Re:Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
by samatman on Saturday January 18, 2020 @01:49PM
(#22086207)
I meant to say, any given alien race.
If there are enough intelligent aliens than it's just a numbers game.
But would it be more than half? I doubt this. Sure would be fun to find out.
Re:Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
by CydeWeys on Saturday January 18, 2020 @01:51PM
(#22086225)
Yeah, that's the thing, there's likely to be lots of different alien species, so it is indeed a numbers game. I wouldn't want to try giving the odds of each alien species discovering Go, but so long as those odds are non-zero, which seems quite likely, the total number of Go inventions across the universe is likely to be quite large.
This naturally introduces the idea of a "universality constant" for any given game, i.e. what percentage of species will have invented that exact game. For obvious reasons this figure is likely to be much higher for, say, Go, Connect-N, or Hex, than for something like Chess.
It's played on a grid of overlapping circles, without counting the origin as an intersection.
Every intersection has exactly four liberties, so it adds an optional move of a stone after each placement. Liberties are counted after both the placement and the move, so a player can't occupy a point with no liberties and then slide to capture.
Anecdotally, it's enjoyable.
Thing is, I came up with it in the year 2000, and it doesn't appear to have existed before that. This experience has left me skeptical that it's obvious that an alien race came up with Go. They might have.