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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

#121

Post by meiraleal »

myle wrote: post #94
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…

What you are saying is true. You can get life lessons from everything. Nevertheless, in some cases implicitly we talk not about the average or best case but the minimum. A university degree means you meet some minimum requirements. Being a doctor means you meet some minimum requirements. Of course, you can diversify well above the minimum. Here, also, we are talking about the minimum. Sure, you can do gardening and t…

> In chess, if you play a bit, you need patience, you need to imagine next possible moves, you need to manage your time and perhaps also your emotions.

someone passionate about gardening can put it the exactly same way you did.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#122

Post by confidantlake »

username90 wrote: post #43

Why concentrate on playing chess when you can concentrate on solving math problems? They are deeper, more fun and also related to the real world. I never liked chess but thinking about random math problems kept me up at night. If you think math problems aren't interesting then you just aren't trying to solve hard enough math problems, there is no end to them.

Why focus on solving math problems when you can solve political problems. They are deeper and more interesting. Or maybe different people find different things interesting?

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#123

Post by RhodoYolo »

yboris wrote: post #83
pmoriarty wrote: post #2

Once one has learned how to concentrate, the next thing to learn is to be able to concentrate on the right thing. Chess taught me to concentrate, but I've always had trouble concentrating on what I should be concentrating on, and instead wasted too much time concentrating on chess and other diversions. The real trick is being able to focus on something even when it gets frustrating, painful, or boring, and being able…

I took a "study drug" once for fun in college. My friend warned me: "it doesn't focus you on studying, you might end up very meticulously cleaning for a few hours". I ended up playing Nonogram for 3 hours into the night. On the "focus what's important in life" I feel like everyone should consider Effective Altruism - focusing on the effectiveness of one's pro-social actions first and foremost.

what do you think about the fountainhead?

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#124

Post by hellodang »

Dumbdo wrote: post #44
hellodang wrote: post #38

I question how much buzz about chess lately is the direct result of a certain Netflix Original. The effects seem to cascade. Chess blog posts on HN... a flood of sales of Chinese chess sets on Amazon... game night pics featuring chess on your social media feeds. How much of our behavior is dictated, or at least seeded, by Big Ns?

As someone who is following chess more intensively for over two years now, I wouldn't necessarily say it's just Netflix. With the pandemic there was a huge influx of new chess players. You can see it in [0], the player count rose over 50% from February to April. After that chess suddenly got popular on Twitch as well, which I would attribute mostly to GM Hikaru, who played chess together with well known streamers suc…

Cool, I never heard of frequency illusion. I experience it all the time.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#125

Post by jonfw »

Bakary wrote: post #113

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 direc…

The great thing about these peripheral pursuits is that they reduce opportunity costs and the consequence of failure.

There are only so many games in a season, and only so many practices in between games. In athletics, if you want to build a new skill you're best doing drills so you can independently work on that skill without sacrificing valuable practice/game time where you should be focusing on higher level strategy stuff.

If you're a consultant and your approach is to get on a client site and send it, that's probably an effective learning strategy right up until you tank your reputation and can't find any more clients to practice with.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#126

Post by yboris »

RhodoYolo wrote: post #123
yboris wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a "study drug" once for fun in college. My friend warned me: "it doesn't focus you on studying, you might end up very meticulously cleaning for a few hours". I ended up playing Nonogram for 3 hours into the night. On the "focus what's important in life" I feel like everyone should consider Effective Altruism - focusing on the effectiveness of one's pro-social actions first and foremost.

what do you think about the fountainhead?

Have not read. From everything I've heard around it -- I already hate it.

Why do you ask?

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#127

Post by RhodoYolo »

yboris wrote: post #126
RhodoYolo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you think about the fountainhead?

Have not read. From everything I've heard around it -- I already hate it. Why do you ask?

I read effective altruism and then the fountainhead right afterwards. It was a good balance between two extremes.

Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration

#128

Post by yboris »

RhodoYolo wrote: post #127
yboris wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have not read. From everything I've heard around it -- I already hate it. Why do you ask?

I read effective altruism and then the fountainhead right afterwards. It was a good balance between two extremes.

I see nothing extreme about giving 10% of your income to help others.

Thank you for the recommendation for The Fountainhead -- I'll consider finally reading it some day so I can form a personal opinion of it rather than basing my opinion off others' comments of it.

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