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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

#31

Post by CydeWeys »

datashow wrote: post #16
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.

Sure, but Go on larger boards is still Go. Even here on Earth there's at least four board sizes that are regularly played on.

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

#32

Post by shkkmo »

CydeWeys wrote: post #27
ivanbakel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It could only be invented by humans" is a very different statement to "no aliens will have invented it". That's making an ought out of an is. The intention of the GP was - given that Go was not invented again on Earth, there's no real indication that it would be invented again at all. That doesn't imply that it cannot be invented again because it is too complex.

I'm not following how this logically follows at all. It was invented here, so if anything, its invention here is a great data point that it could easily be invented elsewhere too (take a Bayesian approach to it). I don't see how its invention here somehow counts as evidence against it being invented elsewhere! There are an infinite number of games that haven't been invented here; all of those would seem to be much le…

> Also, it's kind of silly to count something not have being reinvented against it, because things almost by definition cannot be reinvented.

Well, they can, but the opportunities are limited to cultures where the game has not been introduced yet.

I would also point out that we don't know that Go was never invented independently on earth, just that it was never invented and popularized in a manner that left a cultural or historic record of which we are aware. If Go were played by a small clan of prehistoric people using different color berries and a grid scratched out in the dirt, what evidence would be left?

So that REALLY limits the opportunities to cultures that left a significant historic record but had no cultural exchange with china.

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

#33

Post by CydeWeys »

treve wrote: post #26
mark_l_watson wrote: post #9

That 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…

20,000 seems a little low. I imagine this needs at least 10 more zeroes

Yup. As our telescopes get better we keep finding Earth-like planets just orbiting nearby stars. And that's only what's nearby, here in this one galaxy.

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

#34

Post by afthonos »

elcomet wrote: post #5

Do 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 tr…

Go has points. An opening move is better than another if, given perfect play thereafter, you end up with more points.

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

#35

Post by dkarras »

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…

It's a weird thought I admit but as a computer game, I believe "Tetris" could have been independently "discovered". Board size - gravity rules - scoring etc. are arbitrary but there is some fundamental elegance about all possible tetrominos creating a game that is that fun. At the very least non tetris (so no creating and destroying lines) but a game with all possible tetrominos probably would exist.

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

#36

Post by mark_l_watson »

treve wrote: post #26
mark_l_watson wrote: post #9

That 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…

20,000 seems a little low. I imagine this needs at least 10 more zeroes

I agree. My Dad is a physicist and in his late 90s still a member of the National Academy of Science. We riff a lot on science and technology and this is a favorite topic :-)

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

#39

Post by jofer »

H8crilA wrote: post #37

Funny that God is just a PSPACE oracle. At least in the sense that the oracle can answer essentially all of those questions.

I think you didn't read far enough... (See aliens questions later on)

That having been said, I think it's fascinating that most of these questions are just that, but are impossible to answer at present. The probability space is just too large. It's one of the fascinating aspects of go. It's a very simple set of mathematical rules that yields incredibly complex behavior and is practical impossible to brute force "perfect" gameplay as a result. I.e. you can't search the full space, you have to learn to predict optional strategies and always wonder if there isn't a better solution somewhere.

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

#40

Post by ivanbakel »

CydeWeys wrote: post #27
ivanbakel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It could only be invented by humans" is a very different statement to "no aliens will have invented it". That's making an ought out of an is. The intention of the GP was - given that Go was not invented again on Earth, there's no real indication that it would be invented again at all. That doesn't imply that it cannot be invented again because it is too complex.

I'm not following how this logically follows at all. It was invented here, so if anything, its invention here is a great data point that it could easily be invented elsewhere too (take a Bayesian approach to it). I don't see how its invention here somehow counts as evidence against it being invented elsewhere! There are an infinite number of games that haven't been invented here; all of those would seem to be much le…

That's an argument that only works on logicians, along the lines of "every dice with enough sides is actually rigged to the first number it lands on". If a particular consequence is exceptional (the invention of Go), but some consequence is inevitable (the invention of a board game to pass the time of some people in China), analysis after the fact has limited meaning.
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