Edward Lasker's Famous Go Quote

[entropi]

I think we should not take the statement about the other intelligent life forms too literally.

My impression is that what Lasker means relates more to a once popular philosophical discussion, which can be roughly formulated as follows:

Are the rules of logic universal or human-generated?

Is the statement a=a true because we define the logic and math rules for modelling the world, or is it the absolute truth? In other words, would other intelligent life forms also define the same rule a=a for modelling their environment or would they come up with different rule sets but still achieve similar goals to what we have achieved?

Given the task "design a complex board game", it is not at all likely that chess would be an "obvious" solution. The rules feel like to be artifically designed in order to make it more complex. However Go rules are so simple that feels like the basic logical axioms like a=a. It gives a much more natural feeling.

I think that is what Lasker meant. He used aliens only as a kind of metaphore.

[Chew Terr]

Little do we know, aliens only play chutes and ladders and agricola.

[nagano]

I think one assumption taken for granted is that intelligent life elsewhere would have an interest in games. It seems likely, given that most of the relatively intelligent animals on Earth seem to like games (parrots, dogs, dolphins...), but I don't know if we can take it as a given.

If aliens have an intelligence on par with humans, even if it's a very different way of thinking, they'd certainly understand go. The mathematical description can be made very simple and elegant. Whether they'd independently discover it, the way we'd assume they'd independently discover other math concepts like prime numbers is a harder question. Go, for instance, doesn't seem to have been independently discovered by other ancient humans (e.g. we don't find some go-like game being played by Aztecs or Celts or something).

If it was really that universal, I'd expect it to crop up more than once on Earth. Other cultural concepts (e.g. Pyramids, certain paleolithic technologies, some attributes of language, etc.) have shown up more than once. Likewise, evolution has reproduced certain universal features more than once (things like flight have evolved multiple times independently).

It is important to note that Hex, which shares several rules in common with go, was invented twice independently, by Piet Hine in 1942 and then John Nash in 1947. I think the reason that Go was not invented independently by different ancient cultures is that they were not approaching game design in a systematic way. That is really a more modern innovation, beginning in the 19th and 20th centuries. And the reason it was not reinvented then was that anyone who studied game design intensively likely knew about Go by then. As far as the aliens are concerned, I think the implication was that if they studied game design, that Go is simple enough that they would likely invent something comparable.

[John Fairbairn]

It is important to note that Hex, which shares several rules in common with go, was invented twice independently,

Taking this as a starting point rather than replying to it, hex is an example of why a lot of the discussion about go rules misses the mark. Some people seem to have a fixation about elegance and simple rules. I presume hex fans fit into that category but next to nobody plays it. If that's all go was about, I suspect just as few would play it.

Games that appeal to large numbers seem to have some extra, more "human" dimension. I can't remember the details, but the history of the go (Castle games and so on) appealed to me. Many people mention the aesthetic aspect of the equipment. I imagine the exotic East might be a factor for many. Rules were a minor issue. In that light, it's also no surprise chess has so many adherents despite clunky rules.

Nobody knows what impelled people to "invent" chess and go, but it seems unlikely it was an abstract exercise in elegance, like hex. It was more likely there was a functional element - e.g. representation of armies in chess, divination in go. If so, it was the function that was important, not elegance.

In fact, elegance is a complete red herring and debates on suicide or the like are just purple sprats.

In a series I watched last night there was the opposite extreme. War-gaming, which I gather is a lot more popular than hex. With the uses of rulers, dice and tables this was clearly at the other baroque end of the scale from elegance, but it was easy to see the appeal of all those "toy" soldiers, and the history - the "human" element again.

I'd therefore expect super-intelligent aliens to see through the charade of elegance and to judge a game from earth more on the functions it serves and the pleasure it gives to the many.

[Sevis]

I certainly consider it very likely that any alternative life forms would find a game with the following three rules, which, for me, describe go sufficiently accurately:
1. Adjacent pieces are considered one entity (chain).
2. If a chain has no empty adjacent intersections (places to put pieces), it is removed.
3. The one to have more pieces on the board at the end of the game wins.

