That's not ignorant on his part, it's just a silly analogy to get the point across; and I think you're missing the point by thinking of what happens after the n

That's not ignorant on his part, it's just a silly analogy to get the point across; and I think you're missing the point by thinking of what happens after the network is trained; the point made is about the initial state of the network, not the outcome. The neural network will have preconceptions on how to play no matter how, even if you wire them randomly; the difference of making them random is that you'll have no idea what those preconceptions are, not that they don't exist. The original story on which the koan is based might make it clearer. [1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan#Uncarved_block https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan#Uncarved_block If you still want this to be about the final state, the point would be that, if the training process works well, it shouldn't make any difference whether the net was wired randomly or orderly.