You’re playing chess. You’re white, so it’s your move first. It’s a big board, and there’s a lot of pieces, so you’re not quite sure what to do.
Luckily for you, there definitely exists a rule that tells you the best possible move to play for every given configuration of pieces—the rule that tells you the move that maximizes the probability of victory (or since draws exist and may be acceptable, the move that minimizes the probability of defeat. Or maximizes the points you gain, 1 for a win and 0.5 for a draw, over an infinite number of games against the opponent in question—whatever.).
But many of these configurations of pieces will have more than one possible move to play, so it’s not like this rule is just a given. You have to figure it out.
So what is a rule? It’s something that tells you what move to play in any and every given position. Two rules are equal when, for every possible position, they tell you to play the same move.
When two rules are equal, we just merge them into one rule—they’re literally the same, after all. So let’s consider the list of all unequal rules—rules that differ in at least one move recommendation for at least one position from every other rule.
How many of these rules are there? Mathematically speaking, the answer is “a super-huge amount that would literally cause your mind to explode if you tried to hold them all in your head.” After all, there is a universe-eating number of possible chess positions (remember, this is a rule that works for all possible chess positions, even ones that would never happen in a real game). And in every chess position, the number of possible ways that rules can be distinguished is equal to the number of possible moves in that position.
So imagine each rule as a black ball, each attached to this really big wall in this vast infinite array. Out of this huge infinity of black balls, one of these balls gets a little pink dot placed on its backside, so you can’t see that it’s there.
Now, out of this huge infinite array, you have to find the one ball with the little pink dot on it. That is the challenge of finding the rule that tells you the best chess move for each position.
Is ethics just as hard? No! Ethics is insanely harder. Because ethics tells you a most ethical move possible for each chess position, which includes illegal moves and therefore there are more black balls corresponding to just the subset of ethical choices for chess positions!
Now consider that also Go exists, and checkers, and, Fortnite, and situations that aren’t even games at all, like most of everything in the universe.
There’s a ball for each way a rule can be distinguished from all other rules over the full list of all possible situations, including but hardly limited to chess situations.
One of them has a little pink dot on its backside. Go find it.
That is the challenge of ethics.
Yes, people disagree about which ball has the little pink dot on it! Yes, you can search your heart and soul and still not know which ball has the little pink dot on it! That does not mean there is not a ball with a little pink dot on it!
The pink-dotted ball exists!
Alas, the Babyeaters were looking for the ball with the little red dot on it, and the Super Happy people looking for the ball with the little blue dot on it. Looking for different colored dots, or disagreeing about which ball has the pink/red/blue dot on it, is the stuff that wars and trade are made of.
Luckily for you, there definitely exists a rule that tells you the best possible move to play for every given configuration of pieces—the rule that tells you the move that maximizes the probability of victory (or since draws exist and may be acceptable, the move that minimizes the probability of defeat.
If your opponent is a perfect player, each move has a 0% or 100% probability of victory. You can only maximize it in a trivial sense.
If your opponent is an imperfect player, your best move is the one that maximizes the probability of victory given your opponent’s pattern of imperfection. Depending on what this pattern is, this may also mean that each move has a 0% or 100% probability of victory.
How do you know? What even makes you think that “the pink-dotted ball exists”? How did you come to believe this? “What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?”
Notice that in life, unlike in chess, there is no agreed-upon metric for how well you’ve done. It’s not just that we don’t agree on which rule maximizes the expected score at game’s end; we also don’t agree just what exactly constitutes the ‘score’! (For that matter, we don’t even agree on what constitutes “game’s end”…)
In other words, suppose you somehow find the one ball with a pink dot on it. “Eureka!”, you shout, grabbing the ball and turning it around, “Look! The pink dot!”
Whereupon your friend Alice looks at the ball you’re holding and says “Eh? That dot isn’t pink at all. What, are you blind or something? It’s clearly orange.” And your other friend, Bob, asks, confused, “Why are we looking for a pink dot, anyway? It’s a green triangle we should be looking for, isn’t it?”
And so on. In short, ethics (and metaethics) is actually much, much harder than you make it out to be. In fact, it’s about as hard as looking for the proverbial black cat in the dark room…
we also don’t agree just what exactly constitutes the ‘score’!
The number of possible methodologies to maximise something-or-other maybe infinite… but you can still constrain it diwn by taking “moral” to mean something as a qualifier.
Go chess and fortnite are all amoral. They are not morally relevant.
If ethics had to guide you in every situation, not just a subset, then it would be insanely complex. Likewise, if any value counted as moral value. Make different assumptions, and suddenly things get easier. Maybe as few as ten rules.
Such games are not guaranteed to be morality free.
