The Magical Cue Stick (on the chess victory of DEEP BLUE over Kasparov) by Jim Etchison

With the recent chess victory of Deep Blue, a highly specialized, multi-million dollar computer, over Grand Master Kasparov, a man, I had a conversation with my friends Lori and Ray. Ray said, "All of this.... To beat a simple human." Ray's statement implies, of course, that humans are not simple. Our minds are so incredibly complicated that it takes something equivalent to a Cray computer just to beat us in chess. And this is while the human chess player's mind is also regulating temperature, emotions, urges, hungers, sensations, sounds, etc. -- things the computer doesn't deal with. In addition, a human can muse over the poetry of the game. I've been a chess player most of my life, and there is simply no more fascinating and mysterious game on earth. In fact, for decades it's been a common matter of speculation among futurists and philosophers to ask "When, if ever, will a computer beat the human Grand Champion at chess?" Well that time came sooner than most of them speculated. The reason philosophers ask this question is because the perfect chess game probably one of the highest intellectual accomplishments for humans. It ranks right up there with a Van Gogh painting or an aria sung by Kiri Tikanewa. And to me, that a mere computer, whose thoughts are reduced to 1's and zeroes, can beat Kasparov, who is an artist in my estimation, is a sad sad thing. Yet, at the same time, it's a good thing. It's a strange paradox for me. The reason this is also a good thing is because I've finally hit upon a definition of God that seems to be working for me: God is all that I don't understand. And even though God is all that I don't understand, I am compelled to know who God is. Therefore, in seeking to understand God, I destroy God, because if I understand something, it can no longer be God. So as man makes major strides in understanding, we increase our knowledge, and make smaller the places where God might be hiding. Lori did not agree that this chess defeat was any great defeat for mankind. I had tried to convince her that an artful chess game was one of the mysteries of life, and by reducing it to binary computations, that mystery seemed to me to be totally unraveled. Avid chess players agreed with me, but Lori was not a chess player. She posited that we might be able to find God in what we understand and that my sadness in a computer defeating Kasparov might be misguided. I don't think it is. I hope God is hiding somewhere. And if DEEP BLUE wins, he's not hiding in man's ability to play chess. If eventually we understand everything and realize that God is not hiding under a rock somewhere, then I think it would be good for us to know this. If we eventually come across God in our endeavors, it's my opinion we won't understand what we have found. The good news is this: where science is really studying the hard stuff (quantum mechanics comes to mind) ... we tend to create three questions for every question we answer. So in many ways, the space where God could be hiding gets bigger! As we unraveled the mystery of the atom, we created the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle and a myriad of other mysteries. Quarks and charms do things that don't make any sense ... as we attempt to make the list of questions shorter ... it inevitably gets longer. So even though I think we should kick ass trying to understand it all ... I secretly hope that we never do. GO KASPAROV!!!!!!!!!! With the recent chess victory of Deep Blue (a computer) over Kasparov (the best chess player in the world), I went on a hike in the San Gabriel mountains. While winding among the oaks, I also mused over a recent conversation with my friend Lori who did not agree that this chess defeat was any great defeat for mankind. I had tried to convince her that an artful chess game was one of the mysteries of life, and by reducing it to binary computations, that mystery seemed to me to be totally unraveled.. Avid chess players agreed with me, but Lori was no chess player. She posited that we might be able to find God in what we understand and that my sadness in a computer defeating Kasparov might be misguided. I don't think it is. To me, chess is as much an art as poetry. Imagine that a new Poet Laureate was appointed ... a well-published poet who lived in seclusion. Then imagine that the Poet Laureat was later discovered to be a computer. How would we feel if the best poetry in the land did not come from the human soul, but was a construct of a few poetry professors who knew how to pull people's strings through witty turns of phrase. Even people who don't like poetry can understand the disappointment people might feel. But the bigger question of my posting was of my theory that God is "All that I don't understand." Again ... I still