What do you get when you give a team of international Rubik’s cube nerds access to Google’s most powerful computers? The answer is 20… and it is a number that previously only God knew. Google’s computers prove that Rubik’s Cube puzzle can always be solved in 20 moves or less. Nerdy Rubik’s researchers claim, “One may suppose God would use a much more efficient algorithm, one that always uses the shortest sequence of moves; this is known as God’s Algorithm. The number of moves this algorithm would take in the worst case is called God’s Number. At long last, God’s Number has been shown to be 20.”
Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil” and now they have proven to have divine insight, but I am not sure the researchers interpretation of God’s nature is accurate. Knowing what we know about the nature of God, since when does God solve problems in the most efficient and elegant manner (the Great Flood notwithstanding), after all God is eternal and doesn’t need to be efficient. Natural selection, the driver underlying the theory of evolution, is a perfect example of the unbiased and patient approach that is more consistent with the nature of God. One wonders how many iterations it would take to arrive at 20 moves using a “natural selection-like” random move-and-learn approach. Using this approach all Rubik’s cube solutions should converge on 20 given enough iterations and memory of prior successful attempts.
Don Cooper Ph.D. 