Life is a gift.  Like any gift, we did not choose it, nor ask for it. And like any gift, we may not appreciate it. We were all born alone into this world, and we
will all die as individuals. We did not enter this world from the womb knowing what we were getting into, and even if we had a twin, we enter the world together only physically.  So we are born truly alone, without our choosing life, and without our choosing our race, gender, country, physical defects, intelligence, parents, or the era.  We could have been born male in Africa during prehistory, or Moorish female on the Iberian Peninsula during the Crusades, or a deformed female into a rich household in the 18th century Russia, or a mentally retarded Chinese male during the 1950's.  There is an infinite variety of combinations of life we could have been given, without our choosing them.  And let's not forget the lesser animals; they are born in such combination and variety as we are, either as a butterfly in 1400's Australia, or a lapdog in 1930 Germany, or a prehistoric whale or dinosaur.   So, life is a gift where our circumstances are chosen for us, many of which are impossible to escape.  And when and where we exit life is also, often not of our choice. And we know not where we exit to, and although we may die at the same moment as someone else, in full cognizance of each other's fate, the moment right before we lose consciousness we do not know if they will come with us.
We must accept that they will not, that we will exit separately.  Our lives may end by disease, accident, violence, suicide, or old age.  This manifesto is about what happens in between our entry and exit.

 

Do we have free will?  Or are we complex automata? It is often taken for granted that humans have free will, that we have the ability to absorb information, process it, and make a decision that is truly our own.  However, almost nothing is known, even now, about how decisions are actually made in the brain. We know the brain has millions of receptors which "fire" electrically when we think about this or that.  Most of the existing knowledge on the subject of brain chemistry and brain function compares the brain to a supercomputer.  It has electrical impulses, synapses "firing" and connections being open/closed much like the logic gates in transistors, which are elementary circuits in computers. Perhaps "thinking" is nothing more than billions or binary gates opening and closing, and our "output" consists of a thought or idea.  Viewing it this way, the only way we could even appear to have  "free will" would be for a randomizer program to be installed in our brain, but that would still not be free will. Much of the time, people describe others' behavior in terms of choice, although they have no idea what has gone through the other person's mind.  People say "If I were him I wouldn't do that" which is an absurd statement, because to be someone else is to be in their body, with their brain chemistry, and therefore you would do exactly what they would do.  What they mean is "If my brain were in his body", but that is also absurd, because then you would still be you, and not that other person.  So try as we might to project our own opinion of what choice another person has, we honestly must admit we do not know what goes on in someone else's brain, as we often don't know what goes on in our own, or how we come up with our own decisions and mistakes.  So if there is no freewill, does this imply "predestination" in the sense that your every move would be ultimately predictable if we could sort out all the circuits in our brain and combine this processing with outside stimuli?  This is moot, because even computers, which are orders of magnitude simpler than our brains, often behave in unpredictable ways, so to pose the question of predestination must, inversely, pose the question of free will in computers. 

Let us suppose, for a moment, that free will does not exist; that we are only very complex organic, carbon-based automata, and that our circumstances, upbringing, experiences and internal brain chemistry work together to explain our behavior.  Let us suppose that even if we assert we have free will, this is an illusion (perhaps necessary) we indulge in, that satisfies some unstable or insecure component in our brains that we have some foundation for controlling our own thoughts.   If there is indeed no free will, then all the actions, crimes, achievements of humans throughout history cannot be attributed to their choice, but to their physical body chemistry and circumstance.  This means the end of blame or praise of the individual.  Adolf Hitler was no more responsible, as a "soul" for the Holocaust, as Mother Teresa was responsible, as a soul, for relieving the suffering of thousands in Calcutta.  They were only complex physical beings whose actions had a positive or negative effect upon the comfort or survival of their fellow human beings.  A criminal who robs and kills someone is blameless for his actions, because to blame him would be like blaming a lawnmower with a broken blade for not cutting the grass evenly, or blaming a car with a weak battery for not starting in the cold. Does this mean we must let him go?  No, because it is rational to separate someone from society who harms society--a society we have collectively agreed on would be beneficial for our survival and continuance and comfort.  A criminal should be incarcerated, but not punished, unless that punishment serves as a deterrent for future crime, by him or by others.  Too often, however, we ascribe very personal motives to those who do "evil", as well as to those who do good things.  But the truth is that we do not really know where these motives for good and evil come from, any more than we know why we prefer chocolate over vanilla ice cream. Perhaps it comforts us to believe that every individual is a free agent of will, and that they have a soul, because this is what it looks like what is happening.  Receiving a nice letter from an old friend seems like a warm gesture and certainly not the result of some central processing result.  But just as we must admit that appearances are deceiving when a reed in the water looks bent, but really is not (due to the refraction of light),  we must also admit that what appears like warm, human, soulful behavior can be something else entirely. To insist of the existence of a soul may be comforting, but we must admit it is as hypothetical as believing that there is no soul, or free will. 

