The Anomaly
Since just about everyone else who was there has written an unbiased true inside story of what really happened at the latest Human vs. Computer Ygor competition, and since we’ve even got to the point where outsiders who weren’t within a thousand miles are explaining the “significance” of what took place, it seems a good idea to put my own oar in so at least a few generally undigested facts will come to be known.
And who am I? Well, someone has to snap the pictures of the grandmasters and the computer programmers. When you hunt around in some knowledgeable article, and find in tiny print the words, “Photos by Sam Bean,” you may not be especially impressed, but you know the photographer was there.
After all, to get pictures, you have to keep an eye on what’s happening. And there was a special reason to care how these pictures turned out. I was using one of the first of the new “invisible flash” cameras, the camera company was providing generous expenses, and emotions at the competition were running so high it was a foregone conclusion there were sure to be chances for first-rate shots. All that was necessary was to just keep thinking about pictures, and not get caught up in the terrific emotional atmosphere of the place.
Anyone who wants to understand what happened needs to realize what this atmosphere was like. The only words that really fit are “impending hysteria.” For one thing, the seer who had predicted the recent San Francisco and Tokyo earthquakes came out with the announcement that the influence of the planets had “guided human history into a line of alternative possibilities,” and a “decisive Ygor competition” was to be one of the “key determining events” down this alternate route.
Now, any reasonable person would naturally say, “So what?” but the entertainment was flowing freely, the place was full of rumors, and everyone was rattled by what had happened already.
Part of the problem, of course, was the nature of the game itself. Ygor wasn’t even heard of a few years ago. As the “natural successor to chess,” Ygor is supposed to reach complexities at least an order of magnitude greater, and has been called “the last refuge of the human intellect from the calculating machine.” Though the computer managed to beat the world chess champion years ago, the tricky nature of Ygor had reduced a generation of programmers to nail-biting frustration. But now, the word was, even this last citadel of the human intellect, defended by its masters and grandmasters, its supreme fighters and unconquerable champions, was to fall to the mindless calculating ability of the computer.
So emotions were running high, and what had happened so far did not help.
First, of course, had been the loss of the World Champion to a rank outsider, Manuel Cerverias. Cerverias’ supporters could praise him lavishly, call him “the Capablanca of Ygor,” and so on, but the fact was, his reputation was as a volatile and uneven player, and no-one could say what shape he might be in when he came up against the computer.
Then there was the other half of the competition—the computer. After all, the leading computer program was more or less familiar, and so were the people in charge of it. When they accepted the challenge of “Pirates IV”—by their own claim an outfit of elderly ex-phone-phreaks and virus-breeders—everyone thought it was a joke. But the next thing anyone knew, the Pirates IV program, The Red Death, had whipped the computer champ.
So now, instead of the well liked and respected World Champion, we had a little-known newcomer, and instead of the familiar computer opponent, there was The Red Death. Just in case the name didn’t give you chills, there was the team itself. Every one was thin to the point of cadaverousness, they all dressed completely in black, and the one in charge wore a set of narrow oblong glasses that looked more like prisms than lenses. If you tried to look him in the eye, you’d get a jolt of disorientation. When this Red Death crew walked past in a group, shadows and foreboding darkness seemed to glide along with them. All this compounded the atmosphere.
It would also be possible to blame quite a lot on the site, the weather (that is, drizzle, gloom, and fog), and the proprietor of the hotel where the competition was being held, who claimed that his total pay had been misrepresented, he was being cheated, and unless this was straightened out, he would throw us all into the street. Of course, somebody had to deal with this.
The previous Champion, at least, could not have been accused of political naiveté or financial unawareness. But the new champ, Cerverias, could be heard shouting, “Don’t come to me with this birdseed! I am an Ygor master, not a moneybag!” The result was that a committee of backers and hangers-on was scraped together to disentangle the financial mess, and someone, doubtless sometime pretty late at night, had a stroke of genius and realized that, when you have a boxing championship, the opponents do not have a series of fights; they have only one, and that decides who is champ. If the opponents in this collision could somehow be gotten to agree to that, then one full-length game could decide the championship, the competition would be over with no delay, and then there would be no need whatever to dig up more money for the hotel. Of course, a certain amount of juggling of rules might be necessary, but enough deprivation of sleep can make almost anything look reasonable.
