Chess and life

Rebecca Thomas comments:

All that said, it seems correct to say that a more emotional, less rational approach to the game is losing a lot of ground, and there is something sad about that. On the other hand, we’re talking about a game. The stated goal is to win the game while playing within the rules. (There are many unstated goals, of course – spending time with an opponent, exercising the brain on a hard problem, etc.) I think the conclusion is that the stated goal of chess is one that computers are well equipped to achieve, and in fact better equipped than humans. That doesn’t particularly bother me, perhaps exactly because of the style of chess computers play. Being good at that is something like being good at multiplying very large numbers, another task at which computers outshine humans.

On the one hand, Rebecca argues that Chess is unlike life because it is a rational game. But it is much harder to rationalize and solve than a game like checkers, which computers have already solved. There are computer checkers games that are unbeatable. That hasn’t happened for Chess yet, though it might.

But what about a game like jeopardy? That is much more “life like” and that is the game IBM has currently set its sights on. The question is: if we automate checkers, then chess, then jeopardy, at what point does “life” not become subject to automation?

We can of course rationalize and justify each one of these advances in isolation. But the overall effect is that we humans are living in a world of increasingly rationalized systems in which our values will change just as our valuation of chess moves has changed. This will change our planet and our lives in the direction of the beauty of reason, and away from the beauty of chance, adventure, and risk. I find this undeniable. The next question: so what?