The brevity and bluntness in his responses is pretty amusing. I'm surprised he so candidly rates his own abilities and the abilities of his peers - I feel like many people would dodge those questions in public interviews.
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Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010)
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Re: Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010)
#12I think there's a great analogy for why he cares so little about his intelligence: do you think Michael Jordan sat around admiring his build, his height, etc? In a competitive environment, it's best to accept that some of your abilities are fixed, so you can focus on training what can be bettered.
That's not a good analogy. For all I know after a day's training Jordan sat around admiring his build and height. I think reverse Dunning-Kruger is much more likely in Magnus's case.
I think it's a pretty good analogy. I thought it was well understood that Michael Jordan was a very competitive individual and didn't take his wins for granted and that there was always something to work towards and improve upon.
"...the most competitive individual...Always felt like somebody else was going to outwork him so he wanted to out work them." - A trainer of Jordan's. (Video for reference: http://youtu.be/w39-_rauFSk)
Re: Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010)
#13I think there might be a correlation between being lazy and being creative. I've seen this pattern in many other greats (and in my not so great self :)
Aaron Sorkin talks about procrastinating a lot between writing sessions. Lots of painters and artists procrastinate as well.
I think its a matter of digestion, your mind is focused on a "task" and churning in the background, but you don't actively work on it except when you "feel like it". I saw some scientific article to this affect that the downtime is actually very valuable for the brain to form creative thought.
Re: Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010)
#14The brevity and bluntness in his responses is pretty amusing. I'm surprised he so candidly rates his own abilities and the abilities of his peers - I feel like many people would dodge those questions in public interviews.
The intersection of chess and Scandinavianism is strong here. Fortunately the HN crowd is one of the most appreciative of that degree of bluntness.
Re: Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010)
#15He briefly talks about Kasparov here as they were training together at the time. They later broke up.
I wonder if some of the conflict they felt was was really Magnus's more organic, natural approach clashing with Kasparov's more like systematic and rigid type of training, which he no doubt inherited from Botvinnik. This isn't to say Magnus doesn't work hard at his game but on a chess approach scale of, say, Capablanca to Botvinnik, he would very much tilt towards the former.
edit: Actually he specifically talks about that; somehow I skipped it upon first reading.
Re: Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010)
#16Interesting how he says that extremely high IQ may even be a disadvantage: And that’s precisely what would be terrible. Of course it is important for a chess player to be able to concentrate well, but being too intelligent can also be a burden. It can get in your way. I am convinced that the reason the Englishman John Nunn never became world champion is that he is too clever for that. At the age of 15, Nunn started s…
This makes sense in that IQ is a measure of general intellectual capacity at the concscious level, but the underlying raw processing power of the human brain is much much greater, we just usually lack the ability to apply it directly to problems—it's like a very high level programming language; whereas mathematical savants or intuition, in this case, can outperform much higher IQs by having a sort of unconscious ASIC under the hood, as it were.
Re: Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010)
#17Interesting how he says that extremely high IQ may even be a disadvantage: And that’s precisely what would be terrible. Of course it is important for a chess player to be able to concentrate well, but being too intelligent can also be a burden. It can get in your way. I am convinced that the reason the Englishman John Nunn never became world champion is that he is too clever for that. At the age of 15, Nunn started s…
This makes sense in that IQ is a measure of general intellectual capacity at the concscious level, but the underlying raw processing power of the human brain is much much greater, we just usually lack the ability to apply it directly to problems—it's like a very high level programming language; whereas mathematical savants or intuition, in this case, can outperform much higher IQs by having a sort of unconscious ASIC…
Nice analogy!
Yes, it's spot-on with K. Anders Ericsson's research on expert performance and deliberate practice:
- http://psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html
- http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/ericsson.lo...
Re: Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010)
#18I think there might be a correlation between being lazy and being creative. I've seen this pattern in many other greats (and in my not so great self :) Aaron Sorkin talks about procrastinating a lot between writing sessions. Lots of painters and artists procrastinate as well. I think its a matter of digestion, your mind is focused on a "task" and churning in the background, but you don't actively work on it except wh…
Laziness is relatively defined to other people's minds. Your mind works the best when it does, and it works best with the minds it works best with, which is actually really complicated to think about. Also, persistently evaluating your mind for whether it is lazy or not has side effects on how your mind works.
Just because it doesn't fit someone else's mold doesn't make your mind lazy, and just because a bunch of minds fit together perfectly to propel one person skyward doesn't make them a genius. A bunch of geniuses arguing about progress doesn't create progress. We aren't very good at mapping our minds while using our minds to do it, but maybe we are.
I hope science one day recognizes that we can spend centuries churning our wheels without actually getting anywhere - we create the same problem we begin with by convincing ourselves we found the solution.
Re: Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010)
#19The brevity and bluntness in his responses is pretty amusing. I'm surprised he so candidly rates his own abilities and the abilities of his peers - I feel like many people would dodge those questions in public interviews.
>I'm surprised he so candidly rates his own abilities and the abilities of his peers //
In chess though you have a ranking, you have past games to compare. It would be silly for him to say "oh, I'm not that good" as there's a measured value which [possibly incorrectly] says he's the world number one. Similarly he spends a lot of his time assessing his opponents, their games, their characters.
I found it interesting that he said Kasparov can judge which opening a player will play taking in to account their mood. It would be nice to test that claim some how.
Re: Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010)
#20I'd love to see Carlsen play a modern game like Hearthstone or Magic. Even just to hear his thoughts on them.
I would guess that he'd feel like there is too much chance. The issue with a game like Magic is that you can play perfectly and still lose. And I say this as someone who loves the game. EDIT: I read further and it seems like he enjoys poker. So I guess it's possible that he'd enjoy MTG.
I'd have to agree. Great magic players (kibler, finkel, lsv, anyone in the hall of fame) will often have lifetime win rates that are slightly higher than 50% with 60% in a single season being an extreme outlier.