Episode 248: Checkmate, Grasshopper

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] I am so sick of people selling their psyches for a little attention. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, apparently, I don't know if you knew this, several sources are telling me that

[00:01:19] Arthur C. Clarke wrote a novel version of 2000, A Woman's Space Odyssey, and he answered some of the questions that we talked about last episode. Why did we waste so much time talking about those questions? We're going to have to pull the episode.

[00:01:36] I know, it's too bad because it's doing well, like a lot of downloads. We speculated so much, and the answers were there the whole time. The whole time, you know? It is hilarious. With all sincerity, the people who have written to say, actually, that thing that you and

[00:01:56] Sam were discussing was clearly laid out by Arthur C. Clarke. It's like they felt that we wasted their time. Or more that we wasted our own time. It's too bad because we could have talked about something that wasn't fully settled. Right. So, yeah.

[00:02:16] I saw in a tweet exchange you had, I think, this morning, you laid out, I think, what we all were thinking, which is that you can take works. I'm embarrassed to even have to spell this out because I just assumed that this is what people would already believe.

[00:02:36] But 2001 as a film stands alone as a work of art. And, sure, Arthur Clarke flushed out some of the ideas. And they even might be the ideas that directly led Stanley Kubrick to make the choices that he did.

[00:02:54] But that doesn't mean that those are the answers, at least not to the questions we're asking. Like I don't know. It seems like such a concrete mindset to adopt when discussing a film. Well, it's this whole idea of what's canon and what's not.

[00:03:09] That is tackling some kind of story that has different genres and different variations. You know, and sometimes the people, you know, like in this case, they collaborated another almost identical example. I was saying this on Twitter too, is David Lynch and Mark Frost in the

[00:03:29] season three of Twin Peaks collaborated on the screenplay just in the same way that Arthur C. Clarke and Kubrick did. And then Frost went off to write his second novel on Twin Peaks. He had written one earlier. This one was called The Final dossier.

[00:03:46] And it's a very similar thing where the book is true to the characters, but it answers certain questions that Lynch very deliberately doesn't answer. You know, I get why people will just say, oh, well, that's the answer in the show.

[00:04:04] Like there's just one universe that they're both filling in details about, but I really think that's not how either of them look at it. Like, like I don't think that's how Kubrick, Clark, Frost and Lynch look at

[00:04:16] it. They look at it as their own takes on this common story. And just like the Greeks would have many takes on Oedipus or Achilles or, you know, the House of Agamemnon. There are tons of different takes about them. It's not that they they differ.

[00:04:33] They're inconsistent at times and certainly some of them fill in more details than others, but that's just how art works. Yeah. So there's the question of whether or not there is an answer like in like out there in the world that you might appeal to.

[00:04:51] So so the Arthur Clarke book exists. And it and it has a very clear interpretation of what the monoliths are with like a very rich back story about who the aliens were and what their goals were.

[00:05:04] And I, like you just said, choose to sort of take the film on its own without viewing the book as the like whatever, you know, the Bible of the movie. But also there is the question of what what Kubrick believed

[00:05:26] the star child was representing when he was making the movie, which is like somebody sent us a clip, which like he actually did say he had a very clear belief about what he was trying to symbolize with the story.

[00:05:42] I think maybe my view is extreme and it kind of goes against my temperament. But I believe that not even that matters in my discussion of the film and my interpretation of the film. And I think also it's been overplayed the degree to which Kubrick was giving

[00:05:57] very specific answers. He would get chatty in an interview, but I think he's very he intentionally wants to leave these questions open and not answer them. That and that's this is what I think creators like good creators do.

[00:06:12] Like there's a reason that they don't go around explaining what they thought. It could very well be that Kubrick has spelled out. He probably does have it spelled out so clearly in his mind.

[00:06:24] But he knows that that's not the goal of the work of art that he was producing. It's not like a it's it's not like a Scooby-Doo mystery where at the end you figure out everything and it's no right. And he doesn't think of it that way.

[00:06:38] He doesn't think this is the answer. And I'm just leaving it open to see like who's smart enough to figure it out. It's not like that. Like he I think he regards his own opinion as just one opinion. Just one of many. Yeah, like informed opinion for sure.

[00:06:55] But still just one opinion that the text is the text. Yeah, exactly. And I love that because I actually believe that works of art can come from a place where there is there's communication from Kubrick to us that he might not even be privy to. Right.

[00:07:17] So like that there is a collection of symbols and imagery and emotions that exists in Kubrick that he then puts in the film that he might not be well equipped to explain or describe. Totally. Yeah. You know, yeah, Prince in an interview once.

[00:07:36] I'm pretty sure I'm remembering right. It's spelled it out very clearly. He's like, you know, when people ask me what these lyrics mean, I just think this is stupidest question in the world. Like, of course, like I could say, oh, yeah, I was talking about this girl

[00:07:49] that I had a relationship with. But then it actually robs everybody of the meaning that they may have created themselves, which is his goal to begin with. Like and as an artist, I don't think you would want to rob

[00:08:03] your audience of that joy that like that what we had for whatever, two hours with Sam, the just pleasure of discussing and trying to unravel Yeah, the difference between Lynch and Kubrick, I think they're very similar. Like the way they view

[00:08:20] the function of art and how to approach art. But just Lynch is just way more upfront about that. He will say like the whole closure is a way of forgetting that you've seen the dams thing or it's just a word for forgetting that you've seen the dam

[00:08:34] thing like that's the that like he just is very straightforward about it. Whereas weirdly actually because Kubrick was such a private, reserved person and also completely paranoid that he was going to get like assassinated at any moment and never wanting to leave London.

[00:08:50] I mean, I guess the paranoia was justified. It turned out in the end, but he will just also like in in interviews just open up about like what he was thinking and what he was. But in the actual art, like he's very deliberate about what he chooses

[00:09:06] to tell you and what he chooses not to tell you. And he knows by not telling you that means it's open. Right. You know, there's there's this other thing that, you know, I'm sure philosophers of art have talked about this like so much and so

[00:09:24] well, but the interpretation is so yeah. So much so much like the the whole you get this reaction sometimes from people saying like, you know, that it didn't mean shit like the curtains were red that didn't mean anything. Right.

[00:09:43] And and I'm always of the belief that yeah, like maybe even the artist didn't think when they put in red curtains that they meant something like maybe they weren't saying it should be a simulation. Yeah, like that's just art. That's just how an artist would work.

[00:09:57] Like if they if they were like, oh, I'm feeling blue. Let's make it blue. Because he's sad because the main character is sad. No, that's not. I don't think that's how it works. I wish I was more of an artist and I could give more of an authoritative.

[00:10:12] Yeah, I wish I'm speaking as if I know if I know what it's like to be an artist. But like art is this a postmodern view of some sort? Learn. I don't think so. Like I think it's just like the normal view and a lot of people aren't,

[00:10:25] you know, like there are probably times in my life where I've had a less what I consider now to be like sophisticated way of approaching art. You know, oh, I absolutely did. I was the huge bill. I'm like in literature class in high school.

