Sure, playing chess needs intelligence, dedication, and good chess players are smarter than an average person. But it’s waaaay exaggerated in movies. I’m a math researcher, and in any movie, my department will be full of chess geniuses. But in reality, only about 10% of them even play chess.
That was exactly the reason for my response. :)
Your subjective opinion that “chess is unfun for you” ignores the objective lack of knowledge of what chess even is. I believe something is unfun for you, I just disagree that it’s the game of chess you’re describing.
What you are calling “chess” here is the basics. It’s not the game Magnus Carlson plays.
Fair!
Once again I’m not here to convince you to play it or that it even would be fun if you did. Watch and play what you want. Just also recognize everything has a learning curve and that it is an error to misattribute frustrations in general along the learning curve with frustrstion towards the actual thing once it’s been learnt.
“Chess doesn’t feel like a gateway to other, more fun games, and if it’s not a fun game for me, why would I pursue it?”
Right in here. You don’t actually know if it’s a fun game for you or not. You just know it’s unfun to learn at your current level and don’t see it getting more fun any time soon to he worth sticking with.
Happens to me with countless games and hobbies. I used the book analogy to explain how someone learning to pronounce and sound out words complaining that “reading isn’t fun for me” isn’t actually complaining about reading, they’re complaining about learning to read. Those are different things.
You did. But there’s an objectiveness hidden in the subjective opinion.
As an analogy, if I saw a child in a burning building I could say as a subjective opinion “I will save that child”.
The problem is under pressure and actual flames of a fire, I can’t know how I would act. Maybe I’d panic and wouldn’t actually be able to do it, or maybe some switch would go off and I’d rush in.
The point is I don’t know because I’ve never been in that emergency situation. I’m unqualified to make subjective statements about how I’d react to completely unfamiliar states of mind.
Maybe chess is unfun for you, maybe it’s not. Insert ANY hobby in that statement, it’s not about chess specifically.
Until you’ve learned the thing you can’t even make subjective statements about yourself and how you’d act with knowledge you DONT HAVE.
Why are apologizing lol?
You aren’t enjoying your hobbies wrong, I just think you’re thinking about them in the wrong way.
I think you mean “X is unfun to learn” instead of “X is unfun”.
I think you admitted you don’t know enough about X to say if it’s fun one way or the other.
That’s okay I guess.
I could spend a few hours with no tutorial failing to learn Dwarf Fortress and just conclude the game is unfun and live my life that way perfectly fine.
Does it actually mean the games unfun for me? No, of course. It just means I’m preventing myself from giving a chance to things I misjudged.
What I played was called chess, followed the rules of chess, and seemed to be chess. I didn’t like it.
Building an opinion around the game I actually played rather than some hypothetical higher level game feels like an extremely reasonable approach to me. I’m sorry that you feel it’s not, I guess.
I understand you didnt like it haha. That was never unclear.
But why do you keep feeling the need to apologize to me? Don’t self flagellate, just state what you believe without worrying about upsetting me, this is just about understanding a concept. Theres no emotion here. I think you are almost there and actually nailed the point you’re just missing the nuance.
This is perfectly on the money here
Fully correct. Build your opinion around the game you actually played, which unspoken but importantly in that implies you should leave room for potential different opinions on the game you haven’t gotten to yet.
When a little kid says “I hate math” we don’t want to take that as inate truth about them, it probably has more to do with their boring math teacher.
Get them into Minecraft, if they’re into sports get them into learning stats for their favorite players.
I am super passionate about learning and what I’ve learned about the human brain is all it takes is for the right mindset and sometimes a thing just clicks. Not always, but trying to leave room for the myself I could grow into is a huge part of growth in general as a human.
You at 40 is not you at 30 which isn’t you at 20. Accept my advice or not, you’ll look back one day and I guarantee you won’t recognize the person you once were.
…it’s not an actual apology, it’s a rhetorical device. Was that not clear?
I don’t really understand why you feel the need to second guess my own assessment of my own mind. I’m not interested in an explanation either, just to be clear. Each time you keep drawing comparisons that paint me as naïve and childlike. It’s perhaps not intentional but the end result is tremendously insulting, hence why I’m not interested in further talk on the subject.
With regards to learning new things, the world of human experience is vast. I am not shutting the door on chess out of petulance. I do so knowing the journey I would need to take is incompatible with my own preferences for discovery and growth. To my mind it is a distilled competitive logic puzzle. I don’t like logic puzzles of any complexity, and I particularly don’t like pared down ones with no set dressing or storytelling.
