The miracle of the concept, like that of the loaves and fishes, is its embodiment of the trace of the originary scene, where the shared ostensive sign defers mimetic violence. The sign does not create the physical thing, but it creates the meaningful thing that can be represented by a sign. What I do and what a computer does when we try to think of a chess move are essentially similar. We both evaluate the forces on the board and their possible configurations after a certain number of possible moves with the final intention of choosing which move to make. But what differentiates chess from real life is not simply complexity.
Chess is a game , that is, an activity governed entirely by man-made rules.
Following strict rules is a simple way of avoiding conflict. We have all seen players who get upset and knock all the pieces off the board. But the reduction of chaos to order is not merely the principle of games like chess, it is the deepest principle of human interaction. The act of faith is a feature of all thinking, not only of that effected in the originary scene and in the scenes of revelation on which the great religions are founded. No creature that does not embody the potential violence of mimetic desire would either invent a game like Minesweeper or attempt to devise a strategy to conquer it.