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This one's a favorite of mine but too long for Notes: I was at an Evolution Society conference and sat down for lunch with another scientist. I work in phylogenetics--evolutionary trees--where we are concerned with the way that variation in mutation rate can cause us to infer wrong relationships among species. In particular there's a problem called "long branch attraction" where two species with high mutation rates or high divergence from all other species are erroneously inferred to be related. So, I asked this guy what he was working on and he said that he studied variation in mutation rates along the branches of trees. I nodded, yes, I'm interested in that myself. He then said that long branches were turning out to be a problem. More nods, I get that too. Then he said "Only a very sloppy homeowner lets the branches get that long." --and I suddenly realized that I had not understood a single thing he was saying, because when he said "tree" he meant a big green thing growing in someone's yard, not a diagram of species relationships! He was actually measuring the mutation rate per meter of tree limb, a pretty cool project. So I explained what I'd been thinking and we both had a good laugh.

I've been wondering does Intellectuals have enthusiastic players to parcitipate in a Team Match against some other group? Can we get enough volunteers here?

Hi Everyone, Been a long time lurker on the group, posting now because I'd like to try playing the variants a bit, but when I do seeks there aren't any bites. I'll sit for 5, 10 minutes with an open seek and if I'm lucky get a 3 min 3 check game, but good luck with crazyhouse or any of the games at other time controls. It seems that the variants have not caught on yet, everyone's still playing regular chess… ;-) Anyway, I tried asking in the live chat rooms, but still no takers, then I thought, hey why not try the intellectuals? If anyone would be up for something new and exciting it'll be those guys… I've never played any of them before, so really looking to try them out, If anyone else is interested and experiencing similar frustrations, or just interested... let's make a date to meet up in live chess and play matches in some of these weird chess variants. Maybe we can post our availability here? I'm generally free after 7:00pm at GMT -5 (EST if your in the states). Hit me up with a note on my homepage, or respond here I suppose, not really sure how best to organize this. Thanks all!

I bet you read a good book recently. Tell us about it!

What have you found helpful? Use the queen early, lose the queen early. A knight on the rim is dim. What do we do with bad bishops?

This thread is specifically devoted to discussing specific chess games.

I made that statement in another forum, and f_babaee_a wanted to see what I had to say. I have in mind particularly postmodernism's denial of objective truth. One sees a statement like "Everyone lives in his own world," which is fine if properly construed as meaning that everyone has his own personal experiences of life, that everyone has his own perspective on life, that everyone has his own way of seeing things, and so on, but which is not so fine if construed literally and used as a way of denying the superiority of the scientific enterprise as a way of getting at truths about the world over, say, the mapping of astrological charts. Thomas Kuhn wrote a book entitled "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" that was very influential. Kuhn wrote his book in a way that was easy to misread. Properly read, he made good points about how science is actually done by actual scientists. But because he wrote it in a misleading way, it was easy to read him as a postmodernist, denying that there was any such thing as scientific truth. His book would never have been such a hit--and he would never have become so famous--had he not written it misleadingly; nevertheless, he did write it misleadingly. (Later, after he had been quite understandably misread as a postmodernist objective truth-denier, he was once quoted as saying, "I am not a Kuhnian!") The harm postmodernism does is that it undermines people's respect for science and makes them think that any other way of arriving at "personal truth" is just as objectively valid as the evidentiary method science uses. It makes them think that intellectuals have realized the bankruptcy of the project of arriving at objective truth and makes them disparage the scientific worldview. All truths become just stories about the world, in the minds of those influenced unduly by postmodernism, and all stories are of equal legitimacy and equal truth, in their minds. And that patent falsehood is what postmodernism has to answer for--or, at least, it's one thing postmodernism has to answer for.

