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Which is not really wrong. Chess can be fun, but I always thought it is pretty fascinating that the chess champions are viewed by the media as some kind of geni
by mikub 2y ago
Which is not really wrong. Chess can be fun, but I always thought it is pretty fascinating that the chess champions are viewed by the media as some kind of genius. I mean, it's just a game, not more but also not less.
- portaouflop 2y agoLife is a game no more no less. If you can be a champion at anything you deserve recognition - just look at the people lauded for chugging dozens of hot dogs
- Aeolun 2y agoTo be fair, I do not understand how someone can gobble up food so quickly and not throw up. It really is amazing in a sense.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago"Life is a game no more no less." Exactly. So take a game AI from Deep Mind, link it to some AI that can build a world model, categorize images, put it in a robot, maybe an LLM so it can talk to you, give it some goals. See what happens.
- skeeter2020 2y agoLauded as champions or freaks? I'm on the side that believes there IS bad publicity... Life can look like a game, but to think it is nothing more betrays just how easy you have it.
- tankenmate 2y agoBut playing Chess at any serious level (more than a couple hours a week) has some non Chess side effects; it teaches you to examine your own behaviour, it teaches you that even if you're very good you can still lose (and hopefully how to lose well), and it teaches you that the other side gets a vote (get a turn, no action happens in a vacuum). All of which are very valuable life lessons.
- rafaelmn 2y agoYou'll get that from any sport and also physical benefits
- j_maffe 2y agoYou learn all of these lessons by practicing most other practices/crafts.
- skeeter2020 2y agoCan't I learn this from any game, some with other, more life-applicable lessons and benefits, like sports?
- baliex 2y agoSomething that I believe sets chess aside from most other pursuits (e.g. sports, other games) is the lack of luck; it’s almost all skill. You and your opponent both have everything laid out in front of you, and if you’re skilled enough you can see more than they see, etc etc
- iwishiknewlisp 2y agoThere is absolutely randomness and variance in chess. And variance/randomness is important for any sport, that is what makes it exciting and worth playing. If there were no randomness then every game against the same team and players would be the same. And anyway, sports are vastly more complicated than chess is. Just simply dribbling a basketball while bipedal walking is beyond the capability of replication by robot at the current moment. But a home computer from 20 years ago would beat >90% of the world in chess.
- atiedebee 2y agoA computer being better than everyone doesn't mean that chess isn't complicated. With that logic, games like CSGO would not be complicated because you could create a bot that headshots everyone at first sight. Also, there being variance doesn't mean that there is randomness. There is no random element to the game of chess. All the variance comes from human decisions. It's an unsolved game, so there is no way to guarantee a win.
- amelius 2y agoYeah, if you spend your life solving crossword puzzles, you end up intellectually poor by most standards. Note that this might also hold to some degree for computer programming.
- cxr 2y agoI don't think that's true, let alone self-evident. In any case, a life spent solving crossword puzzles would almost certainly deliver more positive net effects to the "player" (and society at large) than a person spending a lifetime getting good at chess. It really is odd that chess is considered so refined, laudable, etc. We probably shouldn't put it on a pedestal any higher than where we place video games. (In fact, video games might actually be better—and I'm not saying that as someone staring up from a batch of sour grapes and/or looking for an excuse to play video games; that's not how I spend my time.)