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Jul-30-04
 | | ray keene: all discord harmony not understood
all partial evil universal good
alexander pope |
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Jul-30-04
 | | cu8sfan: Speaking of nature, god and chess let's hear physicist and Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman: "We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes "the world" is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics..." |
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Jul-30-04
 | | IMlday: Back in the late 17th century Liebniz was attempting to prove Gods existence
using binary mathematics. He was figuring if he added up all the small things that eventually he would have 'everything'. But he wasn't getting very far because he was started with 0 and perambulating up to 63 binary triplets. Then, the pupil being ready the teacher arrived in the forms of a lot of papers given to him by a Father Bouvet, a Jesuit missionary back from China who had collected a file on what was quaintly called The School of Symbols and Numbers. This uses binary logic and principles of alternation but the bits are yin units and yang units. So the universe was seen as a whole divided into various patterns of primal forces yin and yang. Liebniz had his Eureka! moment, substituted the sequence 1-64
(ie 2^6) for 0-63 and calculus fell into his lap. This breakthrough was shared with and verified by Newton. Binary mathematics took a great leap forward. Eventually it produced the practical application of computers, but in his original book on 'calculus' Liebniz had creditted Fu Hsi, already dead three thousand years, with the basic understanding. Then it was discovered that the dna code itself was a reflection of the 64 possible situations after a three-dimensional (2^6) division of 'positive' and 'negative'. This was old stuff. Circa 1000 AD Chinese mandalas showed a chess board with the 2^6 64 squares of the chess board labelled with the 64 possible binary triplet arrangements, termed hexagrams. For a human it is as if one were a chess piece moving through a finite field composed of the 64 possible situations.
For all its 'conflict', chess is very harmonious in terms of yang and yin, white and black. The starting position,
symetrical, obviously a draw except for the 4th dimensial factor, that White moves first. Time and initiative activate the position and a multitude of possibilities result.
Such basically is life. Shah mat, but the King never dies, the pieces reset for the next game, long live the King.
Perfectly played chess between humans will be drawn. Or someone will pooch and Fritz show where.
Between humans chess is a psychological struggle. Getting a situation where one's opponent will err is like a sumo wrestler intuiting his opponents weakness of mass momentum impulse to activity. We're carbon-based life forms; fritz, silicon based and calculating in binary
can always show the 'perfect draw' and 'refutation of seeking imbalance'. "Turn off your targetting computer, Luke. Use The Force." there's that 'leap of faith'! Not a dry mechanical calculation of combination but an intuitive, human inspiration and practical assessment: this move should work in this situation against this opponent. |
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Jul-30-04
| | cu8sfan: One thing about math and god: Analyze the series
1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 ...
If you calculate like this:
1 (-1+1) (-1+1) (-1+1) ...
you'll see that the terms between the () all equal 0 and you're left with the first 1. So this sequence equals 1. Now calculate like this:
(1-1) + (1-1) + (1-1) + ...
The terms between the () again all equal 0 and you're left with nothing. So this sequence equals 0. This is no joke. This really startled early mathematicians and they thought they had found a proof of god: The creation out of nothing, 0 = 1. Now we know that this sequence just doesn't converge and it has two cluster points, 1 and 0. |
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Jul-30-04
| | ray keene: <imlday> and all others participating in this interesting debate 1 leibniz hit on 64
2 64 squares on a chessboard
3 have you heard of kowa seki?
4 in dantes paradiso do you know the answer to the question posed-how many angels are there in heaven? for angels dante used the word intelligenza by the way! it is a pleasure to converse with so many highly intelligent and knowledgeable thinkers! |
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| Jul-31-04 | | CrackerSmack: What did Socrates mean Ray when he said "I know nothing" |
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Jul-31-04
| | ray keene: <crackersmack> re socrates i think there are two possibilities
1 all life is an illusion therefore we can never know anything-even the analysis of fritz may be included in this illusion
2 it may have been literal-in the sense that all knowledge is intelligent guesswork - all history is a simplification written by the winners-and most world geography was simply beyond their horizon.the mechanisms for knowing anything for sure did not exist then-now we have computers and some areas of human knowledge -such as chess analysis -are yielding to absolute incontrovertible verification. meanwhile a thought for our dutch speakers
what is the dutch word for speech/language/word?
