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I'm not that brilliant, but I gave up on chess myself at around 18 when I crossed the threshold of playing blind and not being able to fall asleep at night beca

I'm not that brilliant, but I gave up on chess myself at around 18 when I crossed the threshold of playing blind and not being able to fall asleep at night because I was replaying games in my head. I think there are plenty of indicators that a more brilliant mind would take as clues of navigating to some local intellectual optimum. :-) Only now I'm twice that age I follow a bit of the tournaments again. Watching a banter chess episode by Jan Gustafsson is a nice way to end the day so now and then. I think the best we can do for brilliant minds is "set them" on a path of applied math (like working on AI). I'll assume that a brilliant mind is able to pick problems that it considers solvable. Even a brilliant mind trying to solve Ramsey number R(6,6) will probably solve a lot of subproblems on the way.

atmosx 9y ago
So, all of you AI guys, started from chess? I see a pattern emerging...
- coldtea 9y ago
  You got that ("all of you guys", "pattern emerging") from just reading about 2 guys?
  - 1024core 9y ago
    You just need 2 points to draw a line... ;-)
  - imranq 9y ago
    The cover for the seminal book on AI (norvig) has a chessboard and games are a fundamental training ground for AI so I'd say there's some truth there.
a_lieb 9y ago
Is there anything you can recall doing that would encourage or discourage chess stuff from popping into your head like that? Do you think it came out of intentionally replaying games on your head and then became more automatic? Or did it just randomly start to happen on its own? This kind of automatic mental practice seems like an awesome skill to develop for any field of study. It's a way to practice and learn without using up any willpower. I play guitar and sometimes I do find myself doing solfege exercises and visualizing fretboard patterns when I'm falling asleep/sitting in traffic/whatever. I'd love to be able to do that more.

atmosx 9y ago

So, all of you AI guys, started from chess? I see a pattern emerging...

coldtea 9y ago
You got that ("all of you guys", "pattern emerging") from just reading about 2 guys?
- 1024core 9y ago
  You just need 2 points to draw a line... ;-)
- imranq 9y ago
  The cover for the seminal book on AI (norvig) has a chessboard and games are a fundamental training ground for AI so I'd say there's some truth there.

a_lieb 9y ago

Is there anything you can recall doing that would encourage or discourage chess stuff from popping into your head like that? Do you think it came out of intentionally replaying games on your head and then became more automatic? Or did it just randomly start to happen on its own? This kind of automatic mental practice seems like an awesome skill to develop for any field of study. It's a way to practice and learn without using up any willpower. I play guitar and sometimes I do find myself doing solfege exercises and visualizing fretboard patterns when I'm falling asleep/sitting in traffic/whatever. I'd love to be able to do that more.