[planetguy]

Yep, he sure has some wacky ideas about history. Still, gotta give him credit for the fact that his wacky ideas are at least unusual -- he seems to have developed his stupid belief system for himself rather than acquiring it wholesale from someone else.

Also, he sure is good at chess.

[btilly]

Actually he acquired it wholesale and then elaborated. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Fomenko) for more on the ideas that he has.

And yes, he's amazing at chess. However that is not necessarily an endorsement of his abilities at anything else. Paranoid delusions seem to be a significant occupational hazard at top levels of play. (See Bobby Fischer for a significant example.)

[itmag]

Paranoid delusions seem to be a significant occupational hazard at top levels of play.

Any theories on why that is?

Maybe having super-charged pattern-making ability makes for great chess AND great paranoia.

[Confusion]

The brain is a pattern recognition engine well known to report many false positives. Most people are aware of that, be it often unconsciously. Chess masters learn to trust their intuition and pattern recognition, even when contrary signals are present, because, for some reason, that works in chess. It doesn't in the real world, where there are much more than 32 (the number of pieces) facts to keep track off.