A GeekDad’s 8-Year Old Daughter Reinvents Chess

If you’re not careful, I scold, you will become indoctrinated in the implicit assumptions of a scientific community, unable to see in certain intellectual directions. Better to remain aloof, so you are psychologically more able to be irreverent and more likely to make a revolutionary discovery.

I've been telling people this for years. Sadly too many people are content with the mold they've fallen into and the worldview they've been given so they just look at me like I'm crazy.

Since he holds Chess in high regard, she "should have" fawned over chess, wanting to play it again and learn more about it. To not do so is to not show enough respect to his ideal of Chess.

If instead, she had played chess a lot with him, talked about how much she liked it, and then presented him with a game she made while downplaying it as a trifling diversion from Real Chess which she really likes, then he would have felt suitable respect was being paid.

aka politics, see also: we humans delight in finding or inventing things to be offended at.

See also: how would you automatically react if someone posted "my forum is much better than YCombinator" and had an account registered a day ago, versus if patio11 posted "I'm trying out a few different ideas for auto-moderating comments on my forum, would any of you come over and give it a try please?". Same basic point, very different presentations.

Irreverence is good if it comes from deep understanding and knowledge or genius - otherwise it just comes off as arrogance.

http://www.chessvariants.com/

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FairyChess.html

After all, isn't current Western chess itself a variant of the (possibly Indian) game from which it originated?

http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Chess.htm

http://history.chess.free.fr/history.htm

If you know people from China, Taiwan, or Vietnam, you may have had the opportunity to play Chinese chess,

http://www.clubxiangqi.com/?F=rules

which is definitely related to Western chess, but noticeably different in game play.

After edit: I wonder about the first reply to this comment here, "so you post this, which is hypocritical on the face of it," and how it fits with the HN guideline

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Above in my original comment, I am of course expressing the opinion that a new variant of chess is unremarkable. I am not slamming the eight-year-old girl who invented the variant (and I appreciate the link in the reply that shows her handwritten notes about the rules--putting the rules in writing at her age is impressive to me). It just seems to me that part of the context of the submitted article is a long and well documented history of many people in West and East developing variants of the game of chess--including the variant that has become the dominant international form of the game. And I raise the meta-issues here because of pg's recently expressed concern

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696

that HN has a problem with some of the comments submitted. I want my comments to be top-quality (and, thus, appreciate correction from other participants here), and I want to be aware of what generally desired behavior is here.

P.P.S. scott_s posted simultaneously with my editing the first time here, and I appreciate his comment explaining succinctly what was dissatisfying about what the submitted article emphasized. Yes, inventing variants of common games (something I have observed dozens of children do over the years) is part of a young person's process of developing creativity--"rewriting the rules" to dare to try new ways of doing things.