stand behind those words. For me (and others, I assume), God is what we put faith in (again, faith is grounded in ignorance), God is who we place hope in (we pray to God for a raise, but we don't pray to our bosses for a raise), and God is what we FEAR. We fear what we don't understand. Primitive tribes think that volcanoes are a god. They threw proverbial virgins into their mouths. (Would that I held such powers.) But as Western Civilization grew, and the word was spread that volcanoes were actually fissures in the Earth's crust where the pressurized magma within the earth was released, people generally stopped thinking that volcanoes were gods. Understanding ended the ignorance. So we don't worship volcanoes anymore ... instead we find Godhood in the other things we don't understand. What I'm purporting is that once we understand those other things ... they lose their god-like proportions. Again ... let's take quantum physics. Right now, scientists are gaining a pretty good understanding of atomic principles. Everything can be reduced to rows of particles that are moving and colliding. It was expressed poetically by Piet Hein as follows: Nature, it seems, is the popular name For milliards and milliards and milliards Of particles playing their infinite game Of billiards and billiards and billiards. Pretty good poem! It becomes difficult to worship nature once you understand it. EXCEPT ... by increasing our understanding of it ... we also create more questions. Imagining all existence as a bunch of atoms bouncing around like billiard balls on a vast billiard table ... the toughest question for scientists (and for me) is "Who broke?" What STARTED all this movement? It requires impetus to start movement. The answer to this question is "GOD." It is GOD because it answers a question we don't understand. You could then define God as a magical cue stick (undoubtedly held by Mary H.) ... so the faithful have a means with which to define what they do not understand. God is the thing that started the movement. But ... if one day science figures out what started the initial impetus that set the atoms in motion. God will no longer be necessary to hold the magical cue stick. And the same goes for animism. On my hike today, I spotted a grey fox (a rare sight in the Los Angeles mountains!). He ran up the trail toward me ... saw me, then stopped. He looked for a few seconds. Then turned and ran back. At the point where the trail turned, he stopped and watched me for a few seconds longer ... then disappeared. There is so much that is mystical about a fox. Several years ago, I wrote a poem that expresses this: Snake Eaters I wonder: when the rain will soak the two brown owls -- stepping high like sentinals across my lawn. who lured them here from lair in tree by brook. what silent cadence tip-a-taps thier beat of airy steps, where the tiny hollow bones of owls will one day bake beneath the gentle sun. why yellow eyes can tell of things that only owls will know. They turn and see my face behind the droplets in the glass, blink once each, and stand windblown in the cleansing rain. So there are poetic things about owls (or foxes) that point to a God ... mysterious things I don't understand. But I don't believe that an owl is a god. Nor do I believe they are even "wise" ... LOL Am I making this clear? Or am I just rambling? Lori said she doesn't understand truck engines or radios. But surely she doesn't think they are gods. That's because she knows enough to know that they are not magical. BUT ... she did attach mystical attributes to natalie merchant's voice singing Carnival and the wind in her hair driving across the plains states. I agree! Those are places where God could be hiding. But if we could scientifically recreate those things ... I'm not sure I would see them the same way. Lori asked: >If Kasparov loses, does his genius become pedestrian? Not really ... but it becomes an imitable thing. Lori wrote: >Maybe, maybe not. Who's to say God doesn't live in a dacha inside our >souls/spirits/solar plexuses/whatever? In which case, external searches won't >do you a bit of good. So stop searching? As long as a lack of understand ing is there ... we should seek to understand it. Otherwise we are possibly putting hope in something that doesn't exist. >Maybe someday science can duplicate these things. But wouldn't >that, too, be a testimony to human ability, just as Kasparov is a testament >to human ability? It would be a paradoxical Tower of Babel. On one hand, I believe we should try to duplicate these things ... and in doing so, remove the mystery. On the other hand ... the terrible thing about removing mystery is that there is no mystery left when you are done. If God exists ... there will always be mystery. Jim "I promise I didn't start the fire in Alexandria" Etchison ~ Copyright 1998, Jim Etchison