Thoughts on Chess Engine

Here are my take on chess engine. I have to put it bluntly, engine ruined chess, but there's little we can do about it. As a game that transcends time, I believe the unique beauty of chess lies in the concept of "generation" and "mystery". In essence, every generation bears the responsibility to contribute to the existing theory and strategy. As we stand in the crux of the 21st century, it should be our responsibility to take the knowledge from the previous generation and seek a bit more clarity within the game itself. However, chess engine ruined it. When clarity of the game is gone, chess is dead. When the responsibility of human to develop the game is overtake by the engine, what's the point of us humans even be in the game? Indeed, one can argue that playing the game is still unclear because we can't just pull up our phone during a classical otb tournament game. Yes, I would say, you are right, but is chess really just about playing the game? Lately I have been delving about the history of the game go. Years back the game go can last over days and even months, where players can analyze the positions to its very limit. The beauty of go, by extension chess, is the coexistence with the obscurity. Even after we played a game, opening the engine and sees that +0.5 essentially sucks out the mystery of the game. The beauty of chess is that one should feel baffled with one's loss and struggle to understand where the mistake was. The process of seeking the truth, in itself , is beautiful. I would also argue that neither should the preparation for the game to be clear. I wasn't trying to say that we shouldn't use engine to prepare or we should not play chess because chess is dead. In fact, I don't know exactly what I am trying to argue but simply it is the sad truth we have to embrace. More and more I like to compare the preparation of opening with the same light as preparing for a test. On every test we have the absolute correct answer, and with engine every position has the absolute correct move. We can know the move by either using our experience (which is sometime reliable) or simply memoize them (tiring but effective). That is why more and more top chess players are turning to freestyle chess (not that I supported their decision or I perfer freestyle chess over traditional chess), all ultimately rooted in the fact that engine makes chess a memory test. This may mean absolutely nothing to a beginner or even advanced player, but I just want you to realize that at the end of the day, we are not opponents but simply people coming together and all chasing for one goal-- the clarity of the position. The thoughts that all chess players are chasing for this one goal excites me, but the reality that it is not "we" but "engines" fulfilling our goal saddens me. Using Hikaru no Go's quote, "we are here to connect the distant past with the distant future". This should be how chess is, every generation adding a bit of clarity to the game, and not engines doing our job.