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Comment by nopinsight | Hacker News Reader

I enjoyed listening to the short segment on how and why he gave up chess at 11 despite being ranked 2nd in the world for that age group. Remarkable reflectiveness for an 11-year-old. Check out this down the page:

"Demis Hassabis: ‘I thought we were wasting our minds’

AI expert Demis Hassabis on giving up chess tournaments aged 11."

It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and how we can better engage them on major problems of our increasingly complex world.

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I'm not that brilliant, but I gave up on chess myself at around 18 when I crossed the threshold of playing blind and not being able to fall asleep at night because I was replaying games in my head. I think there are plenty of indicators that a more brilliant mind would take as clues of navigating to some local intellectual optimum. :-)

Only now I'm twice that age I follow a bit of the tournaments again. Watching a banter chess episode by Jan Gustafsson is a nice way to end the day so now and then.

I think the best we can do for brilliant minds is "set them" on a path of applied math (like working on AI). I'll assume that a brilliant mind is able to pick problems that it considers solvable. Even a brilliant mind trying to solve Ramsey number R(6,6) will probably solve a lot of subproblems on the way.

Is there anything you can recall doing that would encourage or discourage chess stuff from popping into your head like that? Do you think it came out of intentionally replaying games on your head and then became more automatic? Or did it just randomly start to happen on its own?

This kind of automatic mental practice seems like an awesome skill to develop for any field of study. It's a way to practice and learn without using up any willpower.

I play guitar and sometimes I do find myself doing solfege exercises and visualizing fretboard patterns when I'm falling asleep/sitting in traffic/whatever. I'd love to be able to do that more.

So, all of you AI guys, started from chess? I see a pattern emerging...

You got that ("all of you guys", "pattern emerging") from just reading about 2 guys?

The cover for the seminal book on AI (norvig) has a chessboard and games are a fundamental training ground for AI so I'd say there's some truth there.

You just need 2 points to draw a line... ;-)

> It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and how we can better engage them on major problems of our increasingly complex world.

We humans, have this amazing ability to give or take away meaning and essence to whatever we do.

So for another brilliant or less brilliant mind, becoming a doctor, veterinarian, molecular biologists, etc. Means so much more than reaching the limits of AI.

For a guy who's in love with a girl, nothing has meaning except from the moments she's walking in the room... etc. etc. etc.

>So for another brilliant or less brilliant mind, becoming a doctor, veterinarian, molecular biologists, etc. Means so much more than reaching the limits of AI.

And yet, all of those fields will benefit from advancements in AI -- whereas someone being great in chess wont have any impact at all for anything else.

What you said is kinda of true, but in a trivial way. Sure, for the guy who's just fallen in love other things aside from his love interest might not mean anything etc.

But that doesn't give any insight as to whether anything is more important than something else.

Might as well have answered "anything goes", which while true regarding available choices someone has if nothing else is considered to matter, it's not true when things are considered in some grander context and towards an end goal.

E.g. if the question "how I can help more people", or "how I can make more money", etc is also in place, chess loses quite fast compared to some scientific pursuit.

However ability in chess might not predict ability in those other endeavours

I think I understand your sentiment, but I'd object to the phrasing of "trivial pursuits".

If history teaches us anything, it's that humanity advances by people following their "trivial interests", rather than being herded onto the "major problems of our complex world".

What is or isn't trivial vs important is only obvious in hindsight, unfortunately. That moment might still happen for advertising and the art of capturing the human attention (or whatever you meant by this turn of phrase).

In principle we do not know the long-term impact in advance, but we can often make a probabilistic estimate. Choosing career as an AI researcher vs a Go player, for example.

* Note: If you want to make an impact, whichever your career inclination is, this website provides some great guides: https://80000hours.org/

I think trying to capture more of the world's resources for Google, Facebook, etc. do have a large impact in aggregation, so it's not a trivial pursuit. DeepMind itself and many other techs to come are being funded by these companies.

Personal impact may not be extremely large since there are many other brilliant people working on the same thing but some with a leading role could make a contribution there. (For example if you work for Google, which I believe is a major force for long-term innovation.)

What I had in mind was people who spend careers on games, puzzles, or gambling. I once watched a Ke Jie interview after his loss to AlphaGo and could tell that he is brilliant and would likely be successful in other careers that require sharp thinking.

Some like Christopher Lagan needed to live a double life and is still unlikely to make any real impact on the world.

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

> I think trying to capture more of the world's resources for Google, Facebook, etc. do have a large impact in aggregation,

Capturing more of the world's resources for a small number of massive advertising corporations is not beneficial to society in any way. The "innovation" happening at those companies is mostly detrimental, and focused on finding new ways to surveil and manipulate people for profit.

In principle we do not know the long-term impact in advance, but we can often make a probabilistic estimate.

I'm not sure this is true. We can't make a probabilistic estimate without a model. And to design an accurate model, you need to describe precisely what it means to ask, "is this activity worth pursuing?" Is there a way to do this without involving all of human society in your model?

As a first approximation, a simple model could be:

The number of people impacted * How greatly their lives are impacted given your existence

> What is or isn't trivial vs important is only obvious in hindsight, unfortunately.

Amongst things of similar nature, sure, but surely you're not arguing that being very good at chess is just as likely advance humanity in some important way as directly tackling current existential dangers?

Actually, you're not far off!

Where else would the next major advance come from, if not from raising our collective consciousness through games (cheap focused simulations) and articulate story-telling (social alignment and morality correction)? We're not robots, to somehow perceive objective reality independently and logically.

