The Five Rules of Fourth Dimensional Chess

When you Google "four dimensional chess," you get this picture.  There's Spock.  There's his weird chess board. 

But that is not four dimensional chess.  It is just three dimensional chess with a couple extra boards.  To play four dimensional chess, one must be smarter than Spock.  Smart, in fact, as I am smart.  You must be a genius like me.

I am feeling brilliant today, as always, but also generous, so I will share with you five basic principles of fourth dimensional chess.  You will not understand them as I do, but perhaps, in time, you will at least develop an appreciation for the masters of the game.

1)  There are no "pieces."  

In two dimensional and three dimensional chess, these things are necessary.  Small minded people require them.   But in fourth dimensional chess, we ask:  what even is a "piece?"  Is not the thing we refer to as a "piece" simply an agglomeration of atoms and subatomic particles, which are themselves simply elements found everywhere in the universe?  Is not a "piece" primarily emptiness between those particles?  And if a piece is mostly emptiness, what is there that cannot be called a "piece?" 

My hand is a "piece."  That leaf is a "piece."  The screen on which you're reading this is a "piece."

Everything is a "piece."  This is the first rule of fourth dimensional chess.

2) There is no "board."  

Again, in two dimensional and three dimensional chess, you have a finite and bounded board.  An eight by eight grid of alternating colors, typically. 

But four dimensional chess has nothing like that.  Why would one need something as prosaic as a board, for a game that has no boundaries?  Fourth dimensional chess is a meta-game, a game that functions on the level of quantum superposition.  A "move" of a "piece" can be anywhere and everywhere.  In the crudest layman's terms, it has to do with spooky action at a distance, which is a highly complicated phenomenon that has to do with physics you don't understand as well as I do. 

In such a game, boards...and rules generally...are completely unnecessary.  Irrelevant, even.  There are no spaces, no pieces, and no rules.  That is the second rule of fourth dimensional chess.

Wait, you say.  What?  No rules?  But...but...you have this list of rules.  Doesn't that count?

You think you're being clever.  That's so cute.  I could pat you on your little head. 

But that is only because you have not yet read rules three and four.  You are simply uninformed.  Unenlightened.  So read on, and learn.

3)  Tell everyone you're playing fourth dimensional chess. 

This is necessary, because fourth dimensional chess is so complicated that average human beings cannot grasp that you are even playing it.  "But you're just taking money from my wallet," they might say.  "And now you're using my credit card to buy bitcoin and haggling with Bulgarian escorts on the darkweb." 

This is only because they do not understand fourth dimensional chess, as they are not a genius in the way that I am.  So they must be told.  This, in point of fact, is how one begins the game.  Simply state it, and the assertion creates the observer effect.  Again, this is a thing that has to do with quantum physics.  It's complicated.  What, you've not read Richard Fynemann?

Any action, any moment, any statement?  It becomes fourth dimensional chess, simply by stating that that is what it is.

What?

You think I've misspelled Feynman?  Perhaps I have. 

Or perhaps it's...fourth dimensional chess.

4) Repeat the assertion that you're playing fourth dimensional chess. 

When you tell the weaker minded about this game of geniuses, some of them will be recalcitrant.  They will fall into cynicism and stubbornness, and refuse to open their minds to your brilliance.

You're just BSing, they'll say.  You're full of it, they'll say.  Dear God man, what sort of monster would try to transplant that boy's heart when you're only pretending to be a cardiologist, they'll say.  Why would you sloppily fawn over a man who runs concentration camps and murders his family members with antiaircraft guns, they'll say.

All you need to do is remind them of the real game you're playing.  Over, and over, and over again, insist that they simply do not grasp the brilliance of this game of games.  They see only the surface.  They see only the momentary mess you've made of the O.R.  They see only you debasing the dignity of our republic as you transparently flatter a tyrant. 

Small minded people can be that way.

So you repeat the assertion that this is, in fact, four dimensional chess. 

Then you repeat it again.  And again.  And again.

And eventually, many human beings will start to think, hmmm.  Perhaps that is what he is doing.  They will consider the possibility.

And once they've considered the possibility?  Bingo.  Observer effect.  It becomes, at least in part, four dimensional chess.

5)  You always win.

Or rather, I always do.  Like right now. 

I've just won, and you didn't even know we were playing.  And now.  We just played another game, and I won.

I am so very good at this game.

That's the best thing about four dimensional chess.  To win, you simply say, we were playing four dimensional chess, and I won.

So there you have it.  The five rules of fourth dimensional chess.   It's the game of winners.  It's the game of geniuses. 

Because we geniuses always, always win, no matter what we do.