I keep hearing people say: “There are more possible moves in Go than there are atoms in the universe.” (Go is the Chinese game played with little black and white Mentos or whatever they are. {“Mentos: The Freshmaker!”})
Um, astrophysicists and astronomers don’t even know how many stars are in the universe, much less planets and moons and asteroids and comets and nebulae, and all the flora and fauna that may exist somewhere out there, so how could they possibly know how many atoms there are in the universe? They can’t, and they don’t. And if there are more possible moves in Go than there are atoms in the universe, then, wow, the universe is a lot smaller than I thought.
Sure, there are a lot of possible moves in Go, but we don’t know enough about the universe to say there are fewer atoms than moves in Go, so please stop saying that already.
But at least they didn’t say there are more possible moves in Go than there are subatomic particles like quarks, leptons, bosons, photons, gluons, electrons, neutrinos, muons, taus, etc., all counted separately, in the universe. But I’m sure someone will claim that someday…
