I’m sorry to be this particular type of asshole but ... all chess is 4D chess, you fuckin nerds
truly it is I who is the fuckin nerd etc
Can someone who is a man please explain to these men how dimensions work
I’m literally dying someone help me
The moves! in chess! happen! sequentially! in time! regardless! of the depth! of the playing field!
THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE, WE ARE DESCRIBJNG THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE
It
doesnt
matter
what
the
value
of
the
Z-axis
is
because
the
very
nature
of
the
game
relies
on
linear
sequentiality
through
time
https://twitter.com/dg_iii/status/1330887311454842886?s=21 https://twitter.com/dg_iii/status/1330887311454842886
We exist in 4D Minkowski spacetime, and even as a purely 2D hypothetical chess still relies on time, and YES SURE some physicists dispute that time is a dimension, and they’re doing it in very interesting ways, but they sure as hell are not doing it in my mentions right now
I may be just a dumb fucking food writer but I still experience time one Planck unit after the other just like everybody else!!!
Im literally hyperventilating https://twitter.com/nerdburns/status/1330893245795143689?s=21 https://twitter.com/nerdburns/status/1330893245795143689
Yes Jon that’s exactly what I’m doing, I’m being the thought police, because I hate it when people have ideas, and also the universe has no constants and matter is a social construct https://twitter.com/jonhampton/status/1330894875777183749?s=21 https://twitter.com/jonhampton/status/1330894875777183749
Okay but for real, dimensions are not always taught in the clearest way, so I’m going to actually explain this for anyone who’s watching me have a nervous breakdown in real-time and not understanding why
Most folks have a basic understanding of the first three dimensions: for example, that a square is 2-dimensional and a cube is 3-dimensional
It can be hard to understand how time is the 4th dimension! The best explanation I've heard goes like this:
Let's say we're going to hang out. If I say "Meet me on Maple St.," that's 1D. If I say "Meet me at Maple St. and 5th Avenue," that's 2D. If I say "Meet me at Maple and 5th on the 8th floor," that's 3D. "Meet me at Maple and 4th on the 8th floor at 2pm," that's 4D.
Okay now when we talk about chess, we really talk about the GAMEPLAY of chess — this is distinct from "a chessboard" or "a computer screen" or "chess pieces." The gameplay is the manifestation of an instance of the game, unfolding according to its rules etc.
The gameplay of chess (as with virtually all games, including physical sports!) REQUIRES the dimension of time. It is a linear game of actions that rely on actions that have come before: Player A moves, then player B makes a move *in a universe that has been affected by A's move*
A fun exercise to find out whether time is a requirement for a game is to ask yourself "hypothetically, could every action from opening to endgame be performed simultaneously?" If the answer is no, bc some actions rely on the outcome of others, congratulations! It requires time!
Now some of the folks in my replies are saying that because the 3rd dimension (depth) is optional in chess, it is a 3-D game! Three dimensions! Height, width, and time.

This is wrong.
They're right that the 3D manifestation of the *objects of chess* — the board, the pieces — is irrelevant to the game. You can play chess in your mind, you can play chess on a computer screen (functionally 2D, the 3Dness of the screen doesn't really matter).

HOWEVER
What this means is NOT that the 3rd dimension (depth) doesn't exist. What it means is that the 3rd dimension *is zero*. Zero is a value. Zero exists. Zero is a number!
This is important here specifically because of the way we talk about and measure dimensions: the 4th Dimension does not change names and start being called the 3rd Dimension when the value of depth is zero
You COULD say "chess exists in 4 dimensions but only the 1st, 2nd, and 4th dimensions are required to have value, and the value of the 1st and 2nd dimensions can be hypothetical," but that's not the same as saying "chess only exists in 3 dimensions"
My original tweet was a truly stupid joke about how we talk about things being "4-D" when in fact chess doesn't exist at all unless it exists in the 4th dimension. The 4th dimension is ~a linear sequence of events~. I truly did not think this was going to be controversial.
It's not because the pieces have different shapes. It's not because knights can pass other pieces. It's not because even atoms have depth. It's not because our brains are 3D.

It's literally just: You cannot make a move in chess until the moves that come before it have been made.
I want to be clear that I am ONLY providing this explanation so that the levels of exasperation, rage, and hilarity that I (and many others) are currently experiencing can also be experienced by anyone who didn't have access to (or retention of) the same kind of physics education
I believe that everyone, regardless of the circumstances of their education level, should have access to the mindblowing, hole-digging stupidity of men on the internet
YES THIS IS LITERALLY THE JOKE I WAS MAKING https://twitter.com/AaronWrast/status/1330906077874040834?s=20
(ALL OF THIS is a vast oversimplification of dimensions and their expression, which I am not even remotely an expert or even a hobbyist on. Please don't write a smug blog post about all the ways I, not a math or physics phd, lack the nuanced expertise of a math or physics phd.)
I do want to add, to all the chuds yelling at me that the nonexistence of a 3rd dimension means it CAN be called a "3-D game," you're forgetting that the 3rd dimension DOES SOMETIMES (IN FACT OFTEN) EXIST, the point isn't depth is always zero, the point is depth DOESNT MATTER
This is true! But language is useless without meaningful referents, so we have collectively (mostly) agreed to describe dimensionality in terms of the minimum number of values that need to be specified, thank u https://twitter.com/JHernandezUM/status/1330913971747102722?s=20
In sum:
-chess is a spatially-2D game that requires time
-we experience our multidimensional reality as spatially 3D plus time
-so in our experienceed reality, time is the 4th dimension

Ergo chess, as played in reality, happens in 4 dimensions

The joke stands and i hate you all
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