Topic: Episode #329

[GodSlayer]

science or fiction was so obvious.

no amount of practice will make you better than me at chess if the factor is that you're a monkey.


are monkeys allowed on the international ranking of chess?

[Kwisatz Haderach]

science or fiction was so obvious.

no amount of practice will make you better than me at chess if the factor is that you're a monkey.

But if you're a human, practice will make "less intelligent" people (whatever that means) better than smarter people who don't practice.  The study showed that amount of practice didn't matter after a certain point, not that practice is irrelevant.  A minimum amount of practice is still require to be competent at chess.

[GodSlayer]

science or fiction was so obvious.

no amount of practice will make you better than me at chess if the factor is that you're a monkey.

But if you're a human, practice will make "less intelligent" people (whatever that means) better than smarter people who don't practice.  The study showed that amount of practice didn't matter after a certain point, not that practice is irrelevant.  A minimum amount of practice is still require to be competent at chess.

yea, but I won science or fiction home edition because he didn't say anything about humans in the question

[GodSlayer]

also, this weeks' conclusion made me think it would be fun to have some sort of 'quote discussion' segment, where they try to fault or improve upon or give context to whatever quotes are put forward.

[Nene]

One thing I don't recall being mentioned on the show for Europe's new GPS network, is that unlike the American system, it's not in service at the whim of the US Military - which from memory can reduce either accuracy or just outright switch off coverage to geographic areas in the current system. It's a pretty major policy problem to have your entire transport sector and military reliant on a satellite network controlled by another state.

With the better accuracy this is the major reason given by the German Aeronautics Services. Not as mentioned in the podcast to make money.

[chexuma]

I ran into this article a while ago about what makes good chess players good:

http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2011/06/chess_grand_mas.php

In short, people who are good at chess aren't particularly strong in any congitive test. When presented a board from an actual game, they are able to memorize the board quickly. But when presented with a board where the pieces arranged randomly, they aren't any better than less-skilled chess players at remembering the pieces' positions.

If you aren't very good at chess, don't feel bad. Those who regularly beat you aren't necessarily "smarter" -- they're just good at chess.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

I ran into this article a while ago about what makes good chess players good:

http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2011/06/chess_grand_mas.php

In short, people who are good at chess aren't particularly strong in any congitive test. When presented a board from an actual game, they are able to memorize the board quickly. But when presented with a board where the pieces arranged randomly, they aren't any better than less-skilled chess players at remembering the pieces' positions.

If you aren't very good at chess, don't feel bad. Those who regularly beat you aren't necessarily "smarter" -- they're just good at chess.

+1

The societal notion that "smart people are good at chess" or "chess players are smart" is almost as ridiculous as the notion that artists are "born with talent".

Both chess playing and producing art are skills that anyone can learn (given the proper resources) by practicing a lot.  I should know, I am an excellent chess player and a professional artist who is neither particularly smart nor possessed of any inborn artistic talent.

[Anders]

Just because you used training and not talent doesn't mean everyone reaches the pinnacles of art and chess. There may be more than one way to skin a cat.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Just because you used training and not talent doesn't mean everyone reaches the pinnacles of art and chess. There may be more than one way to skin a cat.

In my experience the pinnacles are only reaches by those who practice a lot.

However, sometimes the practice is not in the supposed field of expertise.  For example, in the fine art world many people excelled by practicing bullshiting about the meaning of their work.

[seaotter]

Didn't the panel just cover this? Wasn't it that practice can make you good but not the best?

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Didn't the panel just cover this? Wasn't it that practice can make you good but not the best?

When did they cover this?

[seaotter]

Didn't the panel just cover this? Wasn't it that practice can make you good but not the best?

When did they cover this?

?

But I remember them saying that practice made a difference for somthing like the first five thousand hours, but then after that there wasn't really a correlation between time in and more success.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Didn't the panel just cover this? Wasn't it that practice can make you good but not the best?

When did they cover this?

?

But I remember them saying that practice made a difference for somthing like the first five thousand hours, but then after that there wasn't really a correlation between time in and more success.

Are you just talking about the Science or Fiction piece in this episode that started this conversation?  I thought you meant they talked about the whole talent vs. training thing in depth in a previous episode.

[seaotter]

Maybe is that where they said that?

[rlquinn1980]

Name That Logical Fallacy:

I was surprised that "fallacy of the single cause" (or "causal oversimplification") wasn't mentioned in regards to this, or how it was distinguished from "asserting the consequence" ("affirming the consequent") in this case—which I would love to hear. More surprising still was the information at the bottom of this site regarding the fallacy in question:

Bayes' Theorem can be seen as a probabilistic variation on Affirming The Consequent in which the argument is valid. It tells us that the probability of A given B is equal to the probability of A and B divided by the probability of B. If A implies B, then the probability of A and B equals the probability of A. Therefore, as long as B was not certain to be true, the discovery of the truth of B increases our assessment of the probability of the truth of A.

Once again, a bit of SBM^* has quietly snuck into SGU. I wish the discussion could have been longer.

^*or for that matter, science-based anything-needing-statistics