Cerverias, by this time, was so sick of the problem that he said, “Yes. All right! And to hell with it!” The spokesmen for The Red Death said it could make no possible difference anyway, since their program was sure to win regardless. Everyone else attending the competition was naturally outraged. But the proprietor, noticing how much this shortened the competition and so increased his profit, at once credited a generous rebate to everyone, with the result that all, in effect, were briefly and unexpectedly rich, and in a position to afford some fairly exuberant entertainment. This was a situation hardly anyone lost time taking advantage of.
All of this has to be taken into account to get a picture what things were like next morning when the human champ, Cerverias, hove into view looking hung over, pale, and sleepless, with a bad cough and his left eye twitching, to face the stick figure, like a vacuum cleaner handle with a little portable 3V mounted on top, that The Red Death used to fill the chair opposite the human champ, and to move the pieces.
In due course, silence was established, the game started, and the opposing positions were reproduced on a big angled screen above the players. Cerverias had got the black pieces, The Red Death moved first, and a groan went up as the human champ adopted a defense in general disfavor. While all this was going on, of course, there were opportunities for the camera. The “invisible flash” has been explained in different ways, the general idea being “stored photons guiding computer enhancement.” Whatever the explanation, in practice the camera was delightful. Since there was no actual flash, there was no blinding, no angry fists shaken in the photographer’s face, and, in fact, by moving slowly and evenly, there was almost an illusion of being invisible.
This made it possible not only to get photos of Cerverias, and of the weird mechanism in front of him with its faintly nodding 3V, but also of the programmers, and of such luminaries as the former Champion, several of his predecessors, and the formidable American bad boy, Arnold Winner, who had threatened to boycott the event, claiming that what was being played there was not Ygor.
Winner disliked time limits, despite the fact that he was one of the fastest players around, and periodically, into the teeth of world opinion, demanded that the clock be done away with.
Rumor had it that Winner’s doctors were worried about his health, that he had been warned against stress, and that he had ignored the warning, to play a tough match secretly against one of the leading players. But if he was in bad health, he didn’t look it. He sat back like a well contented big cat, watching the play with a faint smile.
The picture-taking fell into a routine, so that it was a surprise, on taking a fresh picture of Cerverias, to see that the human champ, playing Black, was leaning forward with a glint in his eye. A quick glance at the big screen showed what certainly looked like White in difficulties. The room was utterly silent. The weird entity opposite the champion unfolded its thin jointed metal arm, and responded to the obvious pressure. Any mere wood-pusher could see the computer had done nothing but stay alive for another move. There was a faint murmur and movement in the room, as it occurred to the spectators that Cerverias had not picked this generally shunned defense at random. There was every sign he was thoroughly prepared. One false move on his opponent’s part was all it would take.
Another memory packet went in the camera. “Ultra-hi-res” photos, which accumulated in a compartment on the bottom, came out. Time passed. The tension in the room gradually subsided. The next glance at the big screen showed Cerverias still seeming to generally dominate the play, but now his expression was of exasperated bafflement. One slip could have given him the game. But the methodical computer evidently had not made the slip. Cerverias still had an edge, but it was not what it had been. With monotonous calculation, his opponent shaved off a trifling advantage here, a niggling ghost of an improvement there, move after move. It was beginning to appear that the computer would make no oversight. In that case, its opponent dare be no less methodical; but humans have been known to get impatient.
The champion’s expression was not so much glum as fed up. The various faces around the room showed different degrees of frustration, save for the programmers, who were now smiling modestly.
Here and there, low voices could be heard to mutter, “It’s a draw.”
Then there was a murmur. A glance at the big screen showed that White had moved a man forward. This, at first glance, seemed to do nothing. But a low groan could be heard in the room as it became evident that it was preparation for freeing White’s position. Black had made an oversight. That move by White should have been foreseen and blocked.
Now the consequences of the oversight followed in monotonous succession. White gradually came to dominate Black’s position. Black’s grudging defense finally became tortured, painful to look upon. One by one, the advantages changed sides.
The expression of the viewers showed sadness, disappointment, and in the case of some of the leading players, a sort of doomed paralyzed awareness of what was coming.
Only the former champion and Arnold Winner looked unintimidated by what was happening, their expressions unreadable.