If the game is ever come across by any being studying game theory, they are likely to either immediately realise the depth, or expect to be able to solve it fairly soon. When that case, it's only a matter of time until it becomes a widespread game or puzzle.

Other rules, such as prohibition of suicide, ko and superko, handicap and komi are likely to come fairly soon. Board layout and size does not, to me, define go: while I do mean 2D squares by default, the mechanics hardly change when such things are modified (although it will have a giant effect on strategy, of course).

[W4yneb0t]

I certainly consider it very likely that any alternative life forms would find a game with the following three rules, which, for me, describe go sufficiently accurately:
1. Adjacent pieces are considered one entity (chain).
2. If a chain has no empty adjacent intersections (places to put pieces), it is removed.
3. The one to have more pieces on the board at the end of the game wins.

You are able to describe the rules so quickly only because many of the concepts are already known to most humans. In the case of aliens, you can't expect them to use a language in which words like "entity" or "adjacent intersection" are defined like they are in English. Most humans understand those things without further explanation, but if you tried to define the rules mathematically with perfect precision, you'd find the difference to Chess to be much smaller. A rough approximation would be programming a simple interface that allows you to play Go or Chess (such that the interface can keep track of "chains", detect captures, count the score and whatever else is needed), while a better approximation is making such an interface without relying on anything human-made (like an existing programming language).

What makes Go appealing to us humans is exactly this difference: In Chess, the rules are not intuitive, so explaining them wouldn't be easier than programming them. With Go on the other hand, we have intuitive notions which help us. The same can probably be said for the playing strategy, but you've probably heard that before - "Go is strategy and Chess is tactics", or something like that. You can't expect aliens to have an intuition similar to ours, so they might not find the rules simple or the strategy deep.

I'm probably making wild unsupported claims here, but I like using programs and computers as an example of an intelligence that doesn't resemble a human one. Also, chess is probably a bad example as it is also human-made, so there might be games that appear even more "baroque" to us, yet simple to aliens.

[hyperpape]

If the aliens are intelligent and scientifically sophisticated, they'll understand axes in a two-dimensional space. It would be pretty surprising if they didn't know about perpendicular axes.

[Sevis]

You are able to describe the rules so quickly only because many of the concepts are already known to most humans. In the case of aliens, you can't expect them to use a language in which words like "entity" or "adjacent intersection" are defined like they are in English. Most humans understand those things without further explanation, but if you tried to define the rules mathematically with perfect precision, you'd find the difference to Chess to be much smaller. A rough approximation would be programming a simple interface that allows you to play Go or Chess (such that the interface can keep track of "chains", detect captures, count the score and whatever else is needed), while a better approximation is making such an interface without relying on anything human-made (like an existing programming language).

What makes Go appealing to us humans is exactly this difference: In Chess, the rules are not intuitive, so explaining them wouldn't be easier than programming them. With Go on the other hand, we have intuitive notions which help us. The same can probably be said for the playing strategy, but you've probably heard that before - "Go is strategy and Chess is tactics", or something like that. You can't expect aliens to have an intuition similar to ours, so they might not find the rules simple or the strategy deep.

I'm probably making wild unsupported claims here, but I like using programs and computers as an example of an intelligence that doesn't resemble a human one. Also, chess is probably a bad example as it is also human-made, so there might be games that appear even more "baroque" to us, yet simple to aliens.

Actually, the reason I can describe the rules so easily is because I recently programmed a go interface. Defining `entity', `intersection', and `adjacent' is a trivial matter; `entity' has already been defined by the English language, and any other language is likely to have a similar concept because it is universal. Meanwhile, the other two words make perfect sense as soon as you make a goban (shape and dimensions don't particularly matter). They will indeed be different for different kinds of boards, but this changes strategy, not mechanics.

I haven't programmed a chess interface yet, but I can say with a good deal of certainty that programming rules for chess would be far harder, and the difference even greater (that the pieces would be implemented differently is obvious; but I would design the board in a completely different manner, too, with far more bookkeeping to be done).

As for games that appear baroque to us and simple to aliens: I wouldn't be surprised if there was a race out there that intuitively `got' the Game of Life. It's another one of those things that we can be fairly sure aliens would have come across, again due to its beauty and simplicity.