George Duke wrote on Thu, Sep 10, 2009 01:48 PM EDT:
This says it pretty well:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=23569
We are more in control of the future of Chess/Chaos than anyone else. Do we
want Chaos out of Order? There are four over-all possibilities: O->O, O->C,
C->C, C->O. An example of order out of order: (1^3)+(2^3)+(3^3)+...+(n^3) =
(1+2+3+...+n)^2. It looks like some kind of re-arrangement, but it's not
at all. Most of culture has Order as the right-hand term but not
exclusively. ''Chess'' sounds like ''Chaos.'' Yet even Chess->Chess
is really of the type O->O, when refining the rules of OrthoChess 8x10, or
10x10, or 8x8 or 6x6 or 8x12 or any other size. Here's order C->O: draw
any arbitrary polygon and replace it by iterating its sides' midpoints
indefinitely until you see its change to ellipse. What's the purpose of
C->C? Answer: everyday calculation like greenhouse gases, for example, or
population explosions, or resource depletions. What's the purpose of O->C?
Answer, among millions: Spassky-Fischer or Kasparov-Deep Blue tournaments;
and all that excitement of free wills contending. Is Evolution Chaos/Order?
Chess/Other?
(NextChess has > 25 comments, so the first ones get lopped off without
arduous link.)