Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
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Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
#2I don't know how to play Go, and I'm not very good at maths. How many of these questions could be answered without going to an omniscient heavenly being?
Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
#3I don't know how to play Go, and I'm not very good at maths. How many of these questions could be answered without going to an omniscient heavenly being?
Go is a finite game, so almost all these questions can be answered by just writing an algorithm that enumerates all the possible games and gives the answer. However, the game space is so big that approach would never finish. Further, I doubt any of them could practically be proven, even with some smarter algorithm. It's akin to how even with all the advances made in computer chess, we still don't know what perfect play looks like.
I do think we already have good evidence the best komi is 7 or 7.5, but it's not definitive.
The question of what the best ko rule is value based (different rules have different consequences/aesthetics for gameplay).
Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
#4The best placement for handicap stones seems most for perfect play. For tic-tac-toe I prefer to start in the middle because "not losing" takes more thought for the other player, but assuming perfect play it doesnt matter where you start - the game is a draw.
Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
#5Do things like "best opening move", "worst handicap placement" or similar make sense if you assume perfect play ?
I would think not, because when you have perfect play, you either win, lose or draw. So you just have "winning opening moves", "losing opening moves", and "draw opening moves". You cannot really rank them.
Maybe the ranking would be the number of different games that lead you to a win, in a monte-carlo tree search fashion. Which could then be useful if you can't play perfectly (highest probability of winning).
Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
#6> Is go played anywhere else in the universe, and was it discovered by chance there?
> What openings do aliens play?
I love these questions about if anyone else in the universe is playing Go. My gut response would be yes -- it's a simple enough game (regular game grid of any size roughly 5x5 on up, one type of piece, two players take turns alternating placing pieces, and any that are surrounded are removed). I suspect other simple enough games that likely exist elsewhere in the universe would be tic-tac-toe, connect-N, dots and boxes, and Othello/Reversi -- any others?
Contrast with, say, Chess, which has too many different types of pieces, all with specific movement rules, and with a specific initial layout. I wouldn't be surprised if Chess only existed here, though I also would expect plenty of games similar to Chess to exist out there in the universe, i.e. a game on a regular board with multiple types of pieces and different rules for moving the different pieces. If Shogi, Checkers, or Stratego weren't human games I wouldn't be surprised to learn them from aliens.
It's a great question -- what is the most universal board game? What board game has been independently invented the most times throughout the universe? What if it's a game that we haven't even come up with?
Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
#7> Is go played anywhere else in the universe, and was it discovered by chance there? > What openings do aliens play? I love these questions about if anyone else in the universe is playing Go. My gut response would be yes -- it's a simple enough game (regular game grid of any size roughly 5x5 on up, one type of piece, two players take turns alternating placing pieces, and any that are surrounded are removed). I suspec…
I imagine dice, or some other physical object that introduces randomness, is a sure thing if intelligent life exists elsewhere.
Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
#8I don't know how to play Go, and I'm not very good at maths. How many of these questions could be answered without going to an omniscient heavenly being?
Go is a finite game, so almost all these questions can be answered by just writing an algorithm that enumerates all the possible games and gives the answer. However, the game space is so big that approach would never finish. Further, I doubt any of them could practically be proven, even with some smarter algorithm. It's akin to how even with all the advances made in computer chess, we still don't know what perfect pl…
From Wikipedia:
Komidashi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komidashi
"Komi in the game of Go are points added to the score of the player with the white stones as compensation for playing second. Black's first move advantage is generally considered to equal somewhere between 5 and 7 points by the end of the game. Standard komi is 6.5 points under the Japanese and Korean rules; under Chinese, Ing and AGA rules standard komi is 7.5 points. Komi typically applies only to games where both players are evenly ranked. In the case of a one-rank difference, the stronger player will typically play with the white stones and players often agree on a simple 0.5 point komi to break a tie in favour of white."
Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
#9That was fun. My favorite two questions are:
Is go played anywhere else in the universe, and was it discovered by chance there? What openings do aliens play?
Our Universe is a huge place. I think it was Nature Magazine that had an article estimating 20,000 worlds with earth like conditions and life. My formal education is in physics and personally I subscribe to the multiverse hypothesis so with a potential infinite number of universes these questions have meaning.
My older brother taught me to play Go when I was eight and I played actively in the 1970s. Two years ago, on a whim, I decided to go to the US Go Open. I drastically overestimated my own rating when registering, played too strong of players and lost every game. A good lesson in humility and I made some friends. To lick my battle wounds, I paid a South Korean Go professional for lessons for three months and I feel like that really helped my game.
Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
#10I don't know how to play Go, and I'm not very good at maths. How many of these questions could be answered without going to an omniscient heavenly being?
Most of them if we either 1. discover an amazing technology for blazing fast computing. or 2. advance our algorithms so that they can prune the search space of Go to something manageable by our CPUs while provably keeping correctness.
Does not apply to questions about aliens.