Cerverias, the champ, his voice ringing in disgust, said, “I concede.” He came to his feet, started to turn away from the board, then he turned back. He looked briefly humble, then defiant. “I should not have played this game. I am not in truth really the human champion. I call upon—”
There was chaos in the room.
A group of players around the former Champion, apparently feeling he was about to be called on to play, came to their feet. He, however, shook his head. His voice was clear as he spoke to Cerverias: “You won the championship fairly.”
There was a murmur of approval, the sound of people wearily getting to their feet, apparently to leave the room. Then the computer’s chief programmer spoke, his voice ironical, but very clear:
“Our program will take on anyone here. The Red Death makes no errors. There is no-one who can out-calculate our algorithm. All you have to do is make one slip. —And being human, you will make it. All talk about the art or the science of Ygor, or of the game’s ‘immutable principles,’ is humbug. All that is just an attempted human substitute for the range and precision of digital calculation human minds do not possess. No offense, but as of this moment, all human players of whatever rank are nothing but has-beens. So, if you’ve got any other so-called ‘champion’ out there you want to call on, never mind the formalities. Just bring him on. We’ll take him right now.”
Several high-ranked women players stood up, one with tears running down her cheeks. The former Champion, seeing this, abruptly came to his feet.
Cerverias, still standing by the board, cleared his throat. His voice was thick but understandable:
“I call on the true human champion, Arnold Winner.”
This had the effect of a bomb. People starting to leave turned back from the door. Some looked thunderstruck. A few looked hopeful. Many looked outraged. Winner, a player in the style of chess champion Bobby Fischer, aroused strong emotions, though few players sneered at his skill.
His mere reputation was said to paralyze many opponents. Fiercely offensive players tended to waver uncertainly with Winner on the other side of the board. Unbeatable defensive players had been known to be ripped wide open and lose every game in a match.
And if Winner had any false modesty, no-one had ever mentioned seeing it. Here he came now, tall, powerfully built, smiling, his gait springy, confident, the harsh planes of his face like the slanted surfaces of a gun turret. Let Winner once get his grip into the psychological guts of his opponents, and their offense evaporated, their defense fell apart. General opinion was that only his refusal to accept the rules had kept him from being World Champion.
But he wasn’t popular.
There was a shout of “No! No!” and a moment later, the shout would probably have gone up for the former Champion. Because Winner did not accept the rules, he was not Champion, was the thought. If everyone else has to obey the rules, let him, too. Possibly he was the best player here, but he hadn’t proved it under the rules. He was not the Champion.
But Cerverias’ voice momentarily dominated the gathering:
“Arnold Winner and I played a match last fall, in secret. He won. He is the World Champion.”
The chaos this produced was quieted by the computer’s chief programmer: “You settle the technicalities later. We’ll take him on and whip him now.”
There was a brief silence, then a roar like the surf crashing in, inchoate but powerful. Suddenly everyone was back in his seat. Everyone wanted to see this fight. Winner, grinning, shook hands with Cerverias, leaned across the table, and studied the thing on the other side. He looked ready to shake hands with it, then gave a kind of noncommittal grunt, and sat down. He set up the white pieces on his side of the board, and the slender jointed rod came forward and set up the black.
Some official, doubtless no admirer of Winner, began to speak.
The programmer, apparently to forestall any objection, interrupted. “We couldn’t care less who gets to move first. It’s a question of calculation without oversights. That’s all it is. He can’t win. No human can.”
Winner reached out, and spun the board around. He was now playing Black. He was challenging the computer to take advantage of the first move.
Somehow, imperceptibly, this Ygor competition seemed to have mutated into something else, possibly a medieval tournament, with Arnold Winner as human Champion.
At his gesture of defiance, a roar went up. The crowd was on their feet. Some were chanting Winner’s name. Now it was not only the women players who had tears rolling down their cheeks. Even the European players, most of whom had reservations about Arnold Winner, were shouting their approval.
The expression on the faces of the programmers was worth capturing. The blank look around the eyes told of their surprise. The little wry smile suggested the thought—“What’s this? Are all these people insane?”
This seemed a perfectly valid point. Though anyone might argue that Arnold Winner could bring a power of combination to the game that the computer might not be able to match, still, suppose that were true? Then, in this one game, the computer might go down in defeat. The silicon challenge would be turned back by the human Champion. For now.
But then what?
