Is Chess The Best Thinking Competition?

[towforce]

It might be true to say that computer chess was a good thinking competition in the early days - but that's not so obvious now.

Human chess as a thinking competition:

* well defined rules

* complex enough to prevent the human brain from mastering it

* restricted knowledge domain

On this basis, chess is a better thinking competition than some of the obvious alternatives, like quizzes, academic subjects, writing, debating, public speaking, drawing, managing businesses, politics, puzzles, IQ tests etc.

The game of Go might be a better thinking competition than chess, though.

A key advantage of chess over other thinking competitions is its popularity - though not all good thinkers are happy to take the time to master chess skill.

Chess is obviously losing its power to measure the ability of machines as they are becoming unbeatable.

Please share thoughts on what makes a good thinking competition (or even what constitutes "good thinking", or how we can measure it).

[towforce]

More candidates:

1. Day trading (link)

2. Superforecasting (link): it is a documented fact that the best superforecasters make more accurate predictions about current events than the CIA do. I like this game a lot, because it demonstrates a genuine understanding of (or an ability to model) the processes that are shaping human affairs. The drawback: it's not likely to ever make a compelling competition because of the timescales involved. Maybe it can replace correspondence chess, which is suffering draw death?

[smatovic]

Someone said once "Intelligence is how you perform in a given environment.", assumed we live in a money driven world, the Forbes 200 would be one take. I prefer playing chess though.

Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2023: The Top 200
https://www.forbes.com.au/news/billiona ... the-world/

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Srdja

[towforce]

Someone said once "Intelligence is how you perform in a given environment.", assumed we live in a money driven world, the Forbes 200 would be one take. I prefer playing chess though.

Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2023: The Top 200
https://www.forbes.com.au/news/billiona ... the-world/

I'm voting against this suggestion - sorry: there are some smart guys on the list (Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Bill Gates, Elon Musk etc), but a quick glance at the list shows 2 obvious biases: USA, and inheritance. Is being born American or into a rich family an indicator of thinking skill? No.

Also, as a spectacle it's not much fun, because it's glacially slow: something that moves that slowly isn't fun and engaging like a competition should be.

There's also a discussion to be had about how much of the wealth building was done by the rich guy, and how much was other people building it for him. Finally, there's a lot of luck in this game.

Someone said once "Intelligence is how you perform in a given environment."

Then we should include football: nearly all Premiership players earn millions of GBP per year, and the best of them earn tens of millions of GBP per year (Ronaldo, who is not in the Premiership, and who is well past his best, earns well over $100,000,000 per year).

Thinking is a valuable skill in football, but eyes, legs and lungs are more important in that game. At a certain level, where eyes, legs and lungs are a given, the brain becomes an important differentiator: however, football is not often sold as a thinking game. Maybe football management? Probably not: the factor of management thinking is not well enough isolated from other factors.