I certainly believe story-tellers and players are absolutely critical if humanity is to pull through. In the "standing on the shoulders of giants" kind of way: incremental digging at what really matters. And the free market seems to agree, as people who are good at this are among the highest valued individuals, however you choose to measure value (money, social status, attention...). What makes you think you could assign value better?

Just curious -- what do you see as the "current existential dangers"?

> Where else would the next major advance come from?

Probably from sustained and detailed study of the universe around us and the way it works. That's how we figure out most things. Not that (board) games can't be useful as training but IMO they're a form of navel-gazing. (Games based on high fidelity simulations are definitely useful - look at the AI research using GTA5 as a simulator for self-driving cars, for instance.)

> I certainly believe story-tellers and players are absolutely critical if humanity is to pull through.

In the sense of us dealing with our own demons and learning how to handle the general awfulness of reality (ie. psychology / philosophy), I completely agree. In the sense of us dealing with outside challenges, though, not so much.

> Just curious -- what do you see as the "current existential dangers"?

Right now? Our current economic system is close to its limits, with a growing percentage of humans permanently unemployed and that percentage is growing rapidly with new tech. Various ecological systems are collapsing. (eg. pollinators like bees being wiped out by insecticides - have you ever read John Christopher's "Death of Grass"?) Runaway climate change is a real possibility (ocean warming causing methane clathrates to release large amounts of methane into the atmosphere). Higher human populations and population densities increasing the evolution rate of diseases beyond what our immune systems can handle. And all that on a backdrop of a looming AI singularity which even in the best case will make the world weird and confusing beyond the comprehension of baseline humans. There's a lot going on.

Again, agreed for the most part. I just think you're underestimating the power of (board or otherwise) games, how they capture and reflect patterns of reality that are not immediately apparent or not directly useful (or even verbalizable).

There's this deep connection between curiosity, idle fun and problem solving.

The idea of driving people to "sustained and detailed scientific studies" to tackle "existential threats"... that is just not how the world works. Innovation doesn't happen by committee. It happens by making weird connections in unexpected places.

To be honest, I don't think you're giving enough credit to the evolutionary process that gave us our propensity to admire "games and stories". Dismissing it as "just navel-gazing", or just philosophy, in favour of rigorous science, sounds extremely perilous -- as if killing something fundamental to humanity.

Why is chess any more of a trivial pursuit than, say, art or music? Did Mozart or Michelangelo waste their whole lives for nothing?

Mozart and Michelangelo were major innovators in their fields and influenced an enormous number of artists in subsequent ages. Their works were also epitomes of human excellence, something we all can appreciate and be proud of as a species.

If you are likely to make great innovations in chess moves or patterns that will influence a large number of people in subsequent generations, you may have an impact. Given the dominance of computer chess and the small proportion of the world who appreciate advanced chess, your impact will still very likely be smaller than those of giants in art or music.

Fields matter:

Newton and Einstein still changed the world much more than Mozart and Michelangelo did.

Mechanical reproduction is a force multiplier allowing your art to touch millions or billions. (Mozart & Michelangelo didn't know this was coming, but I'm a consequentialist, so I give them credit for it.)

Far smaller is the audience for play-by-plays of competitive chess. I'd guess because the experience is less visceral? I've read a beginner-intermediate books with this kind of play-by-play and found it interesting enough, but I'd take my record collection over those books any day.

'It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and how we can better engage them on major problems of our increasingly complex world.'

How can you objectify the term 'wasting' (their lives)?

I mean to you the only people that their lives are worth something are scientists?

If you aren't a scientist you have wasted your life?

I think that people that enjoy trivial persuit or chess or whatever it is, haven't wasted anything by doing what they love.

If the only thing you see in life is 'the evolution of science' then I feel sorry for you. There are far better things in life than that. But again each to their own goal, you might enjoy being a scientist and discovering something new, other people might just enjoy living by the beach and have nothing to do with tech. Noone is wasting his/her life.

Also another point, people that can't AI or be good at maths etc doesn't mean they can't have a great mind!

I did not say wasting their lives. I said their brilliant minds are wasted (from doing something that could be both more fulfilling and impactful).

Personal mastery is good and enjoyable for the person. What if the person can achieve that as well as having a positive impact on others?

I believe humanities, arts, and philosophy have a great deal to offer to the world.

(Tangential: When you say you are sorry for your viewpoint/life/.., as you did twice in this thread, are you being condescending while assuming a lot on the people you talk to?)

You're either making the future happen or you aren't. And Demis is definitely making the future happen.

There's nothing wrong with ordinary lives like yours or mine, but let's give credit where credit is due.

The life of that Shepherd doesn't sound trivial at all. And neither does pursuing a life of chess mastery unless that pursuit doesn't bring one personal growth and satisfaction.

It's trivial to the people around him, and in my own eyes he is way more successful than demis, you or me will ever be. Because success isn't valued in money, achievements, fame, discoveries. If you do believe that success is only measured in those above, then am sorry about the life you have chosen to live.

I feel like you didn't read my comment or didn't understand my point.

That said, I won't make wide ranging judgements about your life based on the few words you have written.

I mean you can argue that as nice as AlphaGo is, it has not accomplished any thing real outside of being better at some games.

For a start:

DeepMind AI Reduces Google Data Centre Cooling Bill by 40%

https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-ce...

But how much of that saving is because AlphaGo is so great vs a baseline machine learning algorithm?

Tick tock, my dear friend, the fruits of a mathematical harvest take long to grow; but the rewarding bounties may be enough to feed the walking earth. Or at least the probability of that is higher than Magnus Carlsen providing gain to human welfare of equal measure. ;-)

I encounter comments every day on HN and Reddit, from people with no vision who seem to believe the status quo defines the limit of technology.

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