[00:10:41] Like the cat doesn't mean shit. Yeah, I think I did that too. Like like in college maybe even at least like up to a point. And then I like snapped out of it. You do need somebody to like almost shake you out of it.

[00:10:54] You know, slap you like like someone does in an old movie. Oh my God. You're hysterical. Yeah, I was just I was watching when I was in Qatar. I was watching a bunch of noir films and hilarious the way that they would grab.

[00:11:13] The Hays code had no problem with just slapping a woman if she started like talking too fast or like calm down. Sweetheart. Like. I was watching the Maltese Falcon and he's telling his assistant like now that's a good girl. And I was like, it's just creep.

[00:11:32] But yeah, I you know, I get that maybe people are afraid that you could run rampant if you don't if you don't have some discipline, some boundaries. Like you could just start interpreting things willy nilly like a schizophrenic person would.

[00:11:48] But but I'd rather that than rob the fun out of it by telling me exactly what you meant. And to be clear, the overwhelming response to the episode and even on this topic has been positive. And we're just like bitching for no reason.

[00:12:06] I don't even mind the listeners who bother to put it in. Yeah, it's a very big thing in like Lynch Frost world, you know, like what you count as something that actually happened and what you don't.

[00:12:20] And there's a few things that are inconsistent between the books and the story and the film. And one of the things I was thinking about, let me run this by you. Is there something about film and also song like in the prince example,

[00:12:35] which is a really good example like because songs are very not explicit about what they're doing? There's something about the genre itself that lends itself more to open ended interpretation, whereas novels need more questions answered than these other forms. Maybe because all there is is the words.

[00:12:54] There's nothing else to fill in the gaps of what you're supposed to feel. And yeah, yeah. I mean, my intuition is strong that that's the case. I think so too. And maybe even the more visual art and poetry and music are they they're evocative

[00:13:18] not not via the root of like telling you things propositionally. Yeah, some songs do obviously, you know, but but songs that are closer to poetry. This is why I always laugh like when when rappers say shit,

[00:13:30] like there's nothing else behind it when they say like I have a big dick. It's not like a symbol. That's like 9 11. But like the more the more abstract and the closer you get to like evoking

[00:13:44] without without the words, I think the more when we have to interpret it with words, then we have a lot more freedom. Yeah. If there's one thing 2001 the film doesn't have is a lot of words. So a lot of words. You know, there were some things that like

[00:14:01] had I known before could have added to my interpretation like that were just factual. You know, I was saying something about the the the future that Clark was envisioning looking like it was friendlier between Russia and the United States.

[00:14:15] And then people pointed out that the conversation was really about, you know, the US hiding information from like that's that's where like if I paid more attention to the words like I accept that there's a corrective. So it's yeah.

[00:14:30] And I actually have no problem with like I haven't read the book or the the novel that Arthur C. Clarke did and any of the sequels. But like I have no problem with him answering it. Those questions in the work, that's just that work. Yeah.

[00:14:44] But we were talking about the film. Yeah. I feel like we could have a whole conversation about canon and all this stuff. It is a really interesting concept. And my favorite examples are always from comics because you have like Batman has been written since the 1940s.

[00:15:02] And you have all these iterations of Batman that are wildly different from each other, like the Frank Miller Batman who's like agro and violent and and the less agro detective Batman. But they they have to make a Batman Bible for anybody who's writing Batman.

[00:15:21] Like because there are things that you say you have like freedom to do, to work in like some aspects, but then there are some things like that you can never change the way that his parents died. Like that cannot change.

[00:15:35] I thought like shooting somebody was one of them. But then apparently there's a Batman where he shoots somebody. Yeah. Yeah. So even those are probably a little fuzzy. Yeah, I'm sure they are.

[00:15:46] And it might just depend on like who the editor was that day who like approved it. All right. So before we get to the second segment, which is now is just a game like perlucary. No illusory tech mates is just a game. That's our opening.

[00:16:01] Talk about an audible audible. Like I would never have thought you might hear me. I haven't edited it yet, but you might hear me get converted to an analog class in real time. Like I like I'm still a little bit freaked out about what happened.

[00:16:18] It's like it's like you kissed your first boy and now you're wondering. Before we get to that, so when we last recorded our opening, I think the opening question was about Kanye. Yeah, you asked the opening question.

[00:16:37] Right. And that was only when he had tweeted out the like death con three thing and whatever other accompanying tweets there were to that. It was before that big interview came out. That's it. I don't think it would have changed my answer on those questions.

[00:16:54] You're standing with a condom. I stand with yay. Also, like microaggression. So now ever since that episode, he's been pretty much all partnerships have been severed, including Jalen Brown, who is the biggest mention the whole NBA. So yeah, I'm

[00:17:19] I'm worried about a whole lot of things, which is like I shouldn't spend my time worrying about but but one, I think Kanye and I'm just going to keep calling Kanye. Sorry. He's in such a state that I think it's actually

[00:17:33] unethical to interview him for not just for what he's saying, but because like I feel like it's it's just it's a bit of a cash grab because you know that. Yeah, it's also rubber necking. Yeah, exactly.

[00:17:47] The other thing that really distresses me is how many people I've seen coming to his defense like on on Twitter, YouTube, just as full of comments from like just people who think he's just speaking the truth and he's getting.

[00:18:05] And so that makes me just really worry about losing all the deals, making those people just confirming it. Yeah. In an ideal world, we would all just ignore him. Yeah, I like I'll always love him. The artist, the stuff that he's produced as an artist,

[00:18:22] but it has tainted it for me a bit now. Well, that's good that it painted it a bit. Just a bit. I love the old guy or he was just anti black. Right, it's so funny like that, like that all the stuff with the like all lives matter.

[00:18:37] Yeah, the white lives matter. Not just all. I mean, a white lives matter like that just got ignored. I know. That's that's how the world works. It's you know, that's he clearly doesn't have a very coherent worldview.

[00:18:50] You know, like I think and I believe that he really does feel like he's pro black and so now like you could just see in his he's just been beaten down like he feels like he feels like a victim now.

[00:19:03] And I don't know, it's a it's a fucking shit show. And the only person I can compare him to that I can think of is Jesse single. Fame does terrible things to people. There's people who become just shut ins and let their fingernails grow

[00:19:22] and piss in jars because because they got famous. They got famous and they had a lot of money. And I think it's just it is a lot of stuff like Howard Howard. There's got it. Took me a second.

[00:19:35] Like I had to think of the Simpsons where Mr. Burns is. And no, yeah. All right. Well, we've solved that. We solved that. The country, the nation as a whole can move on. We can start the healing process and also leave Jews alone.

[00:19:57] Yeah, that's a good we've suck advice. We're actually all right. You know, we can be a little much. What I feel bad is for all you Jews who are like broke, you know, and you have to put up with this.