Then the team of programmers would go off somewhere to work on their program, and the chip designers would proceed at their own work, and, in due course, The Red Death II, probably running on an upgraded computer, would be back to play whoever might then be the human Champion.
Suppose the human did win tonight?
What would it prove? And for how long?
Some of the onlookers’ faces showed a realization of tragedy that argued for their recognizing this very point. But not Winner. His face shone with a sublime confidence. His assurance was almost frightening. Before it was possible to get a second view of this expression he glanced up, and pointed his finger at the camera.
“That’s a distraction. No pictures during the play.” He looked around for an official. “Are we going to sit here waiting all night?”
One of the officials, his voice almost squeaking in indignation, said, “Do you accept the rules? This game has a time limit. Will you play with a time limit?”
Winner said easily, “For tonight, I’ll take this hunk of metal any way it wants to come.”
That produced another frenzy of approval.
Play started.
The computer, as if in challenge, chose the same opening it had used against Cerverias.
Winner, as if tossing the challenge back in the computer’s teeth, played the same defense Cerverias had used.
Nearly everyone was seated now, watching tensely. Play moved rapidly. No-one could have said who had the edge. But now Winner abruptly sat up and pointed at the TV pick-up.
“This thing flashes when it reaches the end of its scan. I want it covered.”
No game with Winner would have been complete without something like this, but it seemed to catch the programmers off-guard. A pair of officials came over and looked at the offending piece of apparatus.
The chief programmer was on his feet, scowling.
“We can’t cover that. That takes the data input for the program.”
Winner said imperially, “Fix it so something blocks the flash. I won’t put up with this.”
The expressions on Winner’s face, and on the programmers’ faces, would have been wonderful to record. But somehow, though he had no formal authority, Winner’s order to stop taking pictures barred use of the camera.
A little later, there was a cut-out arch of corrugated cardboard, held upright by small stacks of books, that blocked the reflection. The moves were proceeding with startling speed. On the big display, the position began to resemble the chaotic defense Black had used the last game. That looked promising, but that defense had led to the computer’s victory.
Winner straightened lazily, looked at the board from a slightly different angle, chuckled, and said, “Oh, no, you don’t.”
After apparently playing Black’s previous game move-for-move, now he introduced a variation.
There was a lengthy delay before the computer finally moved, then the jointed arm moved out hesitantly; it made a faltering move, and—
Crack!
There was a collective gasp as Winner, moving like a cat springing on its prey, slammed a piece in place on the board.
The programmers, perspiring, glanced at each other.
Winner glanced up. “Concede?”
The chief programmer, plainly showing strain, snapped, “That’s absurd! This isn’t a human opponent. You can’t rattle a computer. That’s a low stunt, and it won’t work!”
“Why are you sweating if you’re so sure?”
“Hell, man, when you slapped that piece down, I all but jumped out of my skin! I’m rattled. But you’re not playing me. Go ahead and try to win it. It makes no mistakes. You can get a positional advantage, but you can’t win. Sometime, you’ll make a slip. The best you might get is a draw.”
“It’s made two mistakes already. The game’s lost, with best play on its part. Watch.”
Winner uncrossed his legs, and reached forward to move a Black piece. There was a long delay before the computer responded. Winner promptly moved again. On the big display, White’s clear disadvantage in position was compounded by an increasing loss of space. As if there were a fantastic difference in ability, a grandmaster toying with a beginner, the White pieces were forced back across the board, to end up packed together, as one then another retreated from the Black advance. Winner glanced up, and grinned.
“This piece of tin is winning?”
The chief programmer, sweating heavily, studied the board. “You don’t dare to take any of those pieces. Every piece is covered by the same number of pieces as there are attacking it.”
“That’s routine. But how’s it going to maintain it?”
The game proceeded.
Somehow, White survived the endless threats, maintaining its tortured position as the Black pieces visibly built up a greater and greater threat aimed at the White king.
Smiling, Winner settled to his task as the computer, with agonizing skill, rewove its defense, and then tried to move its King away from the danger.
In the breathless silence, certain moves seemed to stand out. A Black Lion slid across the board and took a White Knight. A second White Knight captured the Black Lion.
A Black Dragon checked the White King.
Casually, Winner brought his pieces forward, snapping up this and that white piece, repeatedly checking the computer’s King, forcing it here and there at will.