what is the dutch word for number/calculation/counting? i have a theory based on linguistics but i would like to see some responses before i deliver it. |
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| Jul-31-04 | | PeterFletcher: If philosophers played chess, I would say Kant would kick everyone's butt (other philosophers). The guy sat around and thought and thought... The worst loser would be Sartre. He would probably smash the board on his opponents head and walk out to smoke. Kierkegaard would become depressed after losing a game and go home to cry all night... The rest of the other philosophers, there would debate as to the real purpose of chess, and nobody would be any good at actually playing the game... (Ha! Ha!) |
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| Jul-31-04 | | acirce: Berkeley would close his eyes and make the chessboard go away if he were about to lose. |
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| Jul-31-04 | | Anubis33: GM Keene wrote, "i am going to make a startling analogy now-maybe its going too far but it is what i feel:for me chess is a symbol of the universe and its infinite powers-extent and laws. the symbolism is on many levels.destruction-creation-finishing-starting again-balance-harmony-black-white-opposites and reconciliation.meditation and also risk and mystery." These excellent remarks and IM Day's interesting post re Liebniz, Newton, and Chinese mandalas (and yes, the "I Ching" is based on an 8 X 8 grid), reminded me of the "higher consciousness" elements of the Royal Game. Excuse the following lengthy metaphysical ramble... To wit, chess is perhaps the ultimate game of pure dualism. Not "dualism" as in "duals", but as in duality. Eastern spiritual realization (Taoism, Zen, etc.) in particular is often equated with "non-dualism", because it's usually based on the idea that reality is one seamless whole, and that the very principle of consciousness itself is not separate from that. But what is often not addressed is the significance of dualism as the very "display" of the universe that generates the energy and passion of life. That is, though "non-dualism" is equated with enlightenment, "dualism" itself contains the essence of our lessons as humans and is in part why we're so drawn to contrasts between the "light" and the "dark", across whatever spectrum of life. In my own view of things, chess from the metaphysical perspective is an ancient cypher or a sort of legominism wherein the keys to a kind of psychological or even spiritual awakening can be found. It is essentially a form of spiritual alchemy -- the black/white duality of the checkered battlefield creates the conditions for extreme ego-polarization (and great chess players are fiercely competitive), that in turn has the potential to be transcended when utilized much like a Zen koan. The Zen koan posed by chess is not the typical Vedantic or Zen koan of "Who am I?", but more the koan "Who are you"?, or "What is another?" Chess contains within it the very cycles of ego birth, development, consolidation, strengthening, and dissolution (or integration). (Continued next post...) |
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| Jul-31-04 | | Anubis33: Chess is also largely a game of memory -- but memory used in the service of creative problem solving. This problem solving is finally concerned with validating dualism via psychological and mathematical warfare -- "I lose, therefore I exist as distinct from the other", or "I win, therefore I exist as distinct from the other." Either way, the ego is clearly reinforced in its drive to remain differentiated and distinct. And yet, chess also abounds in sacred geometry -- the very primal forms that are the archetypes of the universe, the "thoughts of God", if you will. This makes it (potentially) a form of what Gurdjieff called "Objective Art", those creations that have the capacity to evoke certain Higher Emotional states much like music or architecture or love (with a nod to Siegbert Tarrasch who in this light once remarked on his sympathy for those who'd never known chess). The geometry of chess is even linked to one of the most lingering ancient mysteries on Earth, the Giza plateau in Egypt. In fact, the entire plateau is built proportionate to a 64 square grid (see Edward Furlong's "The Key to the Temple" for more on that), with the three pyramids fitting in neatly on particular squares. This is significant because of the sacred geometry employed on many ancient sites, a sacred geometry that has been lost as a spiritual device in modern times. To the ancients, art, architecture, science, religion, etc., were all highly interactive and often encoded into one particular architectural body. Chess, although having undergone changes in its rules over the centuries, is still the essence of a Hindu Yantra, or a Tantric Buddhist Mandala, or any device that when used with consciousness has the capacity of evoke shifts in awareness that can transcend the process of mechanical thought (viz., computer-like brute force calculation) and yield openings to the inherent sanctity of the archetypal structure of the universe (via human intuitive insight). To use chess as a meditation on the relationship between dry calculation and intuitive consciousness, is perhaps to go beyond mere winning or losing. That alone is a good metaphor for spiritual realization... |
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Jul-31-04
| | ray keene: <anubis 33> re art and reverting to my qotation from alexander pope- all nature is but art unknown to thee
all chance direction which thou canst not see
all discord harmony not understood
al partial evil universal good
and spite of pride, in erring reasons spite,
one truth is clear-whatever is is right
which brings us straight back to leibnitz parodied as dr pangloss in voltaires candide. |
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| Jul-31-04 | | refutor: <<imlday>"Turn off your targetting computer, Luke. Use The Force.">
that's my favorite part of Star Wars...luke, you can see better with your eyes than with that damn targetting computer...i can't wait for the end of episode 3 where technology goes back 10,000 years to make the movies fit :) |
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| Jul-31-04 | | Lawrence: I still say that Ray Keene is a mystic and he should give us permission to call him <Mystic Spark>. Does anyone agree? Also, nice, because it sounds a lot like "Mr. Spock." http://www.cs.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/nph-sp...