[00:20:09] You're like a few of us made it and now I pay the price. No, that's right. It's like being like a really poor white person and hearing about like how like white people just privileges just like, you know, some person in Eastern

[00:20:25] Kentucky hears about like white privilege and how that just guarantees you a perfect life. You know, like that's how the Jews that like me, they didn't make any money. Broke Jews. And if we can have solidarity with like the other kind of

[00:20:43] failures of their ethnicity, like we could actually bring about like a real systemic. This conversation is really a case of the longer we talk. More just the greater the chances in the in the we're going to know that we're

[00:20:59] going to say something that gets us in real trouble. Well, here's the thing. I think I could handle fame. So like if the thing that's making you not make us famous is that you're worried about like whether we could handle it.

[00:21:13] Like I think we'll be we'll be OK. We'll be good as long as you continue taking your medication. As I flinged all the edibles. All right. So when we come back, we are going to talk about whether chess is a game.

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[00:28:21] But we also release this audio for the two dollar and up supporters. So thank you to everybody for all your support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. All right, let's get to this discussion about whether chess is in fact a game.

[00:28:35] I put I think I tweeted this out and I also said in our slack that I would quit the podcast if we couldn't talk about this paper called illusory checkmates. Why chess is not a game by Michael Hixon, a philosopher, I think, at Trent.

[00:28:54] Trent, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Not a great not a great suit. And this was tweeted out by Liam Bright. He the paper gives like an argument as to why chess is not a game to game. But and Liam tweeted out, I think this paper overlooks the fact that

[00:29:13] chess is a game. So I, you know, this paper hits a lot of my like pushes a lot of my buttons about analytic philosophy and the methods of analytic philosophy. But what I like about this paper also is that it has

[00:29:29] it's such an extreme example of the way I think analytic philosophy just misunderstands life, but it also has a kind of surrealness in both the how extreme it is. But then also like stuff, just weird stuff, like how he talks about the grasshopper.

[00:29:49] And I guess this grasshopper that is in a dialogue with, you know, that a different author wrote about this debate. And like as I'm reading it, I start to like visualize a giant grasshopper engaging in like a completely inane debate.

[00:30:07] Just I and like I honestly, like I had a little bit like I was freaking out. No, I wasn't freaking out because I was enjoying it. But yeah, it was surreal, you know. The the I think that with the addition also of some of the diagrams

[00:30:23] where like the entire chess board is populated with queens and there's oh yes. I know. It's like shit, what did I smoke before? I'm going to have nightmares about that. You know, like I'm the king and the rest of the board is Queens. Or good. Yeah, the grasshoppers.

[00:30:46] I believe the grasshopper's rival is a character named Skepticus. Skepticus. It's like it's like he's clearly a decepticon, by the way. Like in my head. You see this like ancient Greece Greek like an atoga debating this giant grasshopper. I am Skepticus.

[00:31:10] Like here's what I let me just give my broad view on this that I think somebody is crazy here. Like somebody is crazy. And if it's me, that's fine. Like take me away. But like the it feels to me like they have taken something that you might

[00:31:29] talk about in a bar that you might have drinks like at a bar and be like, you know, is bowling alone a sport? Or it's like, you know, and they think that there is some kind of,

[00:31:41] you know, fact of the matter about these things that will be settled by most specific and obscure detail that will actually settle the question. Like that this is a true false question about whether chess is a game or not. And like like and you can make discoveries

[00:32:00] that will bear on the question of whether chess is a game. And that just seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of like language and the role of language, the function of language. It's it's like someone took a discussion in a in a Tarantino film. And like.

[00:32:19] Exactly. And like wrote metaphysics, like had a whole metaphysical debate about it. Or is this metaphysics? I don't know. I don't. I don't know. What is it? I never quite know when something is metaphysics. I guess I guess like a game, like it exists as a game.

[00:32:37] Then it then it is making an ontological claim. So it is metaphysics, but it's certainly not explicit. In the captured by this member of the set of games or something like. OK, hold on. So yeah, say what he's arguing, you know, in the sense that abstract. Sure.

[00:32:56] In this essay, I argue that chess is not a game. I begin by arguing the narrower point that chess is not is not a game in the sense of game developed by Bernard suits. Chess is not a Suziean game because chess lacks a prelucary goal.

[00:33:12] Now we might spend like just the rest of all of our time discussing what that a prelucary goal is. But chess lacks a prelucary goal, which is a goal that is identifiable before a game is played because no checkmate position is nobly achieved before chess is played.

[00:33:30] Checkmate is a post-lucary discovery about chess, not a prelucary goal of chess. And chess consequently has more in common with mathematics and physics that it has in common with darts, sprints and lawn bowling. I love that those are the examples. Who thinks that sprints are a game?

[00:33:51] Just the paradigmatic games of sprints and lawn bowling. And then the final sentence of the abstract is various objections or answers. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. That's awesome. Just fucking read. Just read till the end. I'll take care of it. That's based.

[00:34:11] We haven't done our conceptual analysis on space. Right. OK, there's a lot. There's a lot to unpack about this. A lot. There's a few things I want to say. One is that I like analytic philosophy more than you, obviously. So I look forward to opening segments

[00:34:27] because that's the only time nowadays that you'll ever permit analytic philosophy to be discussed. That claim entails what I'm about to say, which is that I actually think that there is something interesting, perhaps not valuable, but interesting in unpacking a concept in this way.

[00:34:47] And I think I mean, there's a big question as to what like the overall goal is that none of these papers ever spell out. And I think we've talked about the underlying assumption. Yeah, OK. So here's yeah. Here's what I think is going on.

[00:35:00] I think it has to be the case that that there is a belief that the concept of game that we all like employ when we're talking to each other and categorizing these things that it has come to share features that are not explicit,

[00:35:22] but that nonetheless really do dictate what we all mean by game. But that every once in a while will abuse the concept and include things in the category that we ourselves upon reflection would realize we ought not include. So if you have like the Internet loves the debate

[00:35:42] as to whether a hot dog is a sandwich. Right. And in that debate, like what you're doing is appealing through usually through example to intuitions about what is a sandwich and what is not. And it's fun.

[00:35:54] And it's fun because we all do seem to share some sort of rules. And like I saw a tweet thread the other day where someone like bit the bullet and said, a sandwich is this. And everybody was tweeting back with counter examples.

[00:36:06] I don't remember what the specific claim was. This is what this is. That that's the proper arena for this kind of question is Twitter. But why not say like take that tweet thread and unpack it and write it, you know, albeit poorly, like in a real paper?

[00:36:21] Like that's why I say it's not valuable, but it's but it's not crazy. It's crazy in that, I think when you publish it in Synthes, which is a good journal and I never pronounce that out loud. It's Synthes. I always say thin synthese in my mind.

[00:36:37] I think it's Synthes. I defer to you. Certainly, if not, then I've been making a fool of myself. Two ways in which you've discovered you might be crazy. Yeah, which I fully accept that that's a possibility.

