[INTRO] [VERSE 1] Nineteen fifty, Murray Hill Bell Telephone Laboratories Claude Shannon had a question Mostly theoretical, really Could you teach a modern computer How to sit and play a game? Not by moving wooden pieces But by choosing all the same He'd finished writing months before November, forty-nine By March the paper went to print Twenty pages, give or take a line Programming a Computer For Playing Chess, the title read Not a warning, not a prophecy Just a problem in his head How many choices from a position? How many branches from each one? How far could a machine keep looking Before the looking couldn't be done? [INSTRUMENTAL] [VERSE 2] Call it roughly thirty moves Available at any turn A thousand paths across two choices Give or take what you might learn Multiply that forty times For an ordinary game Ten raised to the hundred-twentieth And now the number has a name Shannon's number One followed by A hundred and twenty zeroes Too large to search exhaustively Too wide to hold in view Not saying every game would happen Only what the tree could do And years would turn it into trivia The kind that gets repeated everywhere: There may be more possible games of chess Than atoms in the observable universe [pause] Roughly ten to the eighty atoms Ten to the one-twenty games [PRE-CHORUS] Forty orders of magnitude Between the numbers people quote Though neither count was ever perfect That's not really what he wrote Still, it makes a hell of a headline And it's easy to remember: More games of chess Than atoms in the universe [CHORUS] So choose one Out of everything that follows Choose one And lose everything that doesn't Every square opens another Every answer branches farther You can stand here counting futures Or choose one And move [POST-CHORUS] [VERSE 3] See, the atoms weren't the point Shannon never needed stars He wasn't trying to make chess bigger Than the galaxies are He was asking what a machine could know Before it had to play How many futures could it calculate Before forever got in the way? Because given enough branches Even speed becomes a joke You can make the engine faster You can give it room to grow But you cannot search infinity By simply running fast Sooner or later something chooses Which possibilities to pass Which lines aren't worth pursuing Which futures disappear Which possibilities get silenced So that one can happen here [PRE-CHORUS 2] And suddenly I don't know Why I'm talking about chess Or nineteen fifty Or Bell Labs Or numbers I can't comprehend Because I've done the same damn thing With decisions in my head Trying to calculate what happens Before I take a step [CHORUS] Choose one Out of everything that follows Choose one And lose everything that doesn't Every yes becomes a thousand Every no becomes another Every life you could have lived Starts disappearing from the others You can map the first few branches You can guess where they might run But there isn't enough time To become everyone So choose one And move [VERSE 4] What if I had stayed that night? What if I had walked away? What if I had made the call Or never learned your name? That's not four alternate endings Waiting somewhere fully formed Each one splits a thousand more times Every morning after dawn Maybe staying leads to leaving Maybe leaving brings me back Maybe one small conversation Moves a piece I never tracked Then somebody else makes choices And the board changes again Their decisions branch through mine And mine keep branching into them So tell me which life was the right one Show me where the proof begins Trace every move from every move And every move from those again [BUILD] Ten squared Ten cubed Ten to six Ten to twelve Ten to twenty Ten to forty— [lead interrupts] Stop. [BRIDGE] There is no computer big enough To tell me who I'd be If I'd turned left instead of right At twenty-three No equation gives me every kiss I missed or shouldn't have Every friend I never met Every door I never had No machine can search the life tree Down to every final leaf And if I wait to know the ending I will never choose a thing [quiet] That was Shannon's point, wasn't it? Not the atoms Not the number Not how small we are beneath the stars Some problems become impossible When you demand to know them all [FINAL CHORUS] So choose one Knowing everything will follow Choose one Knowing everything can't Every step destroys a future Every step creates another There are more lives you could imagine Than you'll ever get to suffer Or to love Or lose Or become You don't need to see the ending You don't need to search it all Even the machine must stop calculating Even the machine Has to move [OUTRO] Nineteen fifty Murray Hill Claude Shannon had a question How far could a machine keep looking Before the looking Couldn't help? [pause] Your move.
