Parable of Alien Chess
I suspect the metaphor is inspired by Feynman&#x27;s one about gods playing chess [1]. As it&#x27;s almost always the case, Feynman manages to immediately inspire and illuminate.<p>On the other hand, the present article seems to me to get some important things wrong. For one, it&#x27;s not the case that overall white and black win 50% of the time each. More importantly though, if somebody is interested in investigating chess, they will supposedly understand that it&#x27;s some activity that other (somewhat) intelligent beings are undertaking.<p>Even if everything seems like a blur, an alien scientist should not be content with dismissing it as uninteresting randomness. More so, if somebody actually starts investigating seriously, they will immediately obtain useful results about the game, results that should almost certainly provide useful predictions about the game outcome (at least better than &quot;it&#x27;s all random&quot;).<p>I might find, however, some agreement with the spirit of the article. It seems to me that, even though the author doesn&#x27;t articulate it properly, the idea is that scientists should pursue more fringe theories even if immediate confirmation is lacking. I think there&#x27;s quite a bit of value in this, as long as your predictions are always checked against reality.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=o1dgrvlWML4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=o1dgrvlWML4</a>