Metaphor: Blind Chess Game and the Unknown Opponent

[The Voice of Time]

The title is a name I'm giving to an idea I'm having about the science of ignorance (which is about determining the value of the unknown), and that is that given a specific Graph of Ability (or to simplify the matter: given you have a range of options about where to make a move on a chess board as a metaphor of more serious real-world events) you'd want to know the value of those factors you are not able to determine because of their unknown nature.

Your opponent we can either call "nature" or "time", as in "the course of nature" or "the course of time", or we can call it "the unknown opponent", human or animal or the forces of nature themselves. When they make a move, you won't know what it is, or what follows with the move nor the intents: you are in a complete and utter fog of war. However, one thing you do know, and that is that given you take up an advancing position (or to be precise: make a move on the Graph of Ability from one graph of need to another), that position will in some way or another cost you something (even if the benefits outweigh it), simply because you are not omnipotent and have limited resource. The first thing you loose is a general sense of fortification, or familiarity with and cultivation of; the new position.

You have not had enough time to test and deal with upcoming problems, so you'll have a range of problems likely coming your way some way or the other, some of them you can predict and some not, all of them you'll have to deal with. Therefore, the first value of the unknown, is that it can defeat you or wear you down, until you loose what you seek to retain, which is your position in need-space (your position in the Graph of Ability, your need-graph). Therefore, to the degree this is an untested situation, that same measured value would create the urgency for you to have a fall-back position that lets you escape as many excess problems as possible as securely as possible. The initial value must be based upon what is known to be unsecure and the alienness of the new situation; how many things there are that are known to be unknown by known means of acquiring sufficient knowledge. The value would then follow the progress, and the rate of problem generation and the seriousness of each new problem would have to correct the initial prediction for problem generation, this might increase the urgency of secure fall-backs, but also it might testify to secure environments that can accelerate the plunge into an even further advancing situation.

Patience would here play the value created by the generation of new resources and the expenditure of current resources to the retention of a scalable growing nucleus security, meaning that as the frontier grows so must the core grow to reflect a stronger fall-back as potential degree of necessary fall-backs increases with higher exposure to more fronts and grounds. In a blind chess game example, the number of pieces you move must not just increase your awareness of the frontier, but also your awareness of your core defence. Even if the universe is dumb, it always has a plan, which can defeat you, and blinded you must move your pieces such that you retain a strong core as you gradually defeat the enemy frontier (the universe not subject to your will).

Because (unless you loose) you always retain the same amount of pieces in chess and do not get additional pieces, which you get in a need-space, you can think of the power to wear down the enemy (make him loose pieces and block his options) as the equivalent of gaining and loosing. In terms of retaining the core, your pieces must be in such a position that they can move backwards to defend as well as forward to attack, and the ability for them to do this with speed (number of moves before block/defeat of enemy piece) and flexibility (number of effectively blocking/defeating moves by all self-owned pieces combined) would take the place.