[Retric]

Chess is an abstract set of rules not the thought process behind making a move or the physical action of moving a piece. As such nobody actually does chess.

You can play chess, as in follow the rules, or be a scientist, as in contribute to the progress of science, but nobody is the physical embodiment of chess or science.

Edit: To be as clear as possible, the President isn’t Democracy, but Democracy still exists in that you can meaningfully destroy it.

[nanis]

> To be as clear as possible, the President isn’t Democracy

I am afraid I am lost.

[Retric]

Democracy is emergent behavior, you need free and fair elections and the general public to vote. Elected officials are a tiny part of that, just as an individual cell of your body is no more you than a single person is a country.

Science is similarly emergent behavior. You need the exchange of ideas, not just say a science fair where people go through the motions of experiments, but those experiments don’t get used by others to design new experiments etc.