“Why Chess Will Destroy Your Mind”: Outlook of the Game in 1859 | Hacker News Reader

“Why Chess Will Destroy Your Mind”: Outlook of the Game in 1859

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70 pointsshubhamjain46 comments

Chess in the 19th century is my go to example when trying to deprogram someone from anxious preoccupation with whatever moral panic is currently fashionable. I use the word 'deprogram' in the sense of helping someone recover from a cult deliberately.

You can often find an article from some newspaper of the period decrying chess and its pernicious effects on the youth, the mind, morals, et cetera. Change the instances of 'chess' to 'video games,' 'violent/sexy movies,' 'dungeons & dragons,' 'smartphones,' or whatever item is the focus of a moral panic. Maybe change a few of the sentences in the article where context demands it.

Have your pearl clutching friend read the modified article. Then show them the original.

Fear mongering rhetorical devices become impossible not to notice.

I don't find this line of argument compelling. It's a form of moral induction that specifically selects things that are still in play today (like chess) while ignoring valid warnings that altered a trend (vehicle safety) or halted a trend (smoking). Every moral or health threat needs to be evaluated on its own merits regardless of whether it has the syntax of a historical warning that ended up in hindsight seeming kind of absurd. This is exactly the kind of argument corporations exploring potent forms of addiction want trotted out.

There’s a difference in bring alarmist but making good points and bring alarmist and using rhetorical tricks.

You are describing the former, they the latter.

A problem should stand on its own without the emotional manipulation.

It should, but it doesn't. If you have a conscience and want to make a change, you need both logos and pathos.

But you start with a good argument. Without one, you are wrong to continue on making emotionally manipulative appeals.

Actually I think it can work in your case as well, especially when you see lobbying against safety measures, health concerns etc. Maybe not in a specific 1 to 1 word replacement but showing that similar, totally false claims were made in the past in regards to something we now know the truth of.

An example is seatbelts - looking at how hard lobbying groups and the auto industry fought seatbelts can be inspiration for similar fights going on today. [0]

I think of current events and frame them in the context of what people said about things we totally take for granted now (like seatbelts and smoking) and apply them to issues where we see similar tactics being used (climate change).

[0] http://articles.latimes.com/1985-02-19/news/mn-546_1_seat-be...

While rhetoric is real, sometimes the threat is real too. Consider the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" - at the end, he really was telling the truth (although we can be forgiven for ignoring him).

I disagree with the dismissiveness of the parent post. This is where I think that history has immense value, because the author is speaking to us from a world that once lived without chess being in the mainstream, a perspective that we'll never understand.

I can tell my kids that my 25mbps Internet connection is blazing fast, but because they'll never live with dial-up they won't ever think anything of it. In the same way, I'll never appreciate an escalator like the folks at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris, who saw it for the first time and paid to ride one for the sheer novelty of it.

I can lament that my kids don't know how good they have it. They could counter by saying that 150mbps is a thing and it would enable them to do more. Are either of us really wrong here?

Beyond that, I'd largely agree with the author's commentary. But I don't know if this is really an argument that anyone can win. Our society is smarter in a lot of ways and dumber in a lot of other ways, but of course we'd probably all disagree about which ways are in which column.

Also worth noting that the headline here is very misleading. The original article points to it being more distracting than destructive.

> I can lament that my kids don't know how good they have it. They could counter by saying that 150mbps is a thing and it would enable them to do more. Are either of us really wrong here?

Why do people need to "know how good they have it"? I'm not happy with what would have been luxury to someone 100 years ago, no. Why should I be? Why should someone 100 years from now be happy with what I have? The world changes, I don't see why anyone should feel obliged to not want more just because people in the past couldn't get more.

There is a sense of entitlement that comes without context.

If all anyone knows is the 40-hour work week, it'd be easy to think that we're entitled to it, or that we'd be better off with just 32. But when we learn of our grandfathers working 72-hour weeks (and maybe cleaning the foreman's house on Sunday) in extremely dangerous factories, that lets us appreciate both 1) the labor movement and 2) the status quo. Of course, our grandfather's grandfather probably worked the land for subsistence and had a much smaller say in his own destiny, so the fact that food is abundant and we can vote is really cool.

