Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

MemeBusters Thursday: 11 Dimensional Chess

MOOOOOOOSE!  I’ll stop beginning my posts like this when I get over being so happy to be here.

A meme is “an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.

A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures

Wiki link

Namaste Friends!  This will be the beginning of a continuing series I’ll conduct on Thursdays.  The goal of the series will be to examine and learn to deconstruct ideas being used against the President and Democratic Party.

This is going to be an exercise where I’m going to ask for participation from the audience.  I’m going to request assistance uncovering the next idea, and I’m going to request analytical help from TPV in assessing whether the counters and explanations presented will be effective.

Sound like fun?  Let’s begin!

I think one of the most sickening memes I see around the net is the one of 11 dimensional chess.  That the actions of this President are so arcane and inside a game really complicated that few people actually play that his moves can’t be understood so lets not understand them.

Well it’s not 11 dimensional chess it’s just chess.

I happened to have taught myself to play chess.  I learned on the internet chess server, and I’ve played to a consistent level of 1800 and spend months over 2000.  So, let me introduce you to a few basic concepts from JUST CHESS from a dude who didn’t even need a lesson to understand it.

CONTROL THE CENTER

The king lives there.  You can mess around on the wings if you want, but most likely what’s going to happen if you do that is your opponent is going to smash up your middle and checkmate you.  So the first thing you want.  The first thing you fight for.  The last thing you want to give up is the MIDDLE.

THE KING IS THE GAME

In the middle there is a piece that is the actual focus of the game.  You may sacrifice down to just two pieces and if those two pieces checkmate the opponent.  You win.  Lots of people love to get hung up on this idea.  Oh no’s my queen is in danger, oh no’s my rook is gone, let me ever so hard fight to keep those things on the board, oops check mate.

YOU HAVE TO THINK

Now even I have to admit I hate long chess games.  My mind wanders, I want things to move, move, move, so I tend to personally play games that have 3 minutes per side per game, and to be honest I prefer a 1 minute game.  That’s me being lazy and not wanting to think.  Picking targets and places to attack are dynamic in a game, and every move will make you have to reassess the value AND ASSUMPTIONS BEHIND everything on the board.  You have to ponder, there can be no snap judgments unless you want to lose, or you have memorized 1000’s of patterns or have some savant like ability to assess.  Or you can take the time to THINK before you start making moves.

I suppose what troubles me about the meme is that it assumes what happens is unknowable.  It’s not.  There is no need to ascend to higher plains to know what’s going on just sit down and think about the game.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 44 Comments

44 comments

  1. Peter Jukes

    Deconstructing the memes. I’m with you. When it comes to cliches, taunts and myths about politics, I think you’ve got a long running series.

    Chess is already multidimensional, so the phrase begs deconstructing. The game itself is played on four dimensions, but at every moment – a bit like the multiverse theory – there are potential pathways or virtual dimensions springing off in all directions. Indeed, eleven dimensional chess is a pretty easy game.

  2. bubbanomics

    a put-down of sorts.  Kind of the high-school smart kids are uncool meme.  Obama’s smart… Bush is cool.  Ugh.

    Reminds me in a way of my father’s favorite joke.  A hillbilly sends his son off to college, the first person in their community to “make it.”  The kind comes back home for Christmas break, and the father takes the kid to the general store.  “Son, tell the folks here what you’ve been learning up at college!”  The son says “π r2,” at which point the father hits the kid on the head and exclaims “Boy, what are they teachin you?!?  Everbody knows pie are round.  Cornbread are square!”  

    This joke was the only reason my father approved of my being a math major.

  3. HappyinVT

    the president and anyone who might think the administrration has maybe thought things through.  Kind of like dategate.  I believe they had an agreement with Boehner but when the Speaker got his orders from Limbaugh the White House looked at their options and agreed with Thursday.  And it worked out.  Nothing magical or plotting just common sense.

  4. sberel

    It’s not a game, and I don’t think he thinks of it as such . . . I can’t know anyone’s mind, but in my view, he acts like he takes it seriously.

    Not that chess isn’t serious –

    Good post, good idea.

    I’d like to see at some point a discussion of why people focus on the President & Federal level rather than be active / focus on the local level where their own power is.  

  5. Drewid

    I never liked the 11th dimensional chess meme. I think it was actually started by supporters of the President back in the primaries though now it is used as a put down. In either case I feel it doesn’t have much worth.

    Really enjoyed the analogy of controling the center.

  6. Chris Blask

    Please sir, can I have more?

    I’ve always like the 11D Chess meme – it speaks to the subtle complexity of human affairs, particularly Presidential human affairs – but I see your point(s). From a marketing perspective it has the downside of Elitism, something you wouldn’t use makeup to highlight on this Pres.

    Memes, though. (mmm).

    I only recently found out that some folks think meme=”current fad idea on the Intertoobs”. Yes, those are memes. So is “blue”, “Christianity”, “Syria”, “Toothpaste”…  Memes are just information packets, like everything else, they just evolve gigafactors faster than anything else.

    Early in the universe you can think of the pace of Galactic Evolution. Billions of years leads to slow change on that scale.

    You could look at our own world in the frame of Geologic Evolution. Millions of years changing the landscape. All that information represented by mountains and valleys calculating itself with tectonic pressure and erosion.

    Biological Evolution happens at a blinding pace by comparison. Little bugs perform functions on vast packets of data over minutes and hours. Big complex beasts conjoin encyclopedic volumes of information and produce output in mere years.

    Memetic Evolution, though. In the time it took to write this comment the set of memes that are maintained in the matrix behind my brow has input more data than the genome of a Moose. Enough information has been processed by that memetic engine to describe the paltry datum of every atom in the Santa Cruz Mountains as it relates in space and time with each other. The supermassive blackhole at the center of a galactic supercluster, with its staggering jets of energy sweeping clear bubbles in the intergalatic gaseous medium, has been modeled in loving detail and run forward and backwards in time.

    Memes are more than a term, a fad, a way of looking at things. They are the information structure the universe has created to describe and change itself. Memes bouncing around in this skull of mine, impressed on a matrix with more pathways than there are atoms within 15B lightyears of it, are the universe’s way of getting a second chance. Only the offspring of the memes we diligently produce can save the Earth from falling into the Sun. Only memes stand a chance of reversing the physics of the universe which are tearing it apart.

  7. Progressive Witness

    Amberley excelled at chess–one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind. – Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”

    Damn, that should be my sig here or something….

    PW

  8. Shaun Appleby

    In regard to:


    …one of the most sickening memes I see around the net is the one of 11 dimensional chess.

    While this was clearly a cynical criticism of Obama and his followers back in primary days it can be a very useful vehicle for torturing his detractors when thrown back at them at appropriate moments; with equal if less acerbic sarcasm.  Like when a certain candidate failed to anticipate delegate numbers from various caucuses, for example.

  9. sricki

    I will definitely look forward to it weekly! The memes crack me up, a lot of ’em — just like all the “gates” did (I even wrote two diaries about the gates during the primaries here on the Moose). But silly as some of them are, they can be very damaging and destructive. Deconstructing them systematically in a regular series is a fabulous idea.

    And I adore chess, but I haven’t played in years. I bet I have no strategy left. 😉

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