[00:36:51] But like it feels like I think the assumption when you're talking about whether a hot dog is a sandwich is that OK, I mean, there's not like this is some kind of fact that could be discoverable through like ultimately it's up to you whether you decide whether,

[00:37:10] you know, like and the value of those kinds of discussions is it makes you think about like, well, what are these things that aren't even transparent to me? These assumptions that I have about what a sandwich is. But only in the sense that, you know, like, oh,

[00:37:26] I like I didn't know that I was thinking about sandwiches in this way. That's interesting. What it doesn't do is show show you though I'm mistaken about whether like there's no way to do that because there's just not a fact of the matter.

[00:37:41] It is it is a vague word that either can or can't apply to hot dogs, right? Like it's not something that is settled. There's that like I don't like this is what I mean, the underlying assumptions.

[00:37:53] Like is there like a platonic reality in which like of a sandwich that like doesn't have hot dogs that, you know, the conditions of of a sandwich like don't apply to hot dogs.

[00:38:05] I just like I don't know what they think would like be the truth maker of their claims. Yeah, so this is why I think like maybe Hickson and people on Twitter think that they're they're doing metaphysics, but I don't think that you have to.

[00:38:21] Like I think that actually that would be no definitely not. I think that would be a mistake to think that, you know, because obviously sandwiches. A rose like the concept arose out of like you say, sort of a vague label for some practice we engaged in.

[00:38:37] I've put in the Earl of Sandwich. Play cards. But but so if you set aside that, which I think is kind of a crazy claim that there is the discovery of like some like that we peeped into the Platonic Cave and found the game.

[00:38:53] Well, no, we peaked out of it, peaked out of sorry, the Platonic Cave and found the game. If you set that aside and say, no, it's simply that we deploy these concepts with rules that we're not even sure of. And let's see what those rules are.

[00:39:09] I think it's it's fun and interesting because or else people wouldn't argue back about the sandwich thing like when you when you say like, OK, here I swear to God, this is what a sandwich is. It's anything that is between two bread products.

[00:39:24] And like somebody says, oh, OK, like is a wrap a sandwich or whatever. And then you can say, oh, shit, no, I don't I don't think it is because I would never I would never use that as a sandwich. And then you say, so what do I mean?

[00:39:37] Now, again, I think that this is all a game, but I think it's a game with rules. It's not complete bullshit. It's like a game of discovering what rules we use. If you want to say fuck it, a hot dog sandwich, who cares what a sandwich is?

[00:39:51] Then sure. And maybe it shouldn't be published in Synthes, but but. Yeah, like I agree with you. I think it's where it gets ridiculous is where it goes beyond getting people to kind of reexamine their assumptions about how they deploy

[00:40:05] this concept and more like here's this weird chess position that you don't know whether it's actually could have happened in a game or not. It's like a weird mate that it's not clear, whether it could have come up in a game or not.

[00:40:21] And because of the existence of these kinds of positions, chess is not a game. It's like, no, we didn't have any assumptions at the level of detail that they're talking about. Number one and number two, there's no reason to think that it will all be

[00:40:39] explained by a tight theory, whether it like just a necessary insufficient conditions kind of theory, which is how like this paper, which we should talk about looks at it right? There's no reason to think that the way we deploy concepts is in that

[00:40:53] manner of necessary and sufficient conditions. And once you realize that that is a completely unjustified and borderline insane assumption to make about a word like or a concept like sandwich or game, this was a Wittgenstein's point.

[00:41:07] Right? Like once you realize that then OK, this is this is something we can do that's fun and maybe enlightening and maybe therapy as Wittgenstein says, but like it's not what it poses as. You know, like, like some kind of like discovery where

[00:41:25] like we have to pick a seat, the most the theory that best suits the concept because you just don't. That's not how it works. Yeah. So I do think there has to be the intention in in writing something like this, that there is true discovery being made.

[00:41:42] And I can't get fully on board with that. Here's what I think is really bad about the way analytic philosophy has gone. And I think this paper is a good example of it. Sure, you can start with a question.

[00:41:56] What is a sandwich and we can have these fun debates on the internet? And then somebody starts off by saying, you know what, fuck it, I'm going to write a treatise on what makes a sandwich. And so they lay out like with all the examples that they've got

[00:42:10] from the internet and people's intuitions about what is and what isn't a sandwich. They lay out kind of like a set of conditions that they think makes a sandwich. Yeah. And then they say, I'll die on this hill.

[00:42:22] Yeah. Well, then somebody comes along and says, well, so and so said that this is what sandwiches were. And I'm going to show how like assumption three was wrong. And then they come up with like a theory of what sandwiches.

[00:42:34] Yeah. And then all of a sudden you have people replying to people replying to people and the concept that they're using by that point actually seems so divorced from the concept we started with because they've been trying to rule follow the whole time.

[00:42:49] And like the bullet like so that you have like five people who have bitten a bullet. And so then you get to like this guy, Bernard Suitz, who has like now like whatever the dominant theory of what a game is.

[00:43:01] And this guy is like trying to use that framework. And it's completely like divorced from anything that would be in a discussion over beers between guys. And exactly. I think this paper goes like begins and ends past like anything interesting that I would learn about the way

[00:43:21] I deploy the concept of game. You know, because it's already like five steps in. I think you described it perfectly how it gets there. Like people put up this theory, then somebody objects like to one of the conditions and then that leads to a whole thing.

[00:43:38] And that's where this is. So so here's here's Suitz's definition. Suitz definition is it's a classic definition of game. A game must have a pre-luxury goal. Right? We'll talk about what that means in a second, right?

[00:43:53] So he's just going to assume in the at first that a game has to have a pre-luxury goal, which he considers convincing. And then and then he's going to argue then that chess is not a game because it doesn't have a pre-luxury goal.

[00:44:09] My argument up to section three will be all games have pre-luxury goals, P1 chess lacks a pre-luxury goal, P2. Therefore chess is not a game. That's the conclusion. In the final section, this is where the like in the final section,

[00:44:25] I abandoned Suitz and the grasshopper and argue more generally that chess is not a game. Like that's that's a sentence in the final section. I abandoned Suitz and the grasshopper and argue more generally that chess is not a game.

[00:44:38] I was so confused at first, like what the grasshopper was. Like it's not it just it becomes clear later on. But it's very funny because like the grasshopper is something Suitz made up. It's no reason to include the grasshopper in the introduction to the paper.

[00:45:01] It's like it's it's they're trying too hard to be Lewis Carroll. Mm-hmm. That's what this had a whole Lewis Carroll kind of like, you know how like people started to do bad Tarantino movies after Tarantino came out?

[00:45:20] Then the next section is the chess objection to the to the grasshopper. And you wonder if he's just fucking with us at this point. I don't think so. I don't think so. But I don't know that that in line with our previous discussion.

[00:45:35] I don't know that even he knows. So our discussion. So a game for Suitz is an activity directed at achieving a pre-luxury goal using only looser means in accordance with constitutive rules, which are accepted by adopting a looser attitude. This is like why can't you just write well?

