministic as Newton's Laws of Motion. The great promise of Newtonian physics was that if one knew the mass, position and velocity of every object in the universe, one could calculate the future down to the decimal point. And this is precisely how chess supercomputers beat human grand masters, calculating every move.
There is no luck in chess. No chance, no randomness, no mess. Like Einstein's God, chess does not play dice.
But Einstein was wrong. God does play dice -- vast oceans of them. Newton's Laws are not built on solid rock, but on the rolling waves of quantum statistic probability. Chaos mathematics showed us that the results of even simple equations cannot always be predicted. And here, at the human level, our lives are buffeted by earthquakes and diseases and falling in love. Nothing is predictable.
Chess teaches us strategy, but ignores the most important lesson: some things are beyond our control. The best strategies must accommodate unpredictability, not loftily ignore it.
Poker, then, seems more philosophically sound. Cards dealt at random. Each player with a different sized pile of chips. And after that it's all bluff and counting the odds.
But I've been thinking more about Carcassonne. Players draw random tiles, and with them they must build roads and monasteries and citadels. At first, it seems impossible to plan ahead. Everything depends on the luck of the draw.
But this is the subtle lesson of Carcassonne: when everything depends on chance, the wisest strategy is not to rely on luck. Build carefully. Lay solid foundations. Leave yourself options, but plan what you will do. Bend luck to you, not yourself to luck.
...
Just over half the tiles are left in my game. What have I built? A few short roads. A little citadel. Any number of dead-ends. I'm not winning. From my current position, I may not be able to win.
But there's still half the game left. Anything can happen. And we are here to build things.
So let's build.
(Note to self: do not read Clive James's Cultural Amnesia in bed. Your brain will not stop buzzing, and you will get no sleep.)
Philosophically speaking.
Because it is too perfect, too precise. Stoic pawns and lethal queens glide across its black and white universe guided by rules every bit as deterministic as Newton's Laws of Motion. The great promise of Newtonian physics was that if one knew the mass, position and velocity of every object in the universe, one could calculate the future down to the decimal point. And this is precisely how chess supercomputers beat human grand masters, calculating every move.
There is no luck in chess. No chance, no randomness, no mess. Like Einstein's God, chess does not play dice.
But Einstein was wrong. God does play dice -- vast oceans of them. Newton's Laws are not built on solid rock, but on the rolling waves of quantum statistic probability. Chaos mathematics showed us that the results of even simple equations cannot always be predicted. And here, at the human level, our lives are buffeted by earthquakes and diseases and falling in love. Nothing is predictable.
Chess teaches us strategy, but ignores the most important lesson: some things are beyond our control. The best strategies must accommodate unpredictability, not loftily ignore it.
Poker, then, seems more philosophically sound. Cards dealt at random. Each player with a different sized pile of chips. And after that it's all bluff and counting the odds.
But I've been thinking more about Carcassonne. Players draw random tiles, and with them they must build roads and monasteries and citadels. At first, it seems impossible to plan ahead. Everything depends on the luck of the draw.
But this is the subtle lesson of Carcassonne: when everything depends on chance, the wisest strategy is not to rely on luck. Build carefully. Lay solid foundations. Leave yourself options, but plan what you will do. Bend luck to you, not yourself to luck.
...
Just over half the tiles are left in my game. What have I built? A few short roads. A little citadel. Any number of dead-ends. I'm not winning. From my current position, I may not be able to win.
But there's still half the game left. Anything can happen. And we are here to build things.
So let's build.
(Note to self: do not read Clive James's Cultural Amnesia in bed. Your brain will not stop buzzing, and you will get no sleep.)
