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Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

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Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#111

Post by tehnub »

tomcam wrote: post #77

We nerd types have made this mistake for the last 75 years or so. This mystique about chess has been completely misplaced in my humble opinion. At first the claim was that Smart people played chess, therefore if you made a computer that played chess well it would be Smart. That turned out to be hilariously untrue, but durable: nerds were finally relieved of their arrogance after about 5 decades only when it became cl…

AlphaZero, formerly the strongest chess playing program/player, searches the game tree via Monte Carlo tree search, which really isn't brute force.

But more to the point of your comment, it makes sense to make these claims about chess in particular because chess more or less is exclusively about pure concentration. There is no physical ability you must develop like you would usually have to for sports or music or gaming.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#112

Post by sgillen »

tehnub wrote: post #111
tomcam wrote: post #77

We nerd types have made this mistake for the last 75 years or so. This mystique about chess has been completely misplaced in my humble opinion. At first the claim was that Smart people played chess, therefore if you made a computer that played chess well it would be Smart. That turned out to be hilariously untrue, but durable: nerds were finally relieved of their arrogance after about 5 decades only when it became cl…

AlphaZero, formerly the strongest chess playing program/player, searches the game tree via Monte Carlo tree search, which really isn't brute force. But more to the point of your comment, it makes sense to make these claims about chess in particular because chess more or less is exclusively about pure concentration. There is no physical ability you must develop like you would usually have to for sports or music or gam…

If Monte Carlo tree search is not brute force , what would you consider brute force?

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#113

Post by Bakary »

I appreciated the author's life story, but I don't understand the point of learning a certain quality through a peripheral pursuit. The best way to learn real life things is to engage with real life things. There are so many things to do and so little time to do them.

The hours you spend playing chess/video games/whatever else is marketed to boost some ability are better spent pursuing what you want out of life directly. Or spent doing these same things, but out of genuine interest and for their own sake.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#114

Post by jen729w »

adenozine wrote: post #70
Dumblydorr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually hard to practice concentrating with a game or active activity. If you truly want to meet your mind, sit down and do nothing, i.e. meditate. You'll notice your mind racing, and you'll see just why it's hard to concentrate on anything. You can then practice letting go of intervening thoughts, without self hate, and just observe the breath, sounds around, but in a passive, calm manner, not reactionary or i…

I've heard this advice many times over the years, and I guess I've really just never committed myself to meditation as a regimen. I can keep a fitness routine very well, I think that's as close I get with my brain to that place of reflection. Did you have any like, significant trauma to deal with when you started meditating? I have some things in my past that I feel the need to run from when I am still and quiet in m…

(Beginner/very part-time meditator here.)

Just start. I think most ‘courses’ will address this concern — it’s kinda the basic tenet of meditation, that you‘ll notice thoughts but that this is okay. You train yourself to notice them, observe them, and let them drift by.

Personally I like Headspace because I find Andy Puddicombe’s voice delightful. But of course there are a million meditation resources, many free.

As someone who never thought I’d be a meditator — and whose first experience was in a packed auditorium with Sam Harris at the front, which was amazing [0] — I can’t recommend it enough. This thread has me wanting to get back in to it. (Because, like anything else, the act of just doing it is half the battle won.)

[0]: At the global atheist conference, whatever it was called, in Melbourne, c. 2012? Anyone else there?

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#115

Post by joseph_grobbles »

tomcam wrote: post #77

We nerd types have made this mistake for the last 75 years or so. This mystique about chess has been completely misplaced in my humble opinion. At first the claim was that Smart people played chess, therefore if you made a computer that played chess well it would be Smart. That turned out to be hilariously untrue, but durable: nerds were finally relieved of their arrogance after about 5 decades only when it became cl…

The first claim is a strawman and deserves no further refuting.

The second is...true. Everything we do is something we can learn life lessons from. And chess is a lesson in concentration and focused mental activity, which remarkably few things are.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#116

Post by Barrin92 »

tomcam wrote: post #77

We nerd types have made this mistake for the last 75 years or so. This mystique about chess has been completely misplaced in my humble opinion. At first the claim was that Smart people played chess, therefore if you made a computer that played chess well it would be Smart. That turned out to be hilariously untrue, but durable: nerds were finally relieved of their arrogance after about 5 decades only when it became cl…

The author doesn't dispute this at all. He's a chess grandmaster who is not mystifying chess, but pointing out how a lifetime of rigorous chess playing has taught him the value of concentration. He acknowledges that the very same thing occurs in people in other disciplines, athletes for example.

It's not an article about the virtue of nerds but about the combination of attention, flow experience and concentration, in the face of a culture that neglects all three but the latter in particular.

And I think he is very right and chess can teach us important lessons here, as can programming, or craftsmanship, or participation in the arts among other things.

Particularly important is the point about autonomy. Making concentration and understanding of our own mind through games like chess a priority is liberating. Through things like chess it is possible to move from being distracted by external rewards towards understanding one's own cognition the focus of life, without which no genuine thinking is possible.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#117

Post by perfmode »

mdorazio wrote: post #71
matsemann wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this line of thinking at all . It seems like such a random goalpoast. Why does it matter if the computer is better? If you're an 1800 rated player, you're still so far behind the best humans that it's irrelevant. Or why care if a computer has examined some similar positions before? As an amateur the positions won't be novel in qny way anyway. No more human innovation is blatantly false. If anything, compu…

For me, AlphaZero was the overwhelming proof that a game with a fixed board and a limited set of rules is fundamentally an exercise in pattern recognition and response, not of actual innovation or creativity. This applies every bit as much to chess and go as it does to checkers. I realized that I really didn't want to try to be a better pattern recognizer (aka computer) than other humans, so I stopped playing and put…

could you ever find solid ground?

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#118

Post by tehnub »

sgillen wrote: post #112
tehnub wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AlphaZero, formerly the strongest chess playing program/player, searches the game tree via Monte Carlo tree search, which really isn't brute force. But more to the point of your comment, it makes sense to make these claims about chess in particular because chess more or less is exclusively about pure concentration. There is no physical ability you must develop like you would usually have to for sports or music or gam…

If Monte Carlo tree search is not brute force , what would you consider brute force?

Well, I'd say it's an approximation of brute force. I'd say traditional minimax (with or without branch-and-bound improvements e.g. alpha-beta pruning), is brute force.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#120

Post by kybernetikos »

carabiner wrote: post #92

Any non-trivial hobby is a lesson in concentration: painting, playing piano, rock climbing, carpentry. Ultimately it's all mindfulness.

Isn't mindfulness the opposite of concentration? Concentration takes you away from your place in space and time, because you are absorbed in something else. Mindfulness is usually described as being fully present.
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