[00:45:56] Like what? I know that this is technical writing and like there's reasons to to shortcut your writing by using the language that other people have used. But honestly, like would it would it be that difficult to just say it and plain it like this is not.

[00:46:10] None of these are words. Proloser is not a word. Looser is not a word. You get illusory later and you can kind of. Right. You work your way backward. Yeah, you're like. OK. Yeah. Yeah. So like let me just ask you like what is your sense

[00:46:28] of what a preluxury? Well, this is the big problem. I thought I understood it. The preluxury goal is whatever the end goal of the game is. So in basketball, to score more points than your opponent, like the example gives you or to put the ball in the basket.

[00:46:46] The basket, right? That's right. Yeah, because winning is different from. Yeah. Like whatever the objective is, like, you know, cross the finish line in a race, although that's not a game. I don't know why he uses races. Like a race is not a game. Like it's sprints.

[00:47:02] Maybe sprints is the game. So yeah, whatever the end state, I think his language is the end state of affairs of the game is like the clear goal that you need. That you don't need the rules to describe. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:47:15] That like that that you could describe the goal of basketball or sprints or lawn bowling. I don't actually know. I couldn't but somebody presumably could without giving the rules of the game. I think the loosery means are means that are consistent with the rules. That's right. Yeah.

[00:47:39] In accordance with constitutive rules, which are then accepted by adopting a loosery attitude. Now that I don't know what that I guess that just means like you're you're in it in the sense that like, all right,

[00:47:55] I got to get the ball through the hoop, but I know I can't. Right. Like I can't offensive goaltender or whatever. Like I can't just sit on the top of the hoop and putting. So like I'm adopting the attitude that is the attitude necessary to play

[00:48:07] the game under the rules. Yeah, he says to illustrate suits notion of games. Consider golf, for example, whose perluciary goal is to get a ball in the hole. You cannot just drop the ball in the hole. However, you must follow the less efficient means

[00:48:21] of getting the ball in the hole that are established by the rules. The reason we obey these difficult rules is simply to make golf possible. That's the loosery attitude. I am just learning so much about how I think of games. Then I love this sentence, right?

[00:48:36] At this point, the grass offers interlocutor in the dialogue. Skepticus announces that he will raise an objection to this definition. I shall argue that your account of the perluciary goal has produced too narrow a definition. You take this thing, perlucary goal, that I don't think anybody

[00:48:54] brings to their concept of game, nor finds illuminating when explained what that means. But now the objection isn't to the the account of games having perlucary goal. The the objection is that he's defined perlucary goal, this made up word, too narrowly definition.

[00:49:17] So it's like you have this made up word. No, no, he's saying that the perlucary goal has produced too narrow a definition of a game by saying that. That's fair. I think that I use that, like, even though I don't use perlucary goal,

[00:49:32] I think that we use it when you say, like, if you're trying to teach somebody a brand new game, it often helps to just point out what the end state needs to be. So like you're playing, I don't know, like sorry on a board game.

[00:49:44] And you're like, look, you just got to get your piece, all of your pieces to this point on the board. That's like that's what you're doing. It often helps, but doesn't always help. And it's not connected to whether I think it's a game. Maybe maybe.

[00:49:58] I feel like we have to reflect on the jury is out, depending on how well the argument works. I mean, let's say let's just say that if there were a game where I couldn't specify the end state, it would be very difficult and I might not play it.

[00:50:11] It's not a game to me. If a game refuses to be played, is it like Monopoly? Fuck that. There's no end state. Well, this is actually like an issue in the paper that I also wanted to ask you about.

[00:50:28] So we're talking right now about whether it's a Suitsian game which has that condition and we'll talk about how the condition is not fulfilled because of illusory checkmates. But then, you know, he recognizes that not everybody has accepted

[00:50:43] the idea that a Suitsian game is are the only games, right? Right. So then he says in the final section of the paper, he will argue that the analysis of chess that he's that he's provided

[00:50:55] offers a more general conclusion that chess is not a game of any sort. Suitsian or otherwise. And then here's the really puzzling passage, right? Like that's a shocking, first of all, that he's going to like Suitsian or otherwise. But here's the puzzling part.

[00:51:13] Of course, chess can be played as if it were a game. Right. But the prevalence of the gamification of learning in recent years has shown us that nearly anything can be played as if it were a game.

[00:51:26] We can play math and science games, but math and science are not games. We can play chess games, but chess, like math and science is not a game. Do you think that is just pure gibberish? Or do you think it is saying something coherent

[00:51:44] if misguided or do you just agree with it? I I feel like, like with you, we didn't talk about this before that. That part, like I was like, well, write a paper on that.

[00:51:57] Like why? So if you what do you mean by playing it is as if it were a game? Like we're lying to ourselves. It's like a thick layer of self deception when I'm playing like online poker, you know. This is what I mean where there's Platonist assumptions

[00:52:13] because if you can play it and talk about it as if it were a game, but it's not a game, then that's not how I understand words and language. I play it having sex, but I'm only masturbating. But we can play like I think there's

[00:52:29] equivocation here if we can play math and science games, but math and science are not games. I guess that's like, yeah, you can play math games in like sixth grade. You know, like the teacher can set up math games where the goals to get

[00:52:44] like the most number of them right. But math and science are not games. And then the idea is chess is like that, except that the difference being only that every single person always plays chess as if it was games, whereas that's not true with math and science.

[00:53:03] Right? Yeah, it all does hinge on this like this technical definition of pre-luxury goal and why he says in chess it doesn't have him. And that like just is like shaving the ontology of games. Like he's just cut off like one of the one of like primary games

[00:53:22] played across the world by pointing out what is like, I think a pretty narrow technical definition of a goal because everybody like including on Liam's tweet on Twitter was like, no, checkmate is the goal. And checkmate is, you know, making it so that the king can't get captured

[00:53:39] like can't move without being captured. Well, that's like so this is the the move that he makes. But before we get that, I just want to know if you think it makes sense to say that we play chess all the time as if it were a game,

[00:53:54] but it's not a game. Does that make any sense? That's what I mean. I would want to hear a lot more like, you know, I can see why people would say. You drink soy milk and oat milk,

[00:54:05] and you're acting as if you're drinking milk, but you're not drinking milk. Like there's some way in which I like I don't find the idea objectionable to say you're playing it as if it were a game. But I see what you're getting at, though, because.

[00:54:20] If if I'm treating it like a game and enjoying it and having the attitude that it is a game, how much more does it need to be to be called a game? If nothing, very. Right. So if like if I'm working on an assembly line

[00:54:36] and it's just boring and tedious and like I'm like I'm like Lucy Ricardo when she's having to like put chocolates in the boxes or whatever in that classic and and I just in my mind to start pretending

[00:54:47] like they're little flies that I have to capture and I'm a frog. I've made up a game. It's a game. Like right. Like you've legitimately made up a game. Like I I made up a game where I would like throw a tennis ball at

[00:55:02] like this compost heap and when I lived in North Carolina that we have and like my dog would go get it. And like I like I made up a game. But like but like it's a game because I because I thought of it as a game

[00:55:14] and when like my brother came over or friends and we played the game, we treated it as a game. That's it. It's done. It's a game like there's no. I don't know. But this guy just this guy must run around saying, this is not a game.