However, removing the idea of free will does not mean a society does not protect itself from those who violate its laws. It's a rational response to remove a miscreant from society as it would be to remove an mosquito from your arm.  But what is not rational is to ascribe choice and motive upon a complete stranger, and to seek revenge or punishment.  We tend to look only at how a miscreant has caused suffering, and we wish to pay him back, but actually there are most likely 3 sufferings:  A miscreant's childhood is one of suffering;  he causes suffering to someone else; he is incarcerated and punished, leading to a third suffering.  It is difficult to accept the idea that a miscreant has no free will, because we often have evidence of his planning crime, of feeling no remorse, or even feeling glee.  This has a visceral effect upon us, and therefore we irrationally desire revenge.

It is important to consider this collective desire for retribution, because already many movies are made with the theme of revenge, addressing our irrational,instinctual desire for retribution, and informing our collective behavior and laws as a civilized society.  It rationalizes a collective set of behaviors which seek to blame and punish, appeasing our irrational desires at the expense of understanding what causes such behavior, or at least acknowledging that we just don't know but we should not act upon our ignorance.

 

Chess has been described as many things: a game, a sport, an art, a science, a metaphor for life.  But in essence,  chess is a special algorithm problem based on calculating "trees" of moves, countermoves, ad infinitem.  Because of the complexity of the parameters of the game, where each side has an average of about 20 moves to choose from, this leads very quickly into complex branching, which is simply too difficult for the human mind to reasonably calculate.  The average chessmaster considers, at most, a few candidate branches, and is able to calculate maybe five moves deep, depending upon the complexity of the position. He relies much on experience, and this greatly relieves him from calculating everything out, and his intuition serves him well.  A computer, however, considers every possible move, and every possible response to that move, and its reply, and so forth, culling out weak/losing moves early in the process, to make calculation more efficient for the more promising lines.
Humans, even brilliant ones with good memories, cannot achieve the strength of even average chess computers without years of play.  This is why players do not get to be chessmasters until many years (at least 10) of concentrated
effort, where, after playing thousands of games, their brain stores visual "patterns" which trigger them to consider
which tree branch to calculate from. There are no known idiot savants who are chessmasters,   A computer, however, plays chess completely differently: a computer, using an algorithm (program) which assigns various values to pieces and positional advantages, is able to quickly and accurately calculate the numerical outcome of various branches, and select the line of play that leads to the highest numerical result for its side.  It does not recognize visual patterns.  Although some general heuristics have been used on some computer chess programs, these programs have not proven as strong as "brute force" calculation programs. 

But chess is only "fun" for humans.  Humans have made chess into a game, complete with sides taking turns,
winning, losing, or drawing.  Before computers, there was much mystery as to what the "best move" was in any given position, and men spent hours analyzing a position, instead of plugging the position into a computer and having it analyze for them.   But chess, unlike many other games, has no built-in element of luck about it,
so this makes winning all the more satisfying, and losing all the more painful.  The winner of a chess game
feels a sense of accomplishment for solving analytical problems, and the loser feels upset after having made an "obvious" mistake, much like leaving out the negative sign on an algebra solution, but getting zero credit
for solving the problem.  Chess is unforgiving, and this turns many people off to the "game".  But it has many fierce devotees. 

By contrast, although computers play chess well, they do not care if they win or lose, or even play.  In the event a computer is being bested by a human, the computer simply keeps calculating until the very end.  Yet, even knowing that machines have become better at this game than humans, people still play chess, accepting that their play is weaker and filled with many mistakes. 

But chess is also a metaphor for the worldly life: there is competition, struggle, mistakes, a chance to recover, using assets (pieces and pawns) effectively, turning your weaknesses (imbalances) into strengths, and pitting your wits against an hostile or dispassionate force, overcoming odds,  analyzing cause-effect problems and facing the consequences of our actions.

Chess is also abstract.  Unlike math, it cannot be applied directly to real-world problems.  This is why many chessmasters are living in poverty; being good at the game does not imply any application of this knowledge in the real world to fill a need, except by teaching chess.  And unlike other sports, like tennis, which has no application either, chess is not very interesting to watch as a spectator, so cannot even fill that niche to
make the activity more mainstream. Therefore, chess, in spite of its intensity, intellectual rigor, and dedicated enthusiasts, remains a rather marginal, if fascinating game in general society, although certain countries have greater appreciation of chess than others.

 

 

More to come....