Shifting Perspective And How Chess Is Bigger Than The Whole Universe.

Ever heard of the Shannon number? If you are a chess aficionado, that might ring a bell.?

This number is the answer from the mathematician Claude Shannon to the question: how many different chess games could we play??

Well, according to the mathematician Claude Shannon, about 10 ^120 (assuming a chess game lasts on average 80 moves).

This number is so big that it is hard to fully apprehend. Let’s try to give some comparisons.

If we take the number of stars in our observable Universe, it’s estimated to be in the order of magnitude of 10^24.?

If we consider the volume of our observable Universe, including all the planets, stars, and galaxies, it’s roughly estimated at 3.6?1??? m3.

So, the Shannon number and the complexity it represents is enormous, not to say, overwhelming as we try to grasp its immensity.

But, what if we change our perspective? What if instead of being a chess amateur, we look at the game complexity from the point of view of a go player? That’s a strategy board game too, but its game-tree complexity is estimated to be 31??11(for a game of 200 moves).

Suddenly, the Shannon number seems kinda small.

And what if our life was the game we play? What complexity would it have? Surely, both the complexity of chess and go would look tiny in comparison.

The whole reason why Shannon spent time calculating the game-tree complexity of chess was to demonstrate it was impossible to program a computer to know all the possible outcomes. Basically, there is no way to calculate all the different games, to try to “brute-force” the solution of chess.

Instead, machines had to “copy” humans. They had to learn how to play chess. They had to play games, lose some, win some, and progress their understanding.

This is pretty much the same with Life. So, yes, we only have one game of Life (at least that we know of), but shifting our perspectives a bit, we could see that we play several “mini” games in one Life.

Like the “job search” game, like the “intimate relationship” game or like a chess game.

Nobody (not even genius) sits for the first time in front of the chessboard and knows how to play.

We have to learn the rules, what works best in which situation, either being taught or through your own experience. We cannot crack the game by simply thinking of the different possibilities. They are simply too many (and that’s also assuming you would know all of them).

When you engage in a romantic relationship, there are and will always be unknown. Why is my partner upset today? Is he loving me less than before? Did he sleep well? Maybe he is feeling sick? Or something is troubling him? Did he change??Did he think our relationship changed??

It’s easy to go down the rabbit hole and get lost in our thoughts, incapable of parsing through the infinite alternatives.?

But as we do, we can reduce the uncertainty.

Questions such as “How was your day?”, “Did you sleep well?” or simply “Is there something troubling you?” can already go a long way.?

The first step to playing chess is to learn its rules. Once done, you can exclude obvious losing moves from the Shannon number, which would shrink to 10^40.?

Then, if you want to improve, you play, you train, you learn.

That’s why we actually do need more than one job interview to become good at this “mini” game. Similarly, if we have open and regular discussions with our life partner, we will be better at understanding him or her.

Thinking alone has its limitations. But when paired with doing, we progress and our growth is limitless.

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