[00:55:27] You know, you're not playing a game. Like you look up to like what's the New York Square where they always play chess? Oh yeah. In the park. Yeah. In the park. You know, this isn't a game. Right. Like just so you know.

[00:55:44] Now OK, so let's I actually think all joking aside, like the thing about illusory checkmates is I don't know, kind of interesting. It is interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I figured you like I'm not a test player. So you would get more out of this discussion because there's some

[00:56:01] interesting stuff about about the game of chess in here. But but but it completely disconnected, I think the interest is completely disconnected from the argument. So so the idea is that people will say, like you said, the illusory goal of chess is to checkmate your opponent.

[00:56:22] And what does that mean? Well, it means that you attack the king in a way that the king can't move. Right. So if that's what you think, now, that's before the rules are discussed. Like if you were trying to explain the purpose of chess,

[00:56:39] you would say to checkmate your opponent and then you would explain what that is. But according to the author, that can't be right because there are checkmates that could never come in a game. Right. So if all you're telling them is

[00:56:59] the goal is to checkmate, then you're not telling them really what the illusory goal is because they could be imagining a checkmate that you could never get on a chess board following the rules of chess. And somehow this is supposed to mean that chess lacks

[00:57:17] a illusory goal, which of course means chess is not a game in the Suitsian sense. Right. Yeah, it's that step that that I'm also having trouble with, which is the clearest way in which I understood it was when he talks

[00:57:33] about the historical fact of chess, which which I found super interesting where he where he says people set up the rules of chess, but it couldn't have been obvious that checkmate was a goal that you could achieve given the rules that you had set up.

[00:57:58] And so it appears to be like he's very cautious in saying, wait, wait, that's not true. So he says that that as likely when chess started getting played, the goal was simply to capture more pieces than the other person. And it wasn't until later that it became clear

[00:58:22] that checkmate was a state in which you could make the goal. So like you could set up the rules, you could say like, oh, I'm going to set up a board and give particular movements to all these pieces and still never realize that this

[00:58:36] the state of the board that is checkmate could be the. But this is that I read that as not a historical fact about the way it was developed, but just the complexity of chess is such

[00:58:48] that when you look at a certain position like he describes in diagram six, you don't know if that's legal or not. He says that, but he has a whole section. Hold on, let me find the section. First, I believe that I have established

[00:59:02] that checkmate is not a historically pre-loosery goal. And I think it is a very interesting fact, even if it does not entail a chess, not a game, suits you or otherwise. The earliest origins of chess have been lost in the mists of time.

[00:59:11] But if my analysis is correct, then the invention of chess could not have been like the invention of golf or most other games, the inventor of chess could not have started with the goal of chess and then built a game around it.

[00:59:21] The inventor could have defined checkmate just as we do and might even have laid out the pieces in a checkmate pattern before the first game of chess was ever played. However, because of the existence of a looser, checkmates, the inventor of chess could not have known with certainty

[00:59:32] until at least one game of chess had been played that looser, checkmates existed and that chess as we know it is therefore a possible game. The existence of looser, checkmates and of chess as we play today

[00:59:41] is a discovery made by moving chess pieces on a board according to certain rules. It is not pre-luxury given the way that the possibility of dropping a ball in a hole, crossing a finish line, swimming to the end of a pool

[00:59:52] or jumping over a higher bar than one's opponent are all pre-luxury givens. OK. And so he quotes somebody that says this conjecture is supported by what we do know about the early history of chess, which is the history of a game in nearly constant transformation

[01:00:06] until it finally settled down into its current form only a few hundred years ago. Quote, in early chess, the player who was robbed of all his men lost the game. Robbed of all the men? Yeah. So you had to not just pin.

[01:00:20] I guess you would the final move would be to capture. So I don't get this. My first reaction, I think when I read it was to say, well, like the origins of how a game developed doesn't affect like whether it's a game now.

[01:00:33] Like, who the fuck knows how baseball was developed or how, you know, like who knows, like all the different variations they thought of before. Like what makes chess different than like probably most games in that they went through an evolutionary period where the objective wasn't

[01:00:52] the same that it is right now? And I think he's trying to make the argument that logically it can't be a pre-luxury goal and he's providing evidence that that empirically it wasn't something, something, the complexity of what it means to put something in checkmate

[01:01:08] is not clearly obvious when you set up the rules of chess and the way that would be when you set up the rules of basketball, like the rules of basketball contain the goal. The rules of chess don't contain the goal.

[01:01:21] And so you can think up the rules of chess and and it still would be something that is not known until you played that first game of chess, that that could be something that you put on the board. It's not in the rules.

[01:01:37] Yeah, I guess I just don't get that. I don't think I do either. I'm trying to I'm trying to give it a fair shake. Like you might have this idea of like I have these pieces and I'm going to put them on a eight by eight board

[01:01:51] and I'm going to have them move in certain ways. And that seems interesting. And now I'm just going to figure out like how the pieces move and what would be like you can do a checkmate in like four moves. So you can it's not that it's

[01:02:07] impossible to imagine when you're conceiving of the game that that could possibly be a goal. And my understanding, at least originally, of Prolucery Goal was that it's not dependent on anything like the history of it. It's just dependent on how you describe the game,

[01:02:24] maybe to somebody who hasn't played or maybe to just somebody in general when you're describing it. Yeah. I mean, I have this vague sense of what he's trying to say, which is that you can say all of the things about how a chess board is set up

[01:02:40] and how the players are allowed to move and it's still not be clear that that end state of checkmate is what that's like. I mean, like that's true of football too, right? Like you could set up all the rules as there's no rule that says that very clearly.

[01:02:57] Yeah. Yeah. Like what if the goal is to get to like in darts or something? It's to hit a very specific score. And so that's actually an objection that some people were raising on Liam's tweet, too, which is like it doesn't seem that special to chess.

[01:03:14] Like it's not it's not just that you have to hit the bullseye in darts. Like, yeah, it's like no, not at all. And sometimes it's that you have to score like fewer points because you're closer to the target, you know, and football could have been like that.

[01:03:27] Football could have been you have to have the highest number of points that is, but it has to be like an odd number of points or something. I don't know. You settle on these things. Again, like I feel like now we're he's do we're doing what he's winning.