If a music download goes slowly, would you rather be resentful and be look to spend more money on download speeds, and then you'll be really happy? Or would you rather appreciate that:

- You didn't have to go to a live concert to hear the song

- You didn't have to buy a vinyl that would wear out over time and skip during playback if you walked across the room too heavily

- You didn't have to go out to the music store to buy a CD, or wait for a store to ship one to you

- You didn't have to rip the song to your computer

- You didn't have to buy the whole album to get the one song you wanted (if you're into that)

- It cost less than a dollar

- You had a broader selection of songs to choose from than any previous generation could have dreamed of

I guess if your worldview is hedonistic this argument won't stick to you well. But, your reply doesn't give me confidence that you're able to find contentment in your life. Of course, that's assuming it's representative of your entire outlook on life!

Trying to summarize my position better: Each piece of progress brings its own benefits and challenges. It can improve on what it replaces or not, but more likely it'll improve some things and hurt other things (cars come to mind!) There will be people who will benefit by the new thing and people who will be hurt or unaffected, but more likely it'll be a mix of both. If I had a clarity of mind before always-on Internet that I don't have now, and if I think that's a loss for myself, then it's my job to try and share or instill this perspective on a new generation that would have a very difficult time doing so on their own. Even if they reject me as a curmudgeon, maybe they gain and appreciation and thus contentment in what they now have.

You can enjoy what you have while still looking to improve it. I don't follow your argument that just because people want further improvement they are somehow "entitled".

Just because something is better than the past doesn't mean we should be happy with it. I'm happy I'm not a slave, but that isn't my minimum bar for happiness just because it was for someone in the past.

"Entitlement" seems to be the new way of telling our young people that they don't deserve to get anything better than (or even the same as) what their elders got. I don't buy that.

I think my life is great, and I'm happy with what I have - that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying to improve my life and the lives of others.

Yes, knowing your history is important, for many reasons, but suggesting that we are "entitled" because we want to improve things further just sounds like trying to pull others down to your level out of jealousy.

“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” - Socrates

Im hoping its a real quote

It's not a real quote but suppose it is. A man had a concern 2000+ years ago. Somehow we are still here so similar concerns now are invalid. Is that your argument?

If I find an ancient quote complaining that people were drinking too much 2000 years ago, does that mean my current concerns about opiate addiction are overblown?

My argument is that the old always complain about the young. Whether its talking, chess or video games people will always find something to dislike and complain about the generation after them. People always look at the past with rose colored glasses, for example there a lot of people who claim they want to make america like the 50s again as if it was some sort of golden age.

I think it's more of its perceived usefulness over the entrance barrier rather than the old vs. new thing. Video games and social networks today are much easier to start with than chess while its usefulness (recognized by society) is questionable (not much higher than chess); so it seems more wasteful, i.e. "bad"

Compare this to computer programming. This is clearly new and pretty addictive thing IMO but its entrance barrier is rather high and it looks useful (to the eyes of parents and teachers), so they tend to accept it.

Similarly, there's not much novelty in a fidget spinner but it's blamed and banned from school. It's extremely easy to play with while its apparent usefulness is unclear. Hence it's "bad".

I wonder if any parallels can be drawn between this and the inordinate amount of time children today spend starting at smartphones. While my personal opinion is that it is probably harmful to have so much of our attention focussed on phones at such a young age, we don't know how future societies will view this activity in retrospect.

My prediction is that everyone will be fine just like every other time a new thing came around, and phones won't finally be the one "it's different for real this time super seriously" thing.

Or, if everybody is affected the same way then nobody will know the difference.

My prediction is they will continue the decline that's been going on for a long time.

I'm not convinced they were wrong about chess either.

When in the past was the peak?

Hunter / gatherer.

Back when everyone agreed on libertarianism

You may be right, but it's clear that the _level_ of the addiction, and its ubiquity, are more powerful than anything before. It's basically everyone is doing a minimum of a couple hours a day (but spread out, so without any prolonged cessation), with the average now like 4-5 hours I believe. Television is probably the closest competitor, but that was typically confined to blocks of after-work hours.

Search phrase most likely to match previous moral panics: "You may be right, but it's clear that..."

Ha! True enough. In fairness, "they" weren't wrong about TV...

