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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

#51

Post by coldtea »

dkarras wrote: post #35
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.

There's no actual gravity rules in Tetris. Pieces move downwards, but that's about it.

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

#52

Post by rdlw »

coldtea wrote: post #51
dkarras wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no actual gravity rules in Tetris. Pieces move downwards, but that's about it.

They move faster at higher levels, and the exact speeds and line clear requirements are arbitrary.

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

#53

Post by coldtea »

grawprog wrote: post #45
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 Shogi, Checkers, or Stratego weren't human games I wouldn't be surprised to learn them from aliens. Why do all theories about aliens start with the implication that they're similar enough that they developed the way we did, they think like we do, have similar senses, brain structure and locomotion. Any aliens that have evolved to any kind of level of intelligence would have done so under the conditions specific t…

>Why do all theories about aliens start with the implication that they're similar enough that they developed the way we did, they think like we do, have similar senses, brain structure and locomotion

For the same reason the laws of nature are the same around the universe.

Logic is not really that negotiatable, so thinking creatures will end up with the same kind of logic as us, even if they look differently. All forms of life are also not equally good at developing thinking and tools, so that's another pressure to converge to something similar-ish and e.g. not an underwater fish-like creature or some thing without a means to grab stuff and manipulate it (even if it's not opposable thumbs).

>Humans have problems anthropomorphizing animals as it is

I don't think anthropomorphizing is really a problem, or unscientific. In fact "anthropomorphizing" as a bad thing is probably based on religious inspired dichotomy between the man and the animals, where man is basically just another animal for 99% of intents and purposes.

There's a bad form of anthropomorphizing animals (the Disney or pet owners way, which puts into animals exactly the human characteristics they lack more or don't have at all), but that aside, we share all kinds of insticts, physiology, deep brain structures, etc with animals.

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

#54

Post by andai »

Tomte wrote: post #22
CydeWeys wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

It's an argument against the "naturalness" or inevitability of the discovery. It may be wrong, but "aliens" is not a response to it.

If I'm understanding correctly, the sticking point here (and in most of the thread) is people arguing about different things. Some people are saying the discovery of Go is inevitable (certain?), some are saying it's likely (but not inevitable), some are saying it's possible (but not likely).

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

#55

Post by cylon13 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #29
GrumpyNl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That implies that they think and behave like us.

Does it? A lot of concepts in board games are pretty natural results of universal mathematics. There's only three regular polygons that will tesselate a board (we have plenty of board games that use all three of them), and there's only three dimensions that games can work in (and we have plenty of games of all three types; Candyland, for instance, is played along a 1D path, and the first player to reach the end wins)…

You're assuming a lot about what it means to be an intelligence. It's not the concept of a square that will potentially be missing from an alien lifeform. It's the complex circuitry involved in enjoying board games in the first place. One can imagine an intelligent lifeform evolving differently than us in such a way where the adaptation that makes games fun wasn't required.

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

CydeWeys wrote: post #46
grawprog wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If Shogi, Checkers, or Stratego weren't human games I wouldn't be surprised to learn them from aliens. Why do all theories about aliens start with the implication that they're similar enough that they developed the way we did, they think like we do, have similar senses, brain structure and locomotion. Any aliens that have evolved to any kind of level of intelligence would have done so under the conditions specific t…

Why are people so quick to assume that every single other alien species would be completely unfathomable to us? We all share the same physics, chemistry, and mathematics of our common universe. For example, there's only three dimensions, and there's only three regular polygons that can tessellate a grid. Unless you're going to posit that there's no alien species whatsoever that will even come up with the concept of a…

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by coldtea »

rdlw wrote: post #52
coldtea wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no actual gravity rules in Tetris. Pieces move downwards, but that's about it.

They move faster at higher levels, and the exact speeds and line clear requirements are arbitrary.

>They move faster at higher levels

Which proves it's not gravity -- gravity would move the same speed always (assuming a vacuum game stage), or would move proportionally to air resistance (so based on shape), etc.

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

#58

Post by CydeWeys »

rdlw wrote: post #52
coldtea wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no actual gravity rules in Tetris. Pieces move downwards, but that's about it.

They move faster at higher levels, and the exact speeds and line clear requirements are arbitrary.

None of this is that important to the overall game, though. You can turn Tetris into a turn-based puzzle game where you have an unlimited amount of time to place each next piece, it just has to obey the same rules as having overhead clearance on it, and it's still the same game. This is effectively the game that AI players are playing anyway, since they think faster than the pieces fall and thus time is not a constraint for them.

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

#59

Post by CydeWeys »

cylon13 wrote: post #55
CydeWeys wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? A lot of concepts in board games are pretty natural results of universal mathematics. There's only three regular polygons that will tesselate a board (we have plenty of board games that use all three of them), and there's only three dimensions that games can work in (and we have plenty of games of all three types; Candyland, for instance, is played along a 1D path, and the first player to reach the end wins)…

You're assuming a lot about what it means to be an intelligence. It's not the concept of a square that will potentially be missing from an alien lifeform. It's the complex circuitry involved in enjoying board games in the first place. One can imagine an intelligent lifeform evolving differently than us in such a way where the adaptation that makes games fun wasn't required.

Yes, one can imagine some aliens evolving differently such that they don't enjoy games, but all of them?
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