[01:03:40] Like we're doing what he wants. So this is though. This is why I like we can we can get sucked into conceptual analysis. I think I think I don't understand this argument. Like that's my charitable take at least. But my uncharitable one is that he is not clear

[01:03:59] with this this language like he could have written better. And it's not that it's like I think you could write this beautifully and it would still be completely inane. No, no, nothing in that. It either whether we understand it like it's pretty clear

[01:04:13] that we don't understand the argument. Well, so like it could be an inane argument that I understand and dismiss. So but I think OK, let's see if we understand it. So he gives a bunch of diagrams that show checkmates that could never happen based on the rules, right?

[01:04:29] And the first three are kind of obvious, right? There's one where this is the one that is going to haunt us. Just all all the queens and just this poor king in the top right corner.

[01:04:42] I guess H H eight and everything else is a queen, except for the white king at A1. Yeah, white queens and a black king. White queens. Interesting. Yeah. Not saying they should retract the paper, but. And maybe he's making a comment on white supremacy

[01:05:04] and also like women are fucking taking over. I'm sure this was the discussion he wanted people to have. This was what it was. There is one kind of interesting one, which is the but purely interesting from a chess, he gives us the diagram five. Why that was impossible?

[01:05:21] I mean, it's pretty like it wasn't immediately obvious to me why it was impossible. Like I had to take a second and be oh, yeah, I see that that's impossible. And there's a lot of chess problems. Like I used to do these about 15 years ago.

[01:05:34] Like I would do these chess problems and some of them really do fuck with the rules or play with impossible positions, you know? And in that sense, like they're puzzles. They're not games at that point. And that's fully I would agree with that.

[01:05:48] And if that's his point that just can often be used for like not as a game, then that's fine, you know? But I get the other than there's that sixth diagram, which is, is this a illusory checkmate or not?

[01:06:02] And the fact that we can't figure out whether it is is supposed to be really important for the argument. Right. I mean, the fact that there are illusory checkmates at all is supposed to be really important to the argument. But because illusory checkmates aren't. Just cheated checkmates.

[01:06:26] There it's something deeper that's like supposed to show that merely saying that you have to trap your king to trap the opponent's king isn't enough because there are all these illusory ones. But again, I'm not sure how this.

[01:06:43] And how is that different from saying like the goal is to like put the ball in the end zone without saying jumping from the stands into the end zone with the ball won't like like what that's what this is the part of it

[01:06:56] that I don't get. I'm sure he has an answer. Like if he was here, he could tell us. But this is why the whole thing just spins into craziness. Well, and and he goes like he goes into like these distinctions about like distinguishing between the institution of chess

[01:07:16] versus the game that's being played that supposedly saves his argument from some some deep objection. And at that point, he completely lost me where when you're distinguishing between like what I what he means by institution versus game, I just don't I don't.

[01:07:36] I lost the desire to play this game. I take back, he must think that this is metaphysics because or else why why bother in section six? He says if the argument above is sound, then chess is not a game in the sense developed by suits.

[01:07:54] But this does not. It's cool that his name is suits, actually. But this does not entail that chess is not a game since suits his theory of games may be flawed. Thank you for that concession.

[01:08:07] More argument is needed to prove that chess is not a game in any sense. And so then he says he's going to do that, which you sort of wonder why, you know, you wouldn't start with that. He says a single section can't do that.

[01:08:21] Well, but you had more sections if you didn't thing with the Suzy and game because I don't think anybody embraces that beyond like the weirdos that are in this debate. It's like a Fermat's last theorem, like I don't have space to show how awesome this proof is.

[01:08:37] This is where the thing about, you know, is it lucrative or not being uncertain? This is where that plays into his argument. I don't know if you had checked out by this point. Where are you? So like on page 19 of the PDF

[01:08:56] right here, where he says the crux of this paper is the existence of illusory checkmates. But not just that they're illusory, but that it can't be pointed to very far in advance and because of the complexity. Yeah. So he says these are interesting philosophically

[01:09:10] because of what they entail about the nature of chess. Illusory checkmates demonstrate that the goal of chess, illusory checkmate, is not pre-lustry, but rather post-lustry, both logically and historically. The fact that checkmate is possible within chess is knowable only by playing chess.

[01:09:23] Without playing chess, we can know that the chess pieces can be arranged on the chess board so that the definition of checkmate is satisfied. But we can wonder, is such an arrangement of pieces realizable by following the rules of chess? Are there any illusory checkmates?

[01:09:38] For all we know before playing chess, chess might be like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces do not all fit together no matter how hard we try. We always end up with holes in the picture or missing pieces.

[01:09:47] Before we play chess, we have no way to know that the pieces fit together to create checkmate in a game. For all we know, prior to playing chess, all checkmates are illusory and chess is an impossible endeavor.

[01:09:56] Lusory checkmates are not things we lay down as goals ahead of the invention of chess. They are discoveries made by people who engage with the rule-governed universe of the chess board and its pieces.

[01:10:06] So does this depend on the fact that the rules were in place before the goal was in place? Yeah, that's what I was trying to say earlier. But I don't think that that's necessarily true. Do we know that the knight always moved like the knight moved?

[01:10:21] Like they just came up, they were like, this can't be questioned. How each of the pieces move. Now let's figure out an objective. I don't think that's like certainly nothing he says suggests that that was the history. The pieces and how they move and the rules themselves.

[01:10:37] Never mind a rule like en passant or something like that. Right. Like I guarantee that not all of those rules came before the checkmate was an objective. Right. Some of them might have come after and I don't know if that would change his view.

[01:10:54] Like if a substantial, like if it used to be that all pieces moved the same. But then people realized that checkmate was a possible end state. They made that the goal and started saying, well, now let's make the knight move this way

[01:11:08] because that can be a way to achieve checkmate. Then it seems like it would be a game. But I kind of like whether or not it's a game like fuck that. I kind of like the idea that people set down the rules of chess

[01:11:25] and started playing and didn't quite know whether or not you could ever trap a king properly. Right. That's kind of cool. There was certain things set in stone. There were certain things set in stone about chess.

[01:11:39] And then it's like, well, let's see like what we can do with this. You know, like you would do with like a theory and science or something. I think that's what he wants to say. Yeah. I don't think it has anything to do

[01:11:49] like it just to me is points to the beauty of the complexity of the game. And and that's where I'm happy to say, well, buddy, like let's go play a game of chess. Yeah. And I guess chess, you know, given the popularity of puzzles

[01:12:08] and of all sorts of, you know, ways of approaching chess that don't involve playing somebody and trying to checkmate them. It's true that chess give we might be just buying it's true that that chess offers a kind of world of possibilities

[01:12:26] that some sports don't, although I bet you could do or not sports, but games don't. I bet you could do this for a lot of different kinds of games, you know, games like it's not the only conflict. That's what I was curious about.

[01:12:41] I was curious about like how many things that we would consider games fit into that, like would get would get sliced off by his ontological razor. Yeah. Again, to be very clear, like I think that is not

[01:12:56] like that is a complete pseudo question, whether this means it's a game. But it might point to something different about chess than from lawn bowling or sprints, you know. Right. Yeah. And it could be interesting just for that reason. Like so.

