The Secret of Snakes and Ladders

vsauce kevin here with the ultimate representation of good and evil an epic battle of morality that has raged on game boards across the globe for over 2 000 years snakes and ladders wait snakes and ladders that's nothing but a really simple kids game right wrong while the rules are simple the math psychology and hidden spiritual lessons are surprisingly complex so to highlight that unique combination in a visual way i commissioned an intricate version of the game that harnesses electricity to demonstrate the unpredictable gameplay the circuit that's made as we play will not only show the path to victory but will also reveal the meaning of life sort of this custom game board was created by engineering youtube wizard alan pan the winner of this game of snakes and ladders will trigger this mystery box to do something i i seriously 100 percent do not know what's inside this box or what will happen when the first player reaches the final square but we're about to find out together i do know that it's powered by 16 double a batteries alan put it together in an afternoon and he promised me he promised that it will not burn down my house so that's good here's how it works allen 3d printed red and yellow game pieces that contain about 50 feet of stainless steel conductive thread he's put a nail juncture at every snake's head and tail on every ladder's top and bottom and at the end of each row on the board i'll start by hooking up both game pieces to this bolt and tightening this nut down on it i'll be red and you will be yellow and as we play i'll wrap the steel thread around these junctures which will weave a path up ladders and down snakes to show a trail of each player's movement on the game board here's the important part when the winning players piece touches a node on the final square that will complete a circuit to the battery-powered mystery box and whatever this thing does it will do now let's climb some ladders and slide down some snakes or shoots you probably know this game as shoots and ladders since that's the name milton bradley gave it in 1943 when it was imported to the u.s and sold for 50 cents i guess they thought snakes were scary and weird which they are but the game actually goes back much much further than your grandpa joe it actually originated in india in about the 2nd century bc and was meant to teach children the importance of karma and comma existences push and pull between one's destiny and the actions that disrupt the path to that destiny the gameplay is obviously very simple the two players started at square one which may actually be where we get the phrase starting at square one and then roll a die four the player then moves that number of spaces if you land at the bottom of a ladder then you get to climb the ladder to that space if you land at the head of a snake then you have to slide backwards down to the snake's tail and if there's nothing on the space then it's the other player's turn the first player to get to the final 100th space wins that's it that's the game in the official rules you need an exact role to reach the 100th space so like if you're two spaces away you need to roll a two to win but that can get pretty tedious most people just call it a win when you roll at least high enough to get to the final space and i'll do the same boards historically labeled ladders that advance your piece with good virtuous actions like generosity or learning conversely snakes were depicted along with vices such as greed or gluttony navigate the snakes and ladders successfully and the winner escapes samsara life's cycle of death and rebirth to reach moksha or salvation who knew a game literally recommended for three-year-olds was this profound just looking at this board i can see that snakes are a lot worse than the ladders are beneficial but how much worse we can figure out the breakdown of this board's 10 ladders and 11 snakes from 4 to 16 is a plus 12. 12 to 33 is a plus 21 49 to 51 plus two not much of a help there and 88 to 92 is a plus four all right snakes twenty one two three that's a minus eighteen fifty to eleven minus thirty nine ninety three to twenty five minus sixty eight it's like falling down a well and 99 to 58 minus 41. all right so the advantage of ladders we're looking at 118 divided by 10 equals plus 11.8 per ladder and for snakes we're looking at 388 divided by 11 equals minus 35.27 per snake it's almost exactly three times worse to land on a snake than it is beneficial to land on a ladder and there's an additional snake in there just to make it tougher because why not and this whole thing is probably just random no it's not an integral message of this game is that it's harder to follow a path of good than it is to follow a path of bad it's just easier to slide down into bad choices and bad habits than it is to lift yourself up with virtuous deeds and as subtle as the game's hidden moral lessons may be get alone of the unseen mathematical operation this absolutely ancient board game is actually a 101 state absorbing markov chain a series of events that depends on the state of the prior event which we first explored in parando's paradox that could theoretically go on forever especially when you've got so many punishing snakes and if you want to make absolutely sure the next time you're playing this with your five-year-old sister sally that it doesn't last nine hours well you can't i mean it's not likely that a game will last the rest of your lives but with just the right combination of roles and snakes it actually could because snakes and ladders isn't a game of skill there's nothing you can do to speed up a win and there's no mistake that you can make to lose all you can do is roll and see what happens okay this is taking a while what if i really really want to know when this game will end i can use board states and random roles to run a monte carlo simulation that gives us the most common length of our snakes and ladders game and the odds of any given length two three four four four yes we are close one two three four for you one two three four all right look uh until this moment i had left this battery out for a reason i was worried that i don't know i would have messed something up and then this thing would have done something and then i wouldn't have been able to put whatever happens back in here so the fact is we're at 98 and it's my turn and as long as i don't roll a one it is the actual moment of truth i've reached the end of the board i've successfully ascended ladders and overcome the pitfalls of evil snakes so i'm gonna put this battery in now is fully charged as they say it is lit okay i'm gonna move everything so that you get the best possible look at whatever is about to happen next [Music] don't roll the one don't roll a one don't roll a one don't roll a one okay four all right oh how am i so nervous about this here we go [Laughter] it was actual oh my gosh there's actual snakes well not actual snakes but spring bloated snakes [Laughter] the gearing up of it was actually almost as scary as the exploding snakes themselves snakes and ladders is a remarkable combination of mathematics and human psychology that was invented centuries before the stochastic techniques needed to analyze it were known let alone two board game designers think about it a game intended for children needs to average just the right length too short and it's not interesting enough too long and it gets boring snakes and ladders nailed this so perfectly that thousands of years later kids are still growing up playing the game and that isn't an accident billions of people across 100 generations have played snakes and ladders without even considering the deep story of numbers morality and the essence of human existence buried below its childish facade in describing the hindu board game lila which is a 72 space version of snakes and ladders harish jahari said there is really only one game the game in which each of us is a player acting out his role and while sometimes in life we land on ladders that launch us ahead and other times we step on snakes that slide us back you gotta just pick up the die and give it another roll because the game goes on until eventually you reach your goal whether that's reaching nirvana or triggering a mystery box of springy snakes and as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Vsauce2

Views: 1,426,763

Rating: 4.8503046 out of 5

Keywords: vsauce, vsauce2, vsause2, board games, family fun for everyone, videos for kids to learn, kids games to play, snakes and ladders, chutes and ladders, board game, snake and ladder, snakes and ladders game, snakes and ladders board game, vsauce 2, what is a paradox, ant on a rubber rope, game you win by losing, missing dollar riddle, birds in a truck riddle, birthday paradox, pizza theorem, dot game that breaks your brain, battleship algorithm, can being stupid make you smart

Id: pS11TNmUGiA

Length: 11min 49sec (709 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020