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Go is an ancient game, but during the First 500 Years, it became an important tool for both philosophical and scientific work. When Einstein was working on his great Theory, he often found himself stuck trying to get the numbers to work out right. Like all great men of science, he wandered down to the bar to wet his whistle and forget about his conundrums in order to solve them all the better the next day.

On a fateful day late in July of 1910, Einstein spent another fruitless day battering his head against a theoretical wall that had stumped him for almost two weeks straight. He travelled down to the pub and there ran into a man named Herman Hesse who was fiddling over a strange chessboard covered with tiny stones. Curious (and needing a seat), Einstein struck up a conversation with Hesse who explained that it was an Asian game called Go which he'd been introduced to during a trip overseas. Hesse had been drawn to the game although he hadn't found anyone local willing to play it with him.

Einstein was intrigued and sat down while Hesse explained the rules and they played a few very short games (all of which Hess won, although it was almost sheer luck that he did). Einstein comprehended the elegance of the game and he started thinking about various mathematical strategies that might be employed, but it was getting late so he went home to bed.

Just before dawn, Einstein shot up out of bed. In his own words:

"In a flash I had the answer. The stones were like particles, charged with various moral qualities and the grid they sat upon was the aetheric webbing that held the cosmos together. Further, while each stone was complete in itself, only when looked at from above could any statement be made over whether the stone was part of a winning pattern or not. More than that, a stone could be said to be 'winning' in one context, but 'losing' in a larger one or it could be that a stone with no obvious influence on the game might still ultimately be the key to success. So too can particles upon the aetheric web be viewed in different contexts."

Einstein quickly looked up Hesse and started tinkering with the rules of the game to make it conform to the rapidly developing mathematical model of Reality he was constructing. Eventually, he published his Theory of General Absolutivity. To help explain his theories, he included the rules to the new version of Go he had created -- it had stones in six colors for each moral principle and the stones interacted based on freedoms and the position of other stones around it. Up to six people could play, each taking on the "side" of a morality but capable of playing any stone they wished. Sadly, the game was almost as incomprehensible as Einstein's theory for most people.

Hesse, as Einstein's unwitting lab partner, was one of the few people who could understand the game and found himself being beseiged by questions at the scientific conventions where he was suddenly a star guest. Realizing that Einstein's Go wasn't a good introduction, Hesse taught people how to play the basic game and then added in new elements over the course of several games. This programmed instruction clicked and Go (both basic and Aetheric) spread like wildfire.

For his part, Hesse couldn't care less about the scientific rammifications of the game, he was, at heart, a poet and the philisophical implications of the game was of far more interest. He found like-minded artists and taught them the game so they could explore the intellectual side of things. Since Hesse didn't want to spend all his time dealing with the scientists, he delegated a number of his promising artist-players to visit leading researchers and help them to understand the game and the theory. Eventually, this lead to a strong tradition of Mental Playmates? for all fields of scientific and artistic endeavor. Hesse himself got tired of playing with Einstein and quit playing with him and the lack of artistic sensibility has convinced many observers that this is a contributing factor to Einstein's martial tendencies.

Until his death in 1967*, Hesse was widely regarded as the Grandmaster of Aetheric Go. He could beat almost any opponent from any moral stance, but when playing as Beauty he was pretty much unstoppable -- regularly holding off five opponents deliberately working in concert to try and stop him. When he died, the world held two days of mourning and a massive memorial game was played in his honor.

Interestingly, no Machine Intelligence was ever a top-flight Aetheric Go player. Biointelligences consistently beat them at the game, but even the best BI could be challeneged by a human opponent as Kasparov proved during the groundbreaking Sigma Six Series? in 2008.

SEE ALSO: Einstein, General Absolutivity, Theory of, Mental Playmates?, Sigma Six Series?

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This is a G entry in the Lexicon of the Lost 500 Years.