Click on the image. |
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Jul-31-04
| | ray keene: <lawrence> spok was of course my favourite character-i quote him at some length in my book on the first karpov-kasparov match.i wd prefer to use my real name but i will answer to alternatives if so desired. |
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Aug-01-04
 | | vonKrolock: i will follow the quest for the best Chess books... i'm remembering that Saturday when <ray keene> appeared here - the book i mentioned then was here near the pc - it arrived btw in my hands somewhere in the eighties, when the database was the series of Informants and a criterious assemblage of ancient, classic & modern material was highly desirable - i was still in the mood described in my longer kibitz registered in Taimanov vs Fischer, 1960 and this book have a whole chapter on MT... |
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| Aug-01-04 | | mack: Haha, wondeful, amidst all this Mr. Keene starts talking about Mr. Spock! Okay, now that we're tossing big ideas about, here's something I've been thinking about - does chess actually exist? No, really. If, for example, two people play a game, but they set the board up the wrong way round (i.e. with white square in the corner), is it still chess? If the king and queen are the wrong way round, is it still chess? What is chess? How do we know we're playing chess? |
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Aug-01-04
| | ray keene: <mack> yes chess has many variants which have been widely played which differ fron chess as we play it but are still recognisably chess
for example
shatranj as played by as suli and analysed in the constantinople manuscripts
shogi
xiang qi
korean chess
fischer/shuffle chess/varied baseline chess/fischerrrandom
various types of fairy chess
the definitions are very broad including spockian 3 dimensional chess which i never cd get my head round! |
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| Aug-01-04 | | mack: Oh yes, of course there are hundreds of variants - but I'm just saying that chess has lent itself to so many different ways of being played as well - correspondence, blindfold, etc. - that it's more of a 'concept'. If Kramnik and Anand played a game with the board the wrong way round, and the didn't say anything, would it be a legitimate chess game? By the way, I don't think Capt. Kirk ever beat Spock - they played three times I believe. |
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| Aug-01-04 | | OneBadDog: Kirk DID beat Spock at Chess-I'll have to do some reasearch in order to find the exact episode(s). |
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| Aug-01-04 | | acirce: I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstra... clarifies much of that AND does it with the help of said Kirk - what are the odds? <An abstract structure is a set of rules, properties and relationships that is defined independently of any physical objects.>
<The king is not defined as a tall piece with a small cross on top, because it could be represented instead by the letter K, a computer icon, or a small figurine of Captain Kirk.> |
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| Aug-01-04 | | mack: Link of the day. |
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Aug-01-04
 | | Benzol: <OneBadDog> <mack>
Star Trek episode 'Where No Man Has Gone Before'. The second pilot I believe.
Kirk, and Spock are playing just before the Enterprise encounters the enery barrier at edge of our galaxy. The game is also dicussed with Gary Mitchell in a turbo lift. Not long after this Mitchell ends up god-like with silver eyes and super powers. |
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| Aug-01-04 | | OneBadDog: This was one the the best Classic Trek episodes. |
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| Aug-02-04 | | CrackerSmack: Surely we can dismiss the concept of life being an illusion? if one were to believe such notions, that would be bordering on some morbid metapysical kafkaesque nightmare feedback loop. |
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