[edanm]

Off topic - an interesting observation by economist Tyler Cowen in his book "Average is Over".

Tyler talks a lot about the role of computers that can surpass humans in various tasks, and looks at chess as an example (he was a highly-ranked Chess player when he was younger). He also talks a lot about education, especially with regards to the government's role in it.

He at some point mentions that chess players have gotten much better over the last 20 years, with the rise of chess-playing and chess-analyzing computer programs. He looks at this as an interesting natural experiment in an area of education that is highly optimized, and sees what a huge impact education-via-computers has had (as contrasted with usually a government-run classical educational establishment). I don't even remember his conclusion, but I though the anecdote was fascinating.

I highly recommend the book, btw.

[thom]

Chess players have got better as measured by the number of moves the computer agrees with, which you'd expect, because they're preparing 30 moves in the opening and learning positions from tablebases that were historically thought to be drawn or lost etc. I'd need more convincing that we can measure skill timelessly. Also the money's at the super grandmaster scale seems pretty good these days.

That said, the fact that you've been able to play stronger and stronger players on your computer and in your pocket over the last 20 years must have made a difference.