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8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

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Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#61

Post by patates »

systemspeed wrote: post #53
internet_user wrote: post #17

We are post peak-chess. The interest fell sharply after Kasparov's loss to DeepBlue. I was a member of a chess club, that went from 30 tables to 5 in a span of couple of years.

Speaks to the fragility of the human mind. The human collective organism, as it were, instead of rising against the challenge from the machines, decides to shift focus elsewhere. Chess is nowhere close to being a solved game, yet we're already treating it as such.

Out of curiosity, when would you consider chess, or any game of similar complexity for that matter, "solved"?

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#62

Post by malvosenior »

Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #37
johnchristopher wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can we, as a society, support our future during its most vulnerable time (childhood)? How is it possible that we still have homeless children in a country with so much wealth? The argument goes like this: > Because why should I care for someone else's child and why should I shell out money because someone decided to have children even though they shouldn't have ?

The counter-argument goes like this: Prudent or not, the deed is done; the child is here now and has real needs now. Get over punishing the child for being born and do the right thing.

The counter-counter argument is that not giving someone your money isn't "punishing" them, it's just retaining consent over your finances which everyone should have a right to do, without shame.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#63

Post by volkk »

Dangeranger wrote: post #5

A year after learning to play chess he has a USCF rating of 1473 and is #27 in America for eight-year-olds. Tani participated in the New York State Championship. He won the category for children of his age, kindergarten to third grade, with five wins and one draw[0]. "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and…

i'm highly paraphrasing (dont really know the source and maybe the its from SJG) but your quote really reminds me of -- "do you know the best painter that ever lived? a chinese potato farmer"

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#64

Post by yathern »

jonahx wrote: post #56
vr46 wrote: post #3

As they say, talent is evenly distributed and opportunity is not. Good on the little fella.

Talent is nowhere near evenly distributed. As this boy shows.

Evenly distributed not in the sense that everyone has an equal amount, but that every way you can cut up demographics (age, race, sex, nationality) will have the same bell curve of talent. But that is not necessarily so with opportunity.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#66

Post by klenwell »

argd678 wrote: post #51
Dangeranger wrote: post #5

A year after learning to play chess he has a USCF rating of 1473 and is #27 in America for eight-year-olds. Tani participated in the New York State Championship. He won the category for children of his age, kindergarten to third grade, with five wins and one draw[0]. "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and…

There’s efforts to correct the record on the Middle Ages too for this reason. The History Unplugged POD cast for example has a series on it. Intelligence is also a function of knowledge too however, it’s not purely a trait you’re born with. So the more correct knowledge you have on how to think and approach problems the smarter you are. You can easily see this today with the different decisions people make arround th…

I feel Jared Diamond illustrated this beautifully in his prologue to Guns, Germs, and Steel:

From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is. At some tasks that one might reasonably suppose to reflect aspects of brain function, such as the ability to form a mental map of unfamiliar surroundings, they appear considerably more adept than Westerners. Of course, New Guineans tend to perform poorly at tasks that Westerners have been trained to perform since childhood and that New Guineans have not. Hence when unschooled New Guineans from remote villages visit towns, they look stupid to Westerners. Conversely, I am constantly aware of how stupid I look to New Guineans when I'm with them in the jungle, displaying my incompetence at simple tasks (such as following a jungle trail or erecting a shelter) at which New Guineans have been trained since childhood and I have not.

The whole prologue is worth reading when contemplating the fraught question of nature and nurture and the importance of IQ.

https://archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_S...

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#67

Post by dlandis »

benatkin wrote: post #16
tudelo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> #27 in America for eight-year-olds The granularity of this ranking is interesting.

I disagree. This isn't a contrived category, which is common in tournaments, to make them interesting. On chess.com and Lichess there are chess tournaments that are restricted to people with lower than, say, a 1500 rating. If a 1700 chess player plays worse on purpose to get the score down, that's called sandbagging. There is little room for sandbagging here. People can't just change their ages, or up and move to the…

What (if anything) stops people from cheating in online tournaments (by simply asking a computer for the best next move, given the current board arrangement)?

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#68

Post by damienkatz »

zem wrote: post #43
benatkin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. This isn't a contrived category, which is common in tournaments, to make them interesting. On chess.com and Lichess there are chess tournaments that are restricted to people with lower than, say, a 1500 rating. If a 1700 chess player plays worse on purpose to get the score down, that's called sandbagging. There is little room for sandbagging here. People can't just change their ages, or up and move to the…

minor correction: "sandbagging". the term is common in the scrabble tournament community too, and i'd always assumed it was metaphorically "ambush by hitting someone over the head with a sandbag", but apparently that's only the presumed etymology, and there is at least one other theory out there: https://ridemonkey.bikemag.com/threads/anybody-know-origins-...

My understanding is it’s from car racing. Putting sandbags in during qualifying to make min weight. Then removed during the race to make the car lighter and faster.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#69

Post by b0bby_tabl3s »

benatkin wrote: post #16
tudelo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> #27 in America for eight-year-olds The granularity of this ranking is interesting.

I disagree. This isn't a contrived category, which is common in tournaments, to make them interesting. On chess.com and Lichess there are chess tournaments that are restricted to people with lower than, say, a 1500 rating. If a 1700 chess player plays worse on purpose to get the score down, that's called sandbagging. There is little room for sandbagging here. People can't just change their ages, or up and move to the…

"I disagree" then you proceed to go on a diatribe about nothing the comment you 'disagreed' with.

You must LOVE hearing yourself talk.

:eyeroll:

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