With dogged persistence, the computer calculated and replied; calculated and replied; sheltering its King here, then there, always somehow patching together a temporary defense despite an appearance of easy total domination by its opponent.
Then the last of the series of exchanges was made.
The chief programmer exhaled in a hiss, and mopped his neck and forehead. He had a wondering look, as if he were surprised to still be alive. Now he leaned forward, plainly willing himself to face whatever might be there on the board, and thereby showing how completely he had lost track of the game.
But he wasn’t alone. All around the room, people were staring at the board or the display.
The computer had a King and a Soldier.
Winner had a King and two Soldiers.
A huge sigh circled the room.
The programmers glanced at each other warily, then shrugged in disgust. Plainly, they knew their program somehow was beat; but also plainly, they were not crushed. They knew this loss was temporary.
Winner, smiling, began the routine that, in this position, would win the game for any capable player.
A peculiar beeping noise sounded.
The chief programmer said, “That’s how it concedes. You’ve won. For now.”
The former champion, who had lost to Cerverias, came to his feet. “Three cheers for our World Champion, Arnold Winner!”
Winner, beaming, came to his feet.
No-one was playing now, so it seemed fair enough to take pictures. One of them was a little puzzling, showing the chief programmer with two other experts at his elbow, discussing something intently, their expressions very odd. Then Winner was talking to one of the women grandmasters. He smiled, and the last thing he said was clearly audible:
“I am completely content.”
An instant later he was on the floor, the smile still plain on his face as chaos broke loose around him.
They had doctors on the spot in a moment, but they couldn’t revive him. He was rushed to a hospital, where they had no better luck. The cadaverous chief programmer broke down and cried, as did one of Winner’s doctors, who damned himself for allowing the game. Then the spectators crowded around, masters, grandmasters, and ordinary players, earnestly giving comfort to the doctor and the programmer:
“Look, he wanted to play. It was his life. You didn’t hurt him any.”
“Did you see that expression on his face? How many people die with a smile?”
“He’s in Chess/Ygor heaven now. Humboldt is shaking his hand. Lasker is gripping him by the arm.”
A woman grandmaster, so beautiful there were those who credited her victories over men to her opponents’ distraction, took the doctor gently by the arm.
“He was in no trouble during the game. Did you see any sign of strain? If you’d ever played him, you’d understand. When you played him, you weren’t up against his calculating ability alone. His concentration was total. His attention never wavered. His will would take you like a giant hand and crush the life out of you. No medical condition killed him. He was just through here, that’s all. His will let go of his body. He moved on.”
She briefly drew the doctor’s head comfortingly against her shoulder. He sighed, then looked up with a wondering expression. He was medically responsible for a patient’s death; he could see it no other way. Yet he was surrounded by the friends and admirers of his patient, and no-one looked at him in anger. Everyone was smiling.
“He argued me around,” said the doctor. “With the best good nature, somehow he convinced me he’d be all right.”
“That’s how he was. You couldn’t stand against his will. We’ll miss him. But, oh, what a triumph! What a time to go!”
Her shining face made a beautiful picture, setting off the wondering misery of the doctor’s facial expression.
A glance around showed the chief programmer for The Red Death, with a look none too easy to interpret. He was holding what looked like computer printouts, happened to see me aiming the camera at him, and gestured to come over. His expression was no easier to interpret at short range.
I said, “You don’t look happy.”
“We’ve got what you might call a problem.”
“A temporary problem? Back to the drawing board?” He shook his head. “I would have said so yesterday. If this is truly what it looks like, it’s worse than that.”
“How could it be? A little tightening of the code, an improvement in the algorithm, maybe a faster processor—How can you lose? It’s like every year or so, the strongest man in the world has to go out and wrestle the latest model Caterpillar tractor. How long is that going to be in doubt?”
“That’s what I thought before I saw these.”
“How—?”
“Take a look.”
What he handed over was two listings of the game’s moves, showing the last two games played by the computer. One list was headed “Cerverias,” and the other “Winner.” Comparing the lists, it seemed obvious that, at the beginning, all of Winner’s moves were identical to those of Cerverias. But two of the computer’s moves were outlined in yellow, and these moves differed from one game to the next. I looked up.
“There’s a random aspect to the computer’s moves?”
“Only when the alternative moves have exactly the same value.”
