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Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died

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Re: Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died

#131

Post by pogue »

mazone wrote: post #126

Trying not to sound too cold, he seemed like a very nice guy and i did not know him. It was not surprising for me. I remember seeing interview with him when he took things very personal and could not let things go some year back. Thought at that time that he was at high risk of suicide. He seemed to have a self loathing personality / depression and obsessive behaviors. Staying on the Internet and be dependent on it i…

I asked Perplexity what people are speculating online might have been the cause of his death, and it mostly appears to revolve around mental health issues, substance abuse & self harm. Whether or not it's true, this is a tragic loss. Smart & talented people can often be very sensitive.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-is-the-speculation-onl...

Having struggled with these same issues for most of my adult life I'll just say it's nothing to be ashamed of and if you or someone you care about is in pain or struggling, don't hesitate to reach out. There are resources out there for you and it doesn't make you weak for using them.

US: 988 Lifeline https://988lifeline.org/

US, Canada, UK & Ireland: Crisis Text Line https://www.crisistextline.org/

Worldwide list of resources: https://findahelpline.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

Re: Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died

#132

Post by econ »

toinewx wrote: post #89
ai-christianson wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a link between high intelligence and depression as well?

is being good at chess a proof of human intelligence?

The education system bored me a lot and made an effort to portray me as some kind of mentally disabled retard. It was rather interesting to me that successful career grown ups couldn't win a single game.

I wasn't interested in chess but I could see their entire plan unfold on the board. Unless they were actually good I didn't even try to win, in stead I let them unfold their plan into their own demise.

My winning streak ended when I got to play against the best kid from a different school. His was the biggest brain I have ever seen from the inside. He pretty much violated basic principles of the game in a way that still bothers me 35 years later.

The game was much to open to really look far ahead. The way one would play against a computer. His actual goal was to trade his knights and bishops for two pawns each!?!?! He pulled off 3 such trades. He carefully set up the trades and it made no fkn sense.

Then came a really long and slow pawn push that didn't allow me to trade my knights and bishops for more than a single pawn.

It took so many moves that he pretty much convinced me that 2 bishops and a knight are worth less than 5 points. I haven't seen a second game like it but I'm still 100% convinced.

Re: Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died

#133

Post by rayiner »

Noaidi wrote: post #130
rayiner wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligence presents in different way, but they’re all correlated with each other. The idea that people can be intelligent in different things is mostly a myth: https://researched.org.uk/2018/09/26/myth-busting-gardners-m...

From that artcile: "'Even in our book, we don’t want to call this theory a complete myth, but instead label it as ‘nuanced’."

But read the next two sentences:

> Why? Well, the basic idea behind this theory is that people are different, and maybe you’ve noticed – they really are. People have different interests, different abilities, different moods, etc.

The author isn’t saying that the multiple-intelligence theory is itself valid. Rather, in an educational context, there is a kernel of value in the idea that different students are different. That’s entirely consistent with intelligence being a single thing.

Re: Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died

#134

Post by ddp26 »

This seems as good a place as any for a mini obituary.

I'm 6 years older than Danya, and we shared the same beloved chess coach in the Bay Area. I played him in a tournament game when I was 17 and he was 11, at the Mechanics Club in SF. I was an NM, and he held me to a draw. (Afterward he told me my position was better when we agreed to a draw, which was news to me!)

Around that time Danya won the World Under 12 Championship. Americans almost never win those events, and it was a big big deal in the American chess community.

But to me, most impressive was when in 2007, at age 12, in 6th or 7th grade, he won a much easier tournament, the California High School championship. I had won it the previous year, as an 11th grader - my crowning achievement. We all knew then that Naroditsky was a generational talent, but it was something special that this child - very tall for his age, but still oh so young - beat up all the serious high schooler competitors.

He then went to Stanford, and took an introductory CS course taught by my brother. Everything I heard indicated he was an exceptional contribution to Stanford's culture. He had such wide interests and curiosity, and became a history major. He probably was the most erudite chess player of his generation, reading (and writing!) books at a huge clip.

I remember vividly in his early streaming days, long before Danya became an internet chess celebrity, he was taking challenges while I was watching, so I logged in to the site and played him. I managed to beat him in a blitz game in front of all of his viewers. He was mad! I'm a strong blitz player but he is world-class, consistently a top ~10 blitz player in the world for the last 10 years. (I used to watch him on the old terminal-like chess server, the Internet Chess Club, under the handle "Danya", as he destroyed everyone while still a preteen and largely unknown.)

I don't want to add to the speculation to what happened to him. Suffice to say, I am not convinced by the story people are jumping to.

He will be deeply missed, and he will not be forgotten. He was absolutely unique and a gem of the chess world. Farewell, Danya.

Re: Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died

#136

Post by mewpmewp2 »

gizajob wrote: post #114
toinewx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is being good at chess a proof of human intelligence?

I think Hikaru’s fans made him take an IQ or intelligence test a couple of years ago and it showed he wasn’t exactly a mastermind. He said at the time something along the lines that being good at chess shows you are intelligent only in that one domain of chess-type thinking, not general intelligence.

I remember something related to that, but wasn't he trolling the complete thing?

Re: Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died

#137

Post by somenameforme »

toinewx wrote: post #89
ai-christianson wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a link between high intelligence and depression as well?

is being good at chess a proof of human intelligence?

Not that long ago I would have said no, but I increasingly think that intelligence is mostly about the ability to learn. And chess, at a high level, requires a mixture of achieving an extremely high degree of unconscious competence working right alongside a high degree of conscious competence for things like opening prep. And most, if not all, high level chess players that have tried, in earnest, to do things outside of chess have excelled across a wide variety of fields.

But I think where people get confused is in the inverse. If you take a very smart person and he dedicates two years of his life to chess, all alongside training from some of the world's best, then he's still going to be, at best, a strong amateur at the end. In fact I know at least one instance where this exact experiment was tried. This is generally unlike other fields where such an effort would generally put you well into the realm of mastery.

But that's the unconscious competence part - chess takes many years of very serious training to even start to have it become 'natural' for you, and it's that point that your training journey begins all over again because suddenly things like opening preparation starts to become critical. So it can give the appearance that since seemingly smart people don't do particularly well at chess, while people like Magnus who has/had (daddyhood changes a lot...) a complete 'bro' personality, is arguably the strongest player of all time, it gives the impression that being smart must not be a prerequisite for success at chess.

Re: Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died

#140

Post by sexyman48 »

toinewx wrote: post #89
ai-christianson wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a link between high intelligence and depression as well?

is being good at chess a proof of human intelligence?

I'd say the opposite. Every time a guy crushes me, I flip the board over and call him a fuckwit.
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