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“Why Chess Will Destroy Your Mind”: Outlook of the Game in 1859
- swrobel 9y agoIf you enjoy stories like this, and podcasts, check out The Pessimists Archive. Their latest episode was about chess and they have 6 other excellent ones before it. http://pessimists.co/ http://pessimists.co/
- euske 9y agoI think it's more of its perceived usefulness over the entrance barrier rather than the old vs. new thing. Video games and social networks today are much easier to start with than chess while its usefulness (recognized by society) is questionable (not much higher than chess); so it seems more wasteful, i.e. "bad" Compare this to computer programming. This is clearly new and pretty addictive thing IMO but its entrance barrier is rather high and it looks useful (to the eyes of parents and teachers), so they tend to accept it. Similarly, there's not much novelty in a fidget spinner but it's blamed and banned from school. It's extremely easy to play with while its apparent usefulness is unclear. Hence it's "bad".
- mcappleton 9y agoIf you read the reasons for avoiding chess, they are actually quite good. For example, he says if you do brain work, playing chess takes mental energy away from your work. The article states that one would be better off with physical activity which I think is correct. I am a coder. If I play video games, I feel far less refreshed than if I do something physical. It also points out that playing chess well requires spending a lot of time on it that could be used for more useful pursuits. I suppose you could say "to play too good a game of chess is a sign of a misspent youth".
- jhanschoo 9y agoThis article, in fact, reinforces the idea that chess has more commonly been seen as an intellectual pursuit. The amateur in historical criticism will point out that the existence of this article affirms the popular thing and milieu that it is objecting to, and in fact even says that "Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, because it requires a strong memory and peculiar powers of combination. It is also generally believed that skill in playing it affords evidence of a superior intellect." hence we should not take this author's opinion of the general perception of the game in that period.
- redux13 9y agoI wonder if any parallels can be drawn between this and the inordinate amount of time children today spend starting at smartphones. While my personal opinion is that it is probably harmful to have so much of our attention focussed on phones at such a young age, we don't know how future societies will view this activity in retrospect.
- jimmaswell 9y agoMy prediction is that everyone will be fine just like every other time a new thing came around, and phones won't finally be the one "it's different for real this time super seriously" thing.
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y agoEh, at least for me chess didn't play in dreams, the way Tetris did back in the day it was new.
- sbov 9y agoI used to dream about software development flaws applied to "reality". E.g. I've had radios in my dreams that wouldn't turn off unless I unplugged them because they didn't properly implement graceful shutdown. Or microwaves I couldn't physically use because I made that function private instead of public. Usually it was more like a nightmare - all sorts of things not working for nonsensical reasons.
- 0xBA5ED 9y agoHahaha. That's the funniest thing I've read all day. "Aaah, I put my car keys on the heap and didn't keep a pointer!"
- cultofmetatron 9y agoto be fair, this HAS happened with my smart tv in real life...
- cdelsolar 9y agoI play Scrabble competitively/obsessively and I certainly have dreams about tiles and crazy anagrams and related situations constantly pop into my head while trying to fall asleep, especially at tournaments.
- asddddd 9y agoHah! I played a lot of chess as a kid (competitively). I assure you I dreamed about it plenty.
- sfRattan 9y agoChess in the 19th century is my go to example when trying to deprogram someone from anxious preoccupation with whatever moral panic is currently fashionable. I use the word 'deprogram' in the sense of helping someone recover from a cult deliberately. You can often find an article from some newspaper of the period decrying chess and its pernicious effects on the youth, the mind, morals, et cetera. Change the instances of 'chess' to 'video games,' 'violent/sexy movies,' 'dungeons & dragons,' 'smartphones,' or whatever item is the focus of a moral panic. Maybe change a few of the sentences in the article where context demands it. Have your pearl clutching friend read the modified article. Then show them the original. Fear mongering rhetorical devices become impossible not to notice.
- Brendinooo 9y agoI disagree with the dismissiveness of the parent post. This is where I think that history has immense value, because the author is speaking to us from a world that once lived without chess being in the mainstream, a perspective that we'll never understand. I can tell my kids that my 25mbps Internet connection is blazing fast, but because they'll never live with dial-up they won't ever think anything of it. In the same way, I'll never appreciate an escalator like the folks at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris, who saw it for the first time and paid to ride one for the sheer novelty of it. I can lament that my kids don't know how good they have it. They could counter by saying that 150mbps is a thing and it would enable them to do more. Are either of us really wrong here? Beyond that, I'd largely agree with the author's commentary. But I don't know if this is really an argument that anyone can win. Our society is smarter in a lot of ways and dumber in a lot of other ways, but of course we'd probably all disagree about which ways are in which column. Also worth noting that the headline here is very misleading. The original article points to it being more distracting than destructive.
- Latty 9y ago> I can lament that my kids don't know how good they have it. They could counter by saying that 150mbps is a thing and it would enable them to do more. Are either of us really wrong here? Why do people need to "know how good they have it"? I'm not happy with what would have been luxury to someone 100 years ago, no. Why should I be? Why should someone 100 years from now be happy with what I have? The world changes, I don't see why anyone should feel obliged to not want more just because people in the past couldn't get more.
- OneTimePoster 9y agoWhat happens when mass-media-enforced morality is obviously engaging in an endless parade of ridiculous moral panics based on flimsy redefinitions of words like "harassment" and aggressively doxxes, downvotes, bans, and supresses anyone trying to call it a moral panic? EDIT: Exhibit A.
- andrewflnr 9y agoEven if I agree with you, your comment is grossly offtopic and admits no constructive response.
- OneTimePoster 9y agoHackerNews: the last line of defense for the moral status quo... and hiding it under the guise of TOS conformity. I mean, sure, what would a comment about the moral outrages of 2016 games and 1800s games, both manned by stuffy Victorian-esque pearl-clutching couch feinters desperately hiding their grotesque physiques under an abusive reliance on contemporary styles, possibly have in common?