[majewsky]

I think batmansmk doesn't mean "when X is good at chess, X is automatically good at lots of other things", but "the traits that make you a good chess player (given enough training) also make you good at lots of other things (given enough training)".

[EliRivers]

I might suspect (but certainly cannot prove) that the traits that make a human good at playing chess are very different to the traits that make a machine good at playing chess, and as such I don't think we can assume that the machine skilled-chess-player will be good at lots of other things in an analagous way to the human skilled-chess-player.

[SiempreViernes]

And Gaius point stands before this argument as well, chess is seen as such a weak predictor that playing a game of chess or requesting an official ELO rating isn't used for hiring screening for instance.

I suspect that chess as a metagame is just so far developed that being "good at chess" means your general ability is really overtrained for chess.

[monktastic1]

Second world chess champion Emanuel Lasker spent a couple years studying Go and by his own report was dejected by his progress. Maybe he would have eventually reached high levels, but I've always found this story fascinating.

[taneq]

True, but I'd phrase it the other way around. The traits that make you (a human) good at general problem solving are also the traits that make you a good chess player. I do suspect, though, that there are some Chess-specific traits which boost your Chess performance but don't help much with general intelligence. (Consider, for example, the fact that Bobby Fischer wasn't considered a genius outside of his chosen field.)