Just like how cigarettes were completely fine for a few generations, or added sugar took over fat in every food product? I mean, if everyone does something bad, does it make it fine or only invisible?

More "kids these days are doing this new thing and it's going to cause the downfall of the next generation"

For that matter, what do you suppose is the effect of hours and days spent focusing on intellectual abstractions in school and work.

In my experience it is extremely consciousness-altering. And the effect sticks. It can become "reality" for a person.

In the meditation scene we have a technique for altering your consciousness through prolonged concentration. The Buddhists call it "Samatha". It is potent.

Another thing that might (no strong studies AFAIK so this this straight out of my behind) be a consequence of our increased phone use is myopia.

There is some evidence that myopia incidents(diagnoses?) have increased but I don't think there is proof that it is caused by our increased time spent looking at things close to us.

I also think it is harmful to have so much exposure especially because the most popular apps on smartphones are designed to grab our attention constantly and create this dependency on getting a notification.

Hopefully we see some great studies in the next 10-30 years that can properly map the effects the so-called "attention economy" has had on us

To the best of my knowledge, current studies seem to suggest the cause of myopia is insufficient exposure to bright light (i.e. sunlight) during the developmental phase. That's why it looks like TV/phones/etc might be the cause yet every controlled study was unable to find a link.

People in the future will probably view smartphone use/ the internet in general similar to how many people view television now: as an activity that is fun on occasion, but is mostly a boring waste of time and generally bad for kids.

Television and smartphone/internet use are only comparable to some extent, though. Television had a much more limited amount of power compared to internet usage. You could clearly get by without a TV; it was just a convenience and a form of entertainment. The internet has had a lot more influence in our daily lives in contrast.

Apparently the average adult watches 5 hours of TV a day. How the hell do you even fit that in? My social media is about an hour a day all up, and it still feels like too much...

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-su...

Yeah this is fucking nutty to me. It's not like you can watch TV at work.

I don't know about this. Is HN, and much of the internet, not full of people who spend all their time absorbing information? TV is far more homogenous due to the high barrier to entry and pressure for it to appeal to the least common denominator 100% of the time.

This article, in fact, reinforces the idea that chess has more commonly been seen as an intellectual pursuit. The amateur in historical criticism will point out that the existence of this article affirms the popular thing and milieu that it is objecting to, and in fact even says that

"Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, because it requires a strong memory and peculiar powers of combination. It is also generally believed that skill in playing it affords evidence of a superior intellect."

hence we should not take this author's opinion of the general perception of the game in that period.

Eh, at least for me chess didn't play in dreams, the way Tetris did back in the day it was new.

Hah! I played a lot of chess as a kid (competitively). I assure you I dreamed about it plenty.

I used to dream about software development flaws applied to "reality". E.g. I've had radios in my dreams that wouldn't turn off unless I unplugged them because they didn't properly implement graceful shutdown. Or microwaves I couldn't physically use because I made that function private instead of public. Usually it was more like a nightmare - all sorts of things not working for nonsensical reasons.

Hahaha. That's the funniest thing I've read all day. "Aaah, I put my car keys on the heap and didn't keep a pointer!"

to be fair, this HAS happened with my smart tv in real life...

I play Scrabble competitively/obsessively and I certainly have dreams about tiles and crazy anagrams and related situations constantly pop into my head while trying to fall asleep, especially at tournaments.

If you enjoy stories like this, and podcasts, check out The Pessimists Archive. Their latest episode was about chess and they have 6 other excellent ones before it. http://pessimists.co/

What happens when mass-media-enforced morality is obviously engaging in an endless parade of ridiculous moral panics based on flimsy redefinitions of words like "harassment" and aggressively doxxes, downvotes, bans, and supresses anyone trying to call it a moral panic?

EDIT: Exhibit A.

Even if I agree with you, your comment is grossly offtopic and admits no constructive response.

HackerNews: the last line of defense for the moral status quo... and hiding it under the guise of TOS conformity.

I mean, sure, what would a comment about the moral outrages of 2016 games and 1800s games, both manned by stuffy Victorian-esque pearl-clutching couch feinters desperately hiding their grotesque physiques under an abusive reliance on contemporary styles, possibly have in common?

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