One of the memes put forth by ignorant narcissistic power-seekers — usually, but not always, from an extremist element (more often rightist than leftist) — is that their leader demonstrates that he's so much smarter than the inferior opposition by playing "multidimensional chess" instead of "checkers". The meme is ignorant not just because soundbites don't actually win disputes, but because its underlying analysis is flat wrong.1
As an illustration, consider the following two-dimensional chess opening (in modern notation):
| Mamedyarov v. Kasparov | |||
| Queen's Gambit Accepted Grand Tour (Croatia), 2021 | |||
| 1. | d4 | d5 | |
| 2. | c4 | d5 x c4 | |
| … | |||
Leaving aside that the superior (or at least higher-rated) player — Kasparov — actually lost this game, Black's second move illustrates the real problem with analogizing the real world to chess of any number of dimensions (or, for that matter, checkers): Deterministic outcomes. In the real world, there's a nonzero chance that Black's second move doesn't result in an actual "capture" because White's pawn on c4 fights back — maybe it destroys the attacking d5 pawn, maybe it merely repels the assault;2 "attempting a threatened action" isn't always successful. Then there's the alternating-serial-turn issue — show me an actual live conflict in which that happens.
One of the other problems with analogizing chess to the real world, obvious upon even fleeting thought, is that each player has instantaneous, complete knowledge of the entire board… which, in turn, is the entire universe. Everyone starts from the same position (even in Chess960); everyone has the same "player constraints," usually the amount of time to complete the match (or it's an automatic loss); and, at the grandmaster level, a plurality of games end indecisively — with a draw. Even this ignores the "everyone is playing by the same rules" and "everyone has the same objectives" problems, not to mention imbalanced forces, asymmetric boards, even cheating.
Only those ignorant of chess would compare any real-world conflict resolution or strategic conundrum to chess.3 I'll just end with a classic chessboard-inspired problem — a consequence of thinking of the pieces on the board as manipulable things easily replaced: Place one casualty (or war crime) on the lower-right-hand square of the board, and fill the board to the opposite side from right to left, then front to back, every time doubling the number of things on that square. How many casualties (or war crimes) are littering the board? To those playing any kind of chess with the real world, it doesn't matter.
- We'll leave aside, for the moment, the startlingly-above-expectation rate of serious mental and behavioral issues of chess grandmasters, perhaps epitomized by Bobby Fischer (but he's far from alone). More important in the abstract remains the ethical abyss created by treating human beings — individually and in aggregate — as easily-manipulable token-like pieces (of specified colors!) with no internal or inherent value. Not to mention contemplating the source of ivory used for the white pieces…
- In the real world, the c4 pawn probably obtains a preliminary injunction, or Security Council resolution, or pressure from the tournament organizers, so that the capture attempt never takes place. And, in the meantime, the players are playing enough other simultaneous games to give even Kasparov and Carlsen serious difficulty.
- That the military moved from deterministic to probabilistic "games" just after the Napoleonic era — and that every major "wargame failure" since has resulted from overdeterminism, such as the Schlieffen Plan — should be a hint about playing chess in the real world. Even the later attempts to blame the Schlieffen Plan's failure on von Moltke's modifications ignore the actual starting conditions… and that there was an opponent making other than rule-forced responses.