“So these two moves in the first part of the game had the same values? That is, the moves the computer played against Cerverias, and the two different moves it played against Winner?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then the play against Winner represents superior moves? There is an accumulation of computer skill from game to game?”
“The moves it made against Winner were mistakes.”
I looked at him, then back at the lists. Winner’s comment came back to me: “It has made two mistakes already.”
“But, I thought that couldn’t happen?”
“It can’t. But it did. That’s our problem.”
“Some hardware failure? Maybe some fluctuation in line voltage?”
He shook his head. “We’re ready for anything like that.”
There was a lengthy silence, then he said, “What that woman grandmaster said, that his will just let go of his body. You believe that?”
I said carefully, “I don’t know if she meant that literally.”
“But do you believe it?”
“I don’t know. If ‘life is but a dream,’ he’d certainly reached an ideal spot to end a dream. I heard him say he was perfectly content.”
“I don’t want to believe it. But I don’t know.”
“What does it matter, anyway? All you have to do is keep making incremental improvements.”
He shook his head. “That’s assuming it’s a question of pure calculation. We can handle that. But what’s ‘will’? We’re always hearing about somebody ‘whose iron will overcame all obstacles.’ It sounds like baloney to me. Especially applied to Ygor. But here we’ve got it. How do we fit a thing like that into the program? The first question is, what’s will?”
“I don’t see where you get the idea that ‘here we’ve got it.’”
“First, we see the computer ignore normal calculation when it’s playing Winner, and decide on some other basis. Second, the woman grandmaster, a great player and well acquainted with Winner, credits his dominance to his ‘will.’ Third, no-one disagrees; everyone nods and smiles. Fourth, what other explanation do we have? Remember, Winner threw the computer around the board as if it were a kindergarten pupil. He was a great player, but he could only do that because of his opponent’s errors. How can anyone distract or overawe a computer so it makes errors? What’s Will?”
“I read a definition once—”
“What was it?”
“As I remember, will is what enables you to hold your attention focused. I think it was compared to a polished reflector, and attention was conscious awareness—Like light focused in a searchlight.”
He considered it and nodded soberly. “How about what she said that when you played him you weren’t just playing his calculating ability; he got you in his will—that is, in his focused attention—and crushed the life out of you? Was that true?”
I said carefully, “I only ever played him once.”
He studied my expression. “And how did that work out?”
“Just about as she described.”
“How, specifically.”
“I forgot moves I knew. My thoughts congealed. I recorded the moves, and afterward I couldn’t understand why I’d made some of them.”
“His reputation paralyzed you?”
“It would have, if I’d known who I was playing. It was a wet night out, and I’d just come in, and there were two players I didn’t recognize sitting beside the fireplace, on opposite sides of a game board, and one was just getting up. The other glanced at me. I wanted to be near the fire, to get warmed up, so when he said, ‘Game?’ I said ‘Sure,’ and we started to play. I blamed the results on the cold and wet, followed by the warm fire. But I wasn’t falling asleep. I just couldn’t think properly.”
The chief programmer said dryly, “How many players like that are there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one in a generation. I don’t think you can predict.”
“One is too many.”
“Maybe it’s just that your processor has gone bad.”
Briefly, his face cleared. “We can hope. We’re checking that.”
There was a tearing sound, and one of the other programmers came over with a sheaf of papers. The chief programmer leafed through the sheets, and gave a low grunt, as if he had been hit. The other programmer pointed to different lines marked in yellow, and shook his head.
“Twelve different times through, and we can’t duplicate any of this. But that’s what it did, playing him.”
“We’ll just have to crank everything tighter.”
“Sure, sharpen our knife. Look, he used nerve gas and smart bombs.”
“What else are we going to do? Besides, maybe he was the only one. After all, this whole damn thing is impossible.”
The other programmer nodded ironically, then in a perfectly level toneless voice delivered a mind-stunning profanity. The chief programmer shrugged, then he looked around as if wondering what to do with the sheaf of papers. He noticed me, and held them out.
They were listings of moves, the first marked, “Winner,” and the rest marked, “Trial,” and successively numbered “1” through “12.” The overall effect was stunning.
“The computer did one thing when it was playing Winner, and it did another thing when you gave it the same positions afterward?”
