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Brain ages. He will eventually decline just like any human being. Let's hope by then he will have the wisdom to smile when that happens.

• make3 8mo ago
  Ageism also just one of these shitty unproven biases, like sexism, which is self-realizing by applying pressure to people who fall out of the mold even slightly. He's 30 something, not 90.
  • kaonwarb 8mo ago
    Cognition certainly declines with age at the population level. See e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4906299/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4906299/.
    • make3 8mo ago
      yes but he's 30 not 90, and knowledge and experience continues to accumulate through life, which can certainly compensate
      • DustinEchoes 8mo ago
        The decline starts in your early thirties, and those who are pushing their cognition to its limit are the first to notice.
  • bsder 8mo ago
    > Ageism also just one of these shitty unproven biases You might be right, if we were talking about anything except chess. Chess, unlike everything else, has a clear ranking system and lots of records for people to analyze. And unfortunately, the record is very clear: chess ability decreases after a certain age. However, the decrease is more likely due to stamina than mental decline. Chess tournaments take a long time, and stamina definitely decreases with age. However, pro athletes demonstrate that you can probably go until around your early 40s before it becomes a real issue. Having said that, it will be interesting to see how this generation does in the blitz formats as they age. Those will be less dependent upon stamina and a better measure of mental acuity for chess.
    • renewiltord 8mo ago
      He’s got a point. If the measure works for age, then let’s run it for sex, race, and religion. Then we can make conclusions about these categories and test if we’re willing to accept them. If we’re not, but we’re willing to accept them for age, then the balance of chance is that we’re ageist and just blinding ourselves to it because we are ageist. I think looking at the data you’d have to conclude that women can’t play chess as well as men, that black men can’t play chess as well as white men, and that Judeo-Christian (and perhaps Hindu Brahmins) beliefs are just as indicative. If we deny those conclusions as bigotry of immutable characteristics, it naturally leads to the age question.
      • bsder 8mo ago
        > I think looking at the data you’d have to conclude that women can’t play chess as well as men, that black men can’t play chess as well as white men, and that Judeo-Christian (and perhaps Hindu Brahmins) beliefs are just as indicative. Actually, chess data suggests that all of them are as good as one another. As soon as you have enough candidates in the pipeline, magically, any specific group suddenly becomes as good as any other. On the women's side, the Polgar sisters are both exemplar and counterexample. Clearly, given sufficient training, women CAN be rated highly (Judit cracked 2700). The fact that the women's side hasn't exploded just like the men's side can mostly be tracked to the fact that chess isn't considered a "feminine pursuit" worth putting the time into (that finally seems to be changing slowly in recent decades).
        • renewiltord 8mo ago
          In the history of the sport one woman made the Top 100 of the sport and this is supposedly evidence. And how many black? Count them out. They form at least a sixth of the world population. Now how many old? And perhaps then we find out that we can invent reasons for the defence of the old: traveling is hard, they have more responsibilities with children, they are more senior in primary career. > The fact that the women's side hasn't exploded just like the men's side can mostly be tracked to the fact that chess isn't considered a "feminine pursuit" worth putting the time into (that finally seems to be changing slowly in recent decades). A defence that doesn’t pass for software engineering, amazing. This old canard. The girls just don’t like engineering. It’s not feminine enough. Damore got whacked for this.
  • elevation 8mo ago
    If the skill you need to select for is tactical combinatorics, then Chess dominance as a function of age would seem to support the premise of ageism. What ageism ignores is that outside of chess, prescience outperforms other measures of productivity.
  • deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  • epolanski 8mo ago
    It's not unproven, there's ample literature and research on the fact. Besides, the age pool of chess itself confirms it. There's a single player in his 50s in the top 50 of chess and not a single 60+ in the top 100. Also, even carlsen himself says he's no longer as good as he was years before and his mind isn't as strong.
  • hikkerl 8mo ago
    Can you provide at least three (3) peer-reviewed studies to support this?
  • IMTDb 8mo ago
    Regarding sexism; most tournaments in Chess (including the world championship) are fully open and are thus gender netral: anyone can participate regardless of sex/gender and will compete on equal footing. Women only categories have been created to give women visibility because they mostly were not able to reach advanced levels in the open format. Some women choose to compete with men (Judit Polgár being a somewhat recent example) but most go straight to the women only tournaments to have a shot. The men vs women « bias » is not unproven, they litterally had to create entire categories of competiton to account for it.