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Somebody has the huge talent to learn multiple languages and interact with millions on a privileged position, but choose instead to earn the title of "king of s

Somebody has the huge talent to learn multiple languages and interact with millions on a privileged position, but choose instead to earn the title of "king of scrabble". I'm unsure about if this history is comedy or drama. My suggestion to this person would be to be much more ambitious with this life. He has the skills.

diggan 2y ago
As far as I understand, he's not actually learning the languages he play in, he is "just" memorising words from the dictionary. Probably would make it way easier if he decided he wanted to learn one of those languages, but just knowing words doesn't make you proficient in comprehension and be able to create sentences.
- imzadi 2y ago
  It's not even really learning the words, just how they are spelled. It's basically just pattern recognition.
mulmen 2y ago
Who are you to tell someone how to live their life? Winning a Scrabble championship isn’t hurting anyone.
- kingkongjaffa 2y ago
  Not that I agree or disagree, but they probably think it’s waste of intellect. Like how good will hunting portrays being a janitor a waste of his talents.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    Nobody has a right to another’s intellect. It’s totally unreasonable to criticize someone’s life choices like this.
talldayo 2y ago
Being a scrabble champion is not mutually exclusive to real-world impact. If a Scrabble expert lived a day in our shoes as software developers, I bet they'd think we're a net drain on society too.
ryandrake 2y ago
Would you say the same about other silly things people pursue? We just had the article about the 18 year old chess champion. Surely dedicating your life to chess is about as silly as dedicating your life to scrabble. But we celebrate the chess master, and don't wonder aloud why he didn't pursue more ambitions things...
Thorrez 2y ago
>interact with millions on a privileged position What does this mean? Does learning multiple languages automatically make you famous? 43% of the world's population is bilingual.
traitfield 2y ago
It is not really learning the language, think of it has having such a good memory he can keep and process (to formulate strategies over the board) hundreds of thousands of strings, he might or not keep metadata on the strings but what matters is knowing they can be played.

diggan 2y ago

As far as I understand, he's not actually learning the languages he play in, he is "just" memorising words from the dictionary. Probably would make it way easier if he decided he wanted to learn one of those languages, but just knowing words doesn't make you proficient in comprehension and be able to create sentences.

imzadi 2y ago
It's not even really learning the words, just how they are spelled. It's basically just pattern recognition.

mulmen 2y ago

Who are you to tell someone how to live their life? Winning a Scrabble championship isn’t hurting anyone.

kingkongjaffa 2y ago
Not that I agree or disagree, but they probably think it’s waste of intellect. Like how good will hunting portrays being a janitor a waste of his talents.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Nobody has a right to another’s intellect. It’s totally unreasonable to criticize someone’s life choices like this.

talldayo 2y ago

Being a scrabble champion is not mutually exclusive to real-world impact. If a Scrabble expert lived a day in our shoes as software developers, I bet they'd think we're a net drain on society too.

ryandrake 2y ago

Would you say the same about other silly things people pursue? We just had the article about the 18 year old chess champion. Surely dedicating your life to chess is about as silly as dedicating your life to scrabble. But we celebrate the chess master, and don't wonder aloud why he didn't pursue more ambitions things...

Thorrez 2y ago

>interact with millions on a privileged position What does this mean? Does learning multiple languages automatically make you famous? 43% of the world's population is bilingual.

traitfield 2y ago

It is not really learning the language, think of it has having such a good memory he can keep and process (to formulate strategies over the board) hundreds of thousands of strings, he might or not keep metadata on the strings but what matters is knowing they can be played.