“It made two crucial errors in the beginning—as Winner pointed out. Later on, it made what look to us like no less than half-a-dozen inferior moves. Most of these weren’t by themselves disastrous. Just a shaving off the position here, a little something grated off there. But it’s all going to the credit of Grandmaster Arnold Winner, who smilingly cashes it all in at the end. It’s as if somehow he paralyzed the computer’s ability to calculate.”
Finally I could understand the chief programmer’s facial expression. Just what was he supposed to do now? How could you program a computer to not be influenced by something that couldn’t possibly have affected it in the first place? On the other hand, for someone not faced with the problem, there was a certain hilarious aspect to this.
I said, “Look, what Winner did to you was only what you were trying to do to him, wasn’t it? I mean, through endlessly refining the computer and the program, so you couldn’t possibly lose? All that happened was, you got back what you dished out to Cerverias.”
“Well, yes. But we did it by strictly rational calculation.”
“Yeah, but why should that be the only method permitted? Your assumption was that there was nothing involved except calculation. And in that case, sooner or later you were sure to win. But how could you know in advance that was right? You did dismiss all talk about the art of Ygor, the science of the game, the immutable principles—All just humbug.”
“Well, what the hell, we weren’t planning to come up against The Psychic Powers of the GrandChampion! We didn’t figure the guy could mesmerize the computer! How did he do it? Did he temporarily alter the conducting properties of the chip? Did he impose an electromagnetic field that changed the flow of the electrons? How could he do anything at all except calculate? I thought for the purposes of this game, Mind was just Calculation. But now, how do we know that’s true? And damn it, now he’s gone, so we can never be sure!”
The expression on his face was pure indignation, and it took just a second to record it. He waved his hand in disgust.
“All you care about is pictures. Look, how do we digitize Will? How come we never ran into this before? Was there something special about Winner? You realize, he passed away; the guy is dead, and somehow we’re all seeing it the way he would want us to see it. Now, just think this over. If he could use will to affect the computer, how do we know there won’t be some effect that works the other way, the computer affecting will? Then what?”
He glared at me. “You see how many cans of worms this opens up? I’m only getting started. And you know how many people are going to give this five seconds’ thought? You can count them on one hand. What the hell, most of them probably will never hear about it! But any Pollyanna that wants to write an article on how this proves Mankind will never be outthought by a computer will probably get it in print and even be paid for it.”
“Well—Just keep improving your program.”
“Naturally, we’ll keep improving it! And everyone else will improve theirs. And maybe we’ll clobber the next human champ, and the next fifteen after that. That’s not what we’re talking about here. The point is, what we’ve got here does not fit the way we know things have got to be. It’s an anomaly. It throws our main assumptions completely into question. If what those printouts suggest is true, the whole mechanism of cause and effect may work differently than we believe.”
For a moment, he hesitated. “It’s like when Fleming saw the wood mold had killed the bacteria. The conventional answer to Fleming is, ‘That doesn’t make sense; it couldn’t happen. So, just clean your glassware, man. Keep at it, and you’ll get the result we all know in advance you ought to get.’ Fortunately for us, Fleming nailed down what actually had happened, and we got penicillin. In Science, big gains can come from noticing little anomalies, and this is an anomaly that stands out like a lighthouse! But it happened in an Ygor game. And everyone will just think it’s a mistake on our part. No-one who needs to know about it is likely to see this, much less realize what it means!”
“Wait a minute. You see it.”
“Pirates IV is going to win the competitions if we can, but somehow I don’t see us following Fleming to the bat.”
***
So, since we’ve had one article after another to show “What Arnold Winner’s Last Victory Really Proves,” it seemed a good idea to just mention those points that generally don’t make it into print.
In nearly every article, any anomaly is totally overlooked. If mentioned, the suggestion is that it somehow is unexplainable, and it therefore follows that it must be an error. That leaves the problem, but disposes of the awareness of it.
Since, as they say, there isn’t any point in examining errors, the focus is on what is explainable. So the facts are being gradually normalized out of existence, and Winner’s unexplainable victory is credited to such things as his “sheer Ygor wizardry.”
And of course, since Winner isn’t here, nothing can be proved. But there’s still a lesson here.
The main thing seems to be, if somebody does something impossible according to accepted assumptions, don’t just say it can only be voltage spikes on the line.
Take a hard look at what happened, and the assumptions.
Remember Fleming, and:
Examine the anomaly.