I am actually quite happy to engage in puzzle solving - it’s one of the things I do for a living. However there the puzzles are more cooperative and with many, many more facets to them. They can be solved in a huge number of ways and with a variety of different skills.
I’m explaining this because it seems you need it spelled out rather explicitly. Particularly as you seem to have rather strange ideas about who you’re talking to. I’m nearly 40 and your comment about not recognising past versions of myself could not possibly be further from the truth. The various iterations of myself have been built atop the old ones. The eleven year old boy is still in there, as is the teenager, twenty-something, and the several versions of me from my 30s.
I don’t necessarily know everything I like, but I’ve tried a great many things and have a firm understanding of what kinds of activities I dislike. I can also extrapolate fairly well, and it’s not like chess is an obscure interest such as shin-kicking. The journey and destination both look rather dull to me, whereas many others do not. I cannot do everything in one lifetime and must choose. Chess has had its chance with me. It blew it. The same is true for gambling, as it happens. I have tried it in various forms and found it universally dull. I also don’t enjoy ales, gloomy literature, tennis, or horror movies. There’s much about those things I don’t know and I intend to keep it that way in order to explore other potential interests. Things that I hopefully won’t be bored by, or at least I enjoy some element of the journey.
Otherwise I might as well just be working - at least then the boring bits result in a paycheque.
If we’re giving each other mutual advice on phrasing, I’d remove this particular rhetorical device from your repertoire. Strawmanning me as being upset about some irrelevant thing and insincere apologizing for it is unproductive because now I either have to address the strawman or I could use my own rhetorical device by taking your apology literally and use it against you.
The setup I was given wasn’t really a productive thing to build on, and that was just as clear as the phoniness in your apology.
I understand why you think I’m doing that, and it’s probably related to the part lower down you admit you aren’t really caring about what I say to you and what point I’m actually intending to make.
To once again clarify. At no point have I second guessed your own assessment of your own mind.
I simply pointed out that your assessment of the mind you **do not possess?? (one in which you have fully studied the thing) can’t honestly be guessed at and this is an existing problem for everyone.
Then what are we doing here man? I’m responding for the sole purpose of explaining this point to you.
I think you need to consider why you’re still responding here because all I have for you are more explanations until you understand this basic concept.
Since you mention you love logic puzzles how about that I instead of a comparison:
You are a prisoner in a room with 2 doors and 2 guards. One of the doors will guide you to freedom and behind the other is a hangman–you don’t know which is which, but the guards do know.
One of the guards always tells the truth and the other always lies. You don’t know which one is the truth-teller or the liar either. However both guards know each other.
You have to choose and open one of these doors, but you can only ask a single question to one of the guards.
You ask both guards “are you interested in further talk on the subject?”
The first guard stays silent. The second guard says “Each time you keep drawing comparisons that paint me as naïve and childlike. It’s perhaps not intentional but the end result is tremendously insulting, hence why I’m not interested in further talk on the subject.” And then continues ranting for 4 more long paragraphs.
Which guard is lying and which one is telling the truth?
Yep, no need to justify anything. I know i sound like a broken record here haha but you keep bringing up justifications for why you don’t prioritize this hobby when what your priorities are was never really in question.
My point is still strictly about difference between learning X and doing X, and how the learner can’t access the mind of the doer before they’ve finished learning.
Thats got my interest piqued. In an abstract way or you literally solve recreational style puzzles for a living?
There’s this show Ludwig about a puzzle solver who gets pulled into a murder investigation.
I don’t need anything spelled out. I understand on my end, I’m trying to explain a basic concept to you (difference between thing and learning about thing) and it seems like the problem of why I’m not getting through isn’t that you’re aren’t capable of understanding but you’re not willing to concede I might have a point because we’re now in an adversarial sort of context and you’re just I think in “winning” mode from here on out and won’t give me an inch.
For example this. You obviously understand the difference between teenage your tastes and your tastes now, you just don’t want to give it to me.
Which well, that’s sort of how we’re encouraged to act online anyway.
Yeah I know, chess doesn’t fit into your goals and you don’t have an interest in the game at the current level you’re playing at.
Ye gods, I’m not reading that wall. I tried to make it clear that I was not interested in continuing this interaction but let’s make it a bit more explicit: this conversation is over. You’ve been tremendously abrasive (hence my response in kind) and refuse to take the hint. I’m blocking you now. Best of luck in future interactions, I hope they’re more pleasant than this one.
You can just not reply. It’s weird you keep up typing replies to me and then get mad when I respond.
Do you need the last word that badly?