Mathematical questions about Chess

Would you call this physically or mathematically finite ? 

I thought this was supposed to be "interesting" mathematical questions about chess ?

Does anyone know how much time the average sufferer of chess addiction wastes in a lifetime ?

Tuna ?....I believe in what you've seen. It's unimportant what others think. Your perception is your reality and I fully respect your reality.

Lola,

the number of positions is definitely finite. there are only 13^64 ways to put chess pieces on a labelled board, and thats counting things like all 64 squares occupied by black bishops, so there are far fewer ways to have a legal chess position.

This is definitely mathematically finite, as far as physically finite, I'm not sure what you mean by that...
The set of all distinct chess positions and the cardinality(size) of that set are abstract non-corporial types of things not physicals thing, so I don't think it would be described as "physically finite" 

which is larger, the number of ways to twist a rubik cube or the number of chess positions ?

Sean....I agree w/ you that the # of positions are finite.

But, we haven't found the exact total # of moves yet, right ? So, as far as we know ?....it could possibly be infinite, yes ?

Something tells you the # is not infinite, doesn't it ? That's your common sense helping you along here.

Now, imagine this: Imagine that noone can figure out where these chess pieces came from. They just appeared down at the parlor one day !........Would you believe me if I told you that they've always been there and were never actually made ? What does your common sense tell you here ?

Kinda fun isn't it ?....this common sense thing........

Pelesoccar, do you mean the number of distinct positions(legal or otherwise) on a rubik's cube or do you mean the number of distinct changes that can happen from a single twist(aka enumerate all possible positions, then for each ordered pair of positions count it if you can get from the first to the second in one move) or the number of mechanical single-segment twists that can be done regardless of the colors of the sqaures?

I'll have to think about the first two for a minute, but if you mean the third one, the number of distinct mechanical single-segment twists is  18 I believe(or 19 if you count the trivial twist) 

Lola, again I'm confused as to what you mean by the total number of moves, again if you mean the possible number of moves in a game, its definitely infinite unless you put some restriction such as "the game is automatically declared a draw if 50 moves have happened since the last pawn move or capture"

Shell_knight, you may have an idea of what that is... I'm a little confused by it. It seems like there's a question about the nature of infinity, then it seems to digress into something similar to the watchmaker's argument for the existance of god.

I think you're right.

The problem with the thought that everything has an origin is you must also assume that everything, at some point, didn't exist.  And if at some point nothing existed then why now is there something instead of nothing.

A bit like a child asking what's beyond the city, and beyond that, and beyond that until the adult must admit "I don't know, nobody knows." 

Except of course that some people like to think they know :p

You mean that other thread, Lola. I'd say it picked up some bozo comments by now. I haven't checked back, but I won't be bothering with the dumbass responses.

Shell_knight, 

What you talk of strongly reminds me of one of the biggest issues discussed in post-classical pre-modern(aka after Jesus but before machines) philosophy. 

Most of the philosophy done in medieval Europe was by christian theologists trying to make the Aristotlian model of the world compatible with the Christian model(Even as a heretic, Aristotle was still reveared in the church as one of the greatest thinkers of all time, albiet misguided in his ideas of the "unmoved mover")

They focused on many conflicts between Aristotlian views and the bible, but some of the most interesting(in my opinion) work done was on trying to refute the Aristotlian idea that the universe is eternal since movement must be preceded by movement(its more complicated than that, but thats the jist of a common argument), and you can follow that backwards forever.

Also they did a lot of work on what it means for God to have created ex nihilo(latin for "out of nothing"),(does it mean there was this thing, and it was called nothing, and it was changed into all the things we see today, or does it mean that there were no things, and then there were things), and if it would have been possible for god to have created a world that has lasted for eternity(does being created garuntee that you have a beginning in time, or could God create something without a beginning?)

Both these concepts are crucial to the watchmakers argument and the ideas that you've posted.

I personally am not a christian, but the thought processes of these incredably intelligent medieval philosophers is exciting regardless of your personal religious affiliation. 

And you're right, some pople definitely like to think they know, even though they have no rational basis or proof for it. I personally am in the school of thought that for those types of questions, its better to know that you don't know it, and furthermore to know that you couldn't possibly know it, but to still explore the question so you can better understand why exactly you couldn't possibly know it(because I've tried to "prove" that certain things are unknowable, but I have found no satisfactory way to do it, even though it is clear[almost trivial] that they are unknowable.)

Ohhh, this thread could get really good....fast........