Star Trek: The Next Generation/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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*** As Tasha discovered.
** Pulaski, is that you?
** Information theory estimates that it would take approximately 10^90 years to brute-force all the possible combinations and permutations in chess using modern computing technology. Even assuming that Data's brain is a ''quadrillion'' times more powerful a computer than the 21st century's best (and while he's obviously ahead of current computers by many orders of magnitude, putting him a full 15 orders ahead of contemporary is still a generous estimate), that still leaves us with one thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion (10^75) years' worth of number-crunching to completely solve chess. As a comparision, the estimated remaining lifespan of the universe is somewhere around 30 billion years. Short version: Data might be a science-fiction supercomputer, but being 100% unbeatable in chess is a job that even sci-fi supercomputers don't have the size for, unless you bring in something ridiculous like Deep Thought from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Troi's win is still ''extremely unlikely'', in that she's taking on somebody with at least grandmaster skill in chess while she herself is not a ranked player that anyone knows of, but its still mathematically ''possible''.
*** It was also likely intended as a callback to Kirk beating Spock in chess despite Spock's far superior logic, memory, and computational ability, because Kirk had intuition. The problem is Kirk was famed for his own brilliance (and luck), and Spock was not actually an android, so it's not as much of a stretch there as here.
**** In conclusion: its still one hell of a long shot, but at least its not violating the laws of thermodynamics or anything.
== Here's a conundrum for you ==
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