If you are playing against a chess player that will kill themselfs if they lose and their death is morally relevant then chess strategy becomes relevant (even if only for how to effectively lose)
You’re playing chess. You’re white, so it’s your move first. It’s a big board, and there’s a lot of pieces, so you’re not quite sure what to do.
Luckily for you, there definitely exists a rule that tells you the best possible move to play for every given configuration of pieces—the rule that tells you the move that maximizes the probability of victory (or since draws exist and may be acceptable, the move that minimizes the probability of defeat. Or maximizes the points you gain, 1 for a win and 0.5 for a draw, over an infinite number of games against the opponent in question—whatever.).
But many of these configurations of pieces will have more than one possible move to play, so it’s not like this rule is just a given. You have to figure it out.
So what is a rule? It’s something that tells you what move to play in any and every given position. Two rules are equal when, for every possible position, they tell you to play the same move.
When two rules are equal, we just merge them into one rule—they’re literally the same, after all. So let’s consider the list of all unequal rules—rules that differ in at least one move recommendation for at least one position from every other rule.
How many of these rules are there? Mathematically speaking, the answer is “a super-huge amount that would literally cause your mind to explode if you tried to hold them all in your head.” After all, there is a universe-eating number of possible chess positions (remember, this is a rule that works for all possible chess positions, even ones that would never happen in a real game). And in every chess position, the number of possible ways that rules can be distinguished is equal to the number of possible moves in that position.
So imagine each rule as a black ball, each attached to this really big wall in this vast infinite array. Out of this huge infinity of black balls, one of these balls gets a little pink dot placed on its backside, so you can’t see that it’s there.
Now, out of this huge infinite array, you have to find the one ball with the little pink dot on it. That is the challenge of finding the rule that tells you the best chess move for each position.
Is ethics just as hard? No! Ethics is insanely harder. Because ethics tells you a most ethical move possible for each chess position, which includes illegal moves and therefore there are more black balls corresponding to just the subset of ethical choices for chess positions!
Now consider that also Go exists, and checkers, and, Fortnite, and situations that aren’t even games at all, like most of everything in the universe.
There’s a ball for each way a rule can be distinguished from all other rules over the full list of all possible situations, including but hardly limited to chess situations.
One of them has a little pink dot on its backside. Go find it.
That is the challenge of ethics.
Yes, people disagree about which ball has the little pink dot on it! Yes, you can search your heart and soul and still not know which ball has the little pink dot on it! That does not mean there is not a ball with a little pink dot on it!
The pink-dotted ball exists!
Alas, the Babyeaters were looking for the ball with the little red dot on it, and the Super Happy people looking for the ball with the little blue dot on it. Looking for different colored dots, or disagreeing about which ball has the pink/red/blue dot on it, is the stuff that wars and trade are made of.
If your opponent is a perfect player, each move has a 0% or 100% probability of victory. You can only maximize it in a trivial sense.
If your opponent is an imperfect player, your best move is the one that maximizes the probability of victory given your opponent’s pattern of imperfection. Depending on what this pattern is, this may also mean that each move has a 0% or 100% probability of victory.
How do you know? What even makes you think that “the pink-dotted ball exists”? How did you come to believe this? “What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?”
Notice that in life, unlike in chess, there is no agreed-upon metric for how well you’ve done. It’s not just that we don’t agree on which rule maximizes the expected score at game’s end; we also don’t agree just what exactly constitutes the ‘score’! (For that matter, we don’t even agree on what constitutes “game’s end”…)
In other words, suppose you somehow find the one ball with a pink dot on it. “Eureka!”, you shout, grabbing the ball and turning it around, “Look! The pink dot!”
Whereupon your friend Alice looks at the ball you’re holding and says “Eh? That dot isn’t pink at all. What, are you blind or something? It’s clearly orange.” And your other friend, Bob, asks, confused, “Why are we looking for a pink dot, anyway? It’s a green triangle we should be looking for, isn’t it?”
And so on. In short, ethics (and metaethics) is actually much, much harder than you make it out to be. In fact, it’s about as hard as looking for the proverbial black cat in the dark room…
The number of possible methodologies to maximise something-or-other maybe infinite… but you can still constrain it diwn by taking “moral” to mean something as a qualifier.
Go chess and fortnite are all amoral. They are not morally relevant.
If ethics had to guide you in every situation, not just a subset, then it would be insanely complex. Likewise, if any value counted as moral value. Make different assumptions, and suddenly things get easier. Maybe as few as ten rules.
Such games are not guaranteed to be morality free.
If you are playing against a chess player that will kill themselfs if they lose and their death is morally relevant then chess strategy becomes relevant (even if only for how to effectively lose)