Questions I would ask God about the game of Go • Hacker News Board

Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go

#11

Post by GrumpyNl » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

SamPatt wrote: post #7

CydeWeys wrote: post #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 suspec…

I imagine dice, or some other physical object that introduces randomness, is a sure thing if intelligent life exists elsewhere.

That implies that they think and behave like us.

Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go

#12

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

SamPatt wrote: post #7

CydeWeys wrote: post #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 suspec…

I imagine dice, or some other physical object that introduces randomness, is a sure thing if intelligent life exists elsewhere.

Yeah, but that's not a game on its own, it's just a part of a game. I'm wondering about which game exists in essentially the same form elsewhere.

Once you start looking into the rules for specific games that only use dice, the rules are many and pretty specific (e.g. street dice), and it's the Chess problem again. I guess a dice game that probably exists pretty widely in the universe would be the simple children's dice game, namely, two players roll N-sided dice and the higher number wins, or you accumulate multiple rolls and play first to a given total, but that's not a very interesting game, and there's no strategy.

Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go

#13

Post by beojan » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #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 suspec…

> My gut response would be yes

I'd guess no, since there doesn't seem to be another human culture / civilization that independently invented it.

Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go

#14

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

beojan wrote: post #13

CydeWeys wrote: post #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 suspec…

> My gut response would be yes I'd guess no, since there doesn't seem to be another human culture / civilization that independently invented it.

Go is a pretty generic game that leans heavily on basic mathematics and geometry (which are universal). You really think it could only be invented by humans? Why?

Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go

#15

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #2

I 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?

Likely none of them; the search space is simply way too big. Heck, we can't even answer most of these questions for Chess, and Chess is a comparatively much easier to compute game.

Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go

#16

Post by datashow » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 3:21 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #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 suspec…

If it is true that Go is also played by other Alien species, there is no guarantee that they all play on the same size of board.

If earth is visited by Aliens some day, we should assume they play on larger board than us. It would be laughable that we get visited by 9*9 players.

Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go

#17

Post by Tomte » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 3:22 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #14

beojan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My gut response would be yes I'd guess no, since there doesn't seem to be another human culture / civilization that independently invented it.

Go is a pretty generic game that leans heavily on basic mathematics and geometry (which are universal). You really think it could only be invented by humans? Why?

No, he points out that even other humans haven't done so.

Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go

#18

Post by alanfalcon » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 3:24 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #12

SamPatt wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine dice, or some other physical object that introduces randomness, is a sure thing if intelligent life exists elsewhere.

Yeah, but that's not a game on its own, it's just a part of a game. I'm wondering about which game exists in essentially the same form elsewhere. Once you start looking into the rules for specific games that only use dice, the rules are many and pretty specific (e.g. street dice), and it's the Chess problem again. I guess a dice game that probably exists pretty widely in the universe would be the simple children's di…

The rules for Go are also actually pretty specific. Would you consider any territory capturing game played with simple tokens on a board to be Go? Is Reversi/Othello also Go?

Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go

#19

Post by shkkmo » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

beojan wrote: post #13

CydeWeys wrote: post #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 suspec…

> My gut response would be yes I'd guess no, since there doesn't seem to be another human culture / civilization that independently invented it.

The universe is a little bit bigger that earth, especially outside our observable light cone. If there is alien intelligence out there, it is reasonable to assume that a game mathematically equivalent to go has been invented elsewhere. (Because I feel like if there are any other alien intelligences out there, there would be a very, very large number of them. The anthropic principle might explain a single intelligent species, but just 2 or even 1 million seems very unlikely given the quantities involved)

Re: Questions I would ask God about the game of Go

#20

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #17

CydeWeys wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go is a pretty generic game that leans heavily on basic mathematics and geometry (which are universal). You really think it could only be invented by humans? Why?

No, he points out that even other humans haven't done so.

I'm not following. The universe is unbelievably vast, and likely has many, many more magnitudes of intelligent species out there than we have had cultures down here on this one planet.

I don't want to get into arguing Drake's equation here, but if you accept that aliens exist, then you're granting that there's a lot of them; it makes no sense why we would be, e.g., one of only two intelligent species in the entire universe.