tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143976828657199217.post8720632344776641092..comments2023-05-27T08:37:06.936-07:00Comments on No Longer Reading: Chess, Chaos, and CreationNo Longer Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12716199759491512542noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143976828657199217.post-54288796507309143042021-08-22T23:46:25.564-07:002021-08-22T23:46:25.564-07:00Absolutely.
What you find interesting is when th...Absolutely. <br /><br />What you find interesting is when the 'model' breaks down! <br /><br />The thing about chess is that it apparently used to be far more creative than it is now. Much as the early IQ tests were far better at measuring 'g' than IQ tests now are. <br /><br />The element of thinking in action used to be greater in both cases, and the specific application from a repertoire of pre-learned routines and techniques was less. More analytic and less scholarly, in the past. <br /><br />I suppose the creativity in chess was in devising new strategies, new sets of moves, new ways of thinking about the game. <br /><br />Yet, because chess is a closed system, it eventually reached the point when computers became better at the game than grand masters. <br /><br />In a deep sense, top level chess is now obsolete; in a similar sense that classical music (in the Western Tradition) is a finished, completed art form. First rate creative work is no longer possible. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143976828657199217.post-13702555680664528702021-08-22T18:44:01.032-07:002021-08-22T18:44:01.032-07:00"But in reality, living and conscious beings ..."But in reality, living and conscious beings (with capability of creativity) are what they are - and there is no reason that the essence of creativity can be captured when reducing them to abstract systems."<br /><br />I agree. A metaphor using a closed system cannot express creativity absolute, but I find that if the limitations of the analogy are accepted, then it can be helpful towards thinking.<br /><br />What made this metaphor work for me was that even though in an absolute sense chess is a closed system, in practice, players frequently describe their experience of playing games or going over the games of others in terms of creativity. <br /><br />Somewhat like how a novel can be conceptualized as a sequence of words that might in principal be randomly generated. As in Borges's story "The Library of Babel." The intentional construction of the novel is what makes it meaningful. <br /><br />Similarly, a move in chess is is just an abstract member of a set of possibilities until a player finds the move in a game and plays it, when it gains significance from then intentional choice.<br /><br />It is the experience of conscious beings playing chess (as well as inventing the rules) where the creativity takes place, but not in the game conceptualized as an abstract system. No Longer Readinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12716199759491512542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143976828657199217.post-8188455296142306872021-08-22T07:11:10.398-07:002021-08-22T07:11:10.398-07:00I think a deep problem is introduced by using a ga...I think a deep problem is introduced by using a game like chess as a metaphor for life and creativity. Then you find that there is really no need for creativity since the game can be won by sheer computation (plus speed). It is a closed system, and there is no space for the genuinely creative - except insofar as the game is not actually being played by rules (but instead by some kind of gestalt/ holistic imagination).<br /><br />If, then, you try to make the closed-system game have space for creativity by removing the rules - then you do indeed get chaos. <br /><br />So you get the common (Dungeons and Dragons type) opposition of law and chaos. <br /><br />But in reality, living and conscious beings (with capability of creativity) are what they are - and there is no reason that the essence of creativity can be captured when reducing them to abstract systems. <br /><br />This was, for me, a trap I was stuck in for a log time in trying to understand creativity - the metaphors I was using (unwittingly) excluded everything but direct linear causality or pure randomness - neither of which is creativity. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143976828657199217.post-65200627073573569662021-08-20T13:46:58.602-07:002021-08-20T13:46:58.602-07:00I like this analogy very much, and I agree with it...I like this analogy very much, and I agree with its content as well. Francis Bergerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11063224017320651978noreply@blogger.com