[Thoeu388]

Interesting observations, I would add my own:

- during long game, chess grand masters have physiology comparable to marathon runner, while he runs. Deep thinking for several hours, takes huge load on body. All the logic and critical thinking, is not going to save you, if you are not fit, and your brain does not work correctly.

- real life is not about solving puzzles. Real life is a rigged game where rules are not enforced. Instead of finding problems to solve, you need to find oportunities (and loopholes) and exploit them!

- game is rigged, and oportunities close fast. What worked a couple of years ago, probably does not work anymore.

[Recursing]

> during long game, chess grand masters have physiology comparable to marathon runner, while he runs.

That is obviously not true https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/s0tqcd/chess_grandma...

[nescioquid]

I wouldn't be so hasty to say it is obvious (parent made no claims about calories).

Many top chess players have considered themselves athletes, and if you've ever tried to calculate under pressure at a board for a few hours, I'm sure you'll agree it is an exhausting activity. Fischer engaged in athletic training when preparing for tournaments, for example, to aid in maintaining mental focus (he wasn't unique).

It would be silly to say that 2400 Elo indicates you can run a four-minute mile, or that calculating 6-ply in a closed position burns the same calories as running a block. If the claim is 2400 Elo tend to have similar vascular flow in the brain to people who engage in aerobic exercise or something of that nature -- maybe?

[Thoeu388]

I traced my source back to Sapolsky, so I guess you are right.

But I still maintain my claim, health really matters for proper deep thinking.

[matheusmoreira]

I don't think that statement is meant to be taken literally. Playing chess takes ridiculous amounts of mental effort and that's still subjectively significant even though the brain isn't consuming more glucose. We aren't machines, our attention is limited and chess consumes vast amounts of it.

[mock-possum]

> real life is not about solving puzzles

He says, before laying out the outline of the puzzle and giving suggestions on how to go about solving it

Everything can be about solving puzzles if you let it. Given enough time and patience you can understand anything - the only interesting question is, how to you decide what to focus on?

Navigating life is absolutely an exercise in puzzle solving, at every step you know where you’re at, you know where you want to be, and you know what resources are available to you - given all that, how do you plan your next step? If your first solution doesn’t work, you do a retro, learn your lessons, and move on to your second solution, and your third. It’s all engineering.

[Thoeu388]

From rule 2):

> It’s hard in real life, too: vanishingly few people are meta-rational enough to try really hard to falsify their own ideas. Your brain really wants to find reasons to support what you believe.

I don't think he goes with "meta" deep enough. It is great for engineering problem solving mindset But it is also a good way to end up like underpaid post doc, who needs second job just to pay rent.

And this type of advices are usually coming from someone who "made it", has its own house and is practically retired. Very impractical and harmful (to some extend) for young minds.

Practical implementation for young person is not "falsifying" and trying again again. But coming with solutions that takes minimal time, is good enough and comparable to coworkers who work on the same salary. Time you save can be invested into education, family, hustle and so on.

[dkarl]

> - real life is not about solving puzzles. Real life is a rigged game where rules are not enforced. Instead of finding problems to solve, you need to find oportunities (and loopholes) and exploit them!

"Real life puzzles" are too open-ended and have too many levels to really be called puzzles. A puzzle has a closed set of rules that usually gives you only one level on which to solve the problem. Many interview questions could be described as puzzles. A "real life" programming task has a bunch of different levels: what's the real problem the customer wants solved, is this the problem this customer wants solved first, do we have a bigger customer with a bigger problem you should be working on instead, can the problem be solved without programming, should the problem be solved in a different system, are there other people on the team who solve problems like this in their sleep and they'll give you the answer in five minutes if you describe it on Slack? If it does seem like you need to solve the problem, what's your level of confidence that with investment of X time you can solve the problem, for different values of X, and given this information, does it still make sense to try to solve it?

What makes puzzles relaxing and reassuring is knowing that there is a solution, and that you know all the rules. Also, you know that you'll recognize the solution when you get it. Real life rarely gives you that reassurance. With a real-life problem, you don't know if there's a solution, and even when you have one, you can't know that there wasn't another solution that would have been much better, because of possibilities you failed to consider. The only way to turn a real-life problem into a "puzzle" is to strip away the open-ended real-world context and present a subset of it that can be described in a closed form.

[yeahwhatever10]

I disdain this pessimism that is all over the internet.

[blueyes]

The business ecosystem, like biological ecosystems, involves forms of collective life that have learned how to sustain themselves in competitive environments, usually by seeking moats. Those moats "rig the game". The moats tend to fail when the environment changes; e.g. due to technical innovation, social movement, external shocks. It is the central interest of any business to build moats and drawbridges.

Life is turtles all the way down and drawbridges all the way up. Anyone seeking opportunities is looking for the openings between those moats and drawbridges.

[doopdoopsoup]

I'm curious what strikes you as pessimistic in this comment versus just being realistic about the current social structures implicit to the US (I cant speak for the rest of the world)?

[bluepod4]

Probably because GGP’s comment reflects a narrow, unfavorable, and extreme view of reality

> Real life is a rigged game where rules are not enforced

Even in the United States, there are plenty of stupid and non-stupid rules that people are forced to follow in order to “play the game”. There are also plenty of rules that only apply to certain groups. There are also plenty of people who don’t play the game at all.

Maybe if GGP weren’t so extreme and negatively one-sided with his view, then it’d come off as less pessimistic and more critical.

[sanderjd]

I would probably say "cynical" rather than "pessimistic". I would also say that it does not actually reflect reality. Reality is also not the exact opposite of this perspective. Reality simply doesn't bear reduction to either "everything is a rigged game" or "everything is fair"; it's more complicated than that.

[respondo2134]

pessimistic and realistic are not mutually exclusive (unfortunately). You can understand reality without accepting it.

[Thoeu388]

What pessimism? I am talking about health, opportunities...

Starting family today is very difficult, there is no easy and direct route.

[yard2010]

I think you're missing the point, while you are pretty correct IMO, viewing the world in such a dichotomic way misses the fine details along the spectrum

[dkarl]

Spot on. When you discover that people are solving a problem by considering a wider context than you did, do you broaden your thinking about the problem, or do you accuse them of cheating and complain that the rules aren't being enforced? Morality and (most) laws should be respected, but outside of that, rules shouldn't stand in the way of solving problems.

[glitchc]

Sounds very similar to academic researchers.