[01:13:12] And then ends kind of mystically, which I like, right? Like he starts talking about mathematics and chess in the mind of God, maybe a branch of mathematics. So he starts really going metaphysical. And then it gets sort of mystical at the end.

[01:13:28] He says, however, chess is not physics either because chess is not about anything. It represents nothing beyond itself, except perhaps metaphorically. You might say that the universe of chess that we discover is midway between the worlds of heaven and earth, between mathematics and physics.

[01:13:45] As Stephen Zway passionately remarks in the chess story, I guess a book that he wrote. And he says he concludes with the memorable passage that inspired that paper. But I like that. Yeah, it's cool. It's something we discover. Yeah, it's like it's Platonism at that point, you know.

[01:14:03] And I'm down for that. Fuck it. Good job, Michael Hixon. You got you got more out of Tamler the analytical, the analytic philosophy side of Tamler that I think has happened for years. That's true. All right. Well, we thought this was an opening segment,

[01:14:25] but I think it might have like might be one of our most important main segments. It's true. Like, like I'm a little confused right now. Am I convinced by grasshopper? He's standing over you. It's a giant. It's definitely a giant grasshopper.

[01:14:52] And he's like with his little like legs together, you know, like just like. Chess is not a game. I told you, I told you. Yeah, I am absolutely fascinated by the insane possibilities of a chessboard.

[01:15:11] Yeah, it really is like that every chess game could be played and never be repeat like you'd never repeat like in an eight by eight board. It's like infinity in an eight by eight board. Yeah, it is a very mystical kind of game.

[01:15:26] It lends itself to that kind of thinking because of its just infinite complexity. Somebody suggested a while back that we do Herman Hesse's the Glass Bead game, which I read a long time ago, maybe 15 or 20 years ago.

[01:15:42] But it plays with a lot of these kinds of questions actually about like, you know, the the the interplay of games as a kind of metaphysical and spiritual enterprise. Yeah, it might be fun to do.

[01:15:56] It would have to be like a summer thing because it's it's a real novel. But yeah. Yeah, the weird studies guys have a nice couple of episodes that reminded me about reading it. And I remember liking it a lot. Yeah, I'm proud.

[01:16:10] I can't believe we didn't talk about the vibrating anal beads controversy. Oh, my God. Shall we close the episode by talking about that? Sure. I forgot to even prepare by reading anything about it. But if you. Yeah, I didn't either. I could talk about the poker one.

[01:16:28] But oh, yeah. That, you know, I think there was a big scandal where it looked like people are using computers to signal the chess players moves via the use of anal beads. That's it's so brilliant if it's true. Do you think this could be like a legal defense?

[01:16:49] Like you can't cheat if it's not a game. Chess is not a game. Therefore, I do not see it. Yes, absolutely. Maybe Michael Hixon wrote this just so that he could be a legal expert. Because they'll bring him in.

[01:17:02] Yeah, I mean, like expert witnesses get paid a shitload of money. You know, they do. So like it would also turn like a checkmate that we thought was Lucery and something that might be illusory or post-luxury or quasi-luxury, maybe because it's legal in a certain sense.

[01:17:21] But also not because of the anal bead. Imagine figuring out a way to both win at chess and get that sweet vibration in your ass. I mean, it's win-win. The next day, like everything in life after that is just. Downhill. And there's going to.

[01:17:44] There's a lot of those kinds of things now, you know, there was one in poker, which hasn't been settled yet, whether the woman actually did cheat via the use, not of anal beads, I think, in this case, but of some kind of vibration. There's always vibration.

[01:17:58] You know, magicians use a little device for like mind reading stuff where they'll communicate to the person doing mind reading via like like straps your ankle. It's like a little thing that taps you and they call it the thumper.

[01:18:16] So so I'm, you know, cheaters use thumper is a lot. I'm surprised that it hasn't happened. Is that cheating at magic and at magicianing? You know, it's interesting because there are rules to magic, you know, generally agreed upon rules about what is like bad practice in magic.

[01:18:36] And that's not. So like if you can find a way to communicate for a mind reading act, that's not what is considered cheating is having a stooge in the audience. So if like if a stooge says like, oh, my God, you guessed it or whatever. That's actually bad.

[01:18:54] Yeah. Are there ones that are kind of on the borderline, like using like a video camera or something? Oh, yeah, that's a good. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Actually magic through editing. Right. Is considered just bad practice.

[01:19:09] But by the way, Chris Angel is one of the guys who gets most blame for for like just being a terrible magician because he violates these rules. But yeah, if you didn't really do something and like you splice in footage

[01:19:20] of your levitating, you know, like after the fact, that's actually considered bad practice. And people have been accused of this a lot. Like there was a Netflix series where a guy did seemingly incredible things and he swears up and down that there was no camera tricks,

[01:19:37] but there's no way to prove it. It's just absolutely zero way to know whether or not they spliced in footage later on. So like could you write a paper saying not just that it was bad practice, but that it's not magic? Yeah.

[01:19:55] I find that much less aversive of paper, like an idea than you do. But maybe you don't find it. Like as long as we both agree that when I say it's not magic, I just mean that it's like it doesn't follow the rules. Yeah.

[01:20:09] And that the rules and maybe that the rules are like not just arbitrary, that there is some sort of order that has emerged so that you could predict even if somebody had never done something, you could predict whether or not that would be an instance of cheating.

[01:20:25] It's not just pure convention. And like I bet it would be very hard or just impossible and also unnecessary to specify exactly like in a general way, what is cool and what is not cool.

[01:20:39] You know, it's because if you try to say, well, it has to be hard. And if you have a stooge like anybody can do that. Well, I bet you can find a lot of counter examples to it has to be hard.

[01:20:50] You know, there's probably a lot of right. Like you can buy ready made gimmicks from a shop and make it seem like you have these powers, you know, of like. Yeah, I've done that. Like there's a great like mind reading one which has cards. Don't reveal. Oh, sorry.

[01:21:08] I'll cut that out. I loved that one. But that's the thing is like it's magic, but I could do it. It does take a little practice, but not much. And I could you have to remember what's on the other side. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. But it's pretty easy.

[01:21:22] Yeah, but that is a mindblower. You know, real magicians use that all the time because it's so mind blowing. And if you don't expect it, they'll like carry around that deck with them just in case. Like, OK, here's my first time somebody showed it to me.

[01:21:37] I was like, I need to know how to do it. Actually impossible. Yeah, yeah, like that's legitimately magic. And then he was like, I can't. And then but I think I was such a pain in the ass that it was like, all right,

[01:21:47] I'm not going to tell you, but it's called this. You could probably look it up on Google, but I don't think you should. And I did immediately. OK, I'm going to ask a final question. Yeah, if you splice this into the podcast at an earlier time,

[01:22:02] have you cheated on the podcast? Right. Is it a podcast? Is this a main segment? Is this a main segment? Sussine pa. You know, main segment. All right, join us next time on Very Bad Wizards.

[01:23:07] Just a very bad wizard.