What does Kant's categorical imperative say? Something like this is what I remember. I have a recollection of my mother telling me about the Categorical Imperative when I was about seven, so I think I can understand it at the level of a 7-year old, at least. (I think that she wanted me to be precocious, and impress teachers.) "A person should not do a thing if it would not be OK for everyone to do it." I think it may be somewhat untrue. Some things are OK to do if only a small portion of the people would ever want to do them. Obviously it's untrue if misinterpreted in some evil way, so I need to find a better statement of it. The reason I thought of this now is that Elroch sent me a message saying that maybe I shouldn't feel obligated to leave if I voted early, because if everyone left who voted early, then the group would have hardly any members. That is seems like a pretty good application of some version of the categorical imperative. I don't know if Kant considered communication. The first person who does something can start a discussion about it. I think he must have made up his Imperative in context of some larger argument. Actually I got to take a course at U. Penn from Alan Kors about the Intellectual HIstory of Western Europe, but I don't think I understood it. I think I lost about 99.9% of what was said in that course. But it is never too late. Kant seems to be one of the founders of Communism, philosophically. Communism has never been implemented the way the philophers intended, I suspect, but I have not tried to confirm that. I'm sure I could learn about it more if I would take time to read Wikipedia about it just for starters. I am also interested in the philosophy of impulsive actions but that is another topic for sure. People suggest ADD medicine but that does not seem to be a deep solution.

I figured since this is an intellectual chess player group, it needs a post on IQs. Please post as I'm curious to know what your IQ is!

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. -- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

If you create a tournament you'd like to share with the group, post a link here. If the SA doesn't like it,feel free to delete this. It's just an idea. Thanks.

Right now we have 8 games in progress. In my opinion that is too many. I don't suggest that we do anything drastic to get out of the ones we have going now, but I do suggest that we set a limit as to how many we want to try in the future and stay at that, or close, to that number. I suggest that later on, when we get better at vote chess (VC), we can manage four or five games at once. For now I would like to see that number down to two or three till we win at least one game. I am a member of another group that was formed about a year and a half ago. We have won six games and have never lost. But we never had more than three games going at one time. What say you???

I think when we get new games we need to play games with either 2 days or 3 days per move. 24 hours is probably not best for us right now. What say you????

http://biochemistrycourse.blogspot.com/2012/12/inner-life-of-cell-explained.html

Upon rhetorical request by JustADude80, here is the thread about which he jokingly spoke! Feel free to complain 'till your heart's content.

Too much playPlaying chess - practice - is very important for improvement. When you play chess (over the board, at tournaments), you put into practice what you have learned, you use your brain to think chess, you are in the testing environment, you test your accumulated knowledge and skill against another person. However, too much play and too little study holds you back. You can repeat the same mistakes over and over. You will tend to follow your own old patterns and not have time to develop a different, correct thinking process, and to learn proper strategy and new ideas. In this case, you should take a long break from playing and concentrate only on study for several months. You will make a significant improvement. Incomplete knowledgeIt's so simple: an incomplete study of theory leaves you with weaknesses and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. There is no shortcut; a necessary task for serious improvement is to have COMPLETE knowledge of chess theory, of chess strategy. Then, you will know what TO DO in any situation on the chess board. It makes no sense to re-invent the wheel when there are full blueprints available. Too much trainingThe idea is to optimize your time for study. Too much information on the same subject becomes superfluous. Too many exercises of the same kind will only hold you back. Too much theory without enough exercises or too many exercises without essential theory is also counterproductive. Too much of anything may hold back your creativity and diminish your joy for the game. You do not need Quantity but Quality! Save yourself time and study and train only with the best materials, not with ALL materials. Disorganized studyDisorganized study habits are another reason for stagnation for even the most serious learners. Many lose a lot of time trying different methods, studying different materials - even if the individual lesson are good, the results of a piecemeal approach can be disappointing. Acquiring the right blend of chess knowledge is a delicate balance and therefore you should make a good plan from the start or follow a professional program of study and training. Quality of the lessons/booksWhat exactly a chess lesson teaches you makes a very big difference. Here, we have to give a concrete example. Let's say you have two different lessons about the isolated pawn. The first lesson tells you that the isolated pawn is weak in the endgame and then fills the space with "illustrative" games. The second lesson systematizes the possible endgames into 10 possible types, tells you exactly which is a draw and which is winning, tells you how to defend and how to attack for each case, tells you exactly what to do in every situation. Obviously the difference is enormous; the first lesson leaves you in semi-obscurity and you are left with the impression that the endgames are lost for the side with the isolated pawn, which is far from true. The second lesson really and concretely teaches you that subject so you will know what you have to do in every situation and what endgames to aim for, so that you can get the maximum from the position, win or draw. As a conclusion: the substance of the lessons, that is, their concreteness, what and how they teach, and how structured they are, all make a big difference. Passive learningIt might be enjoyable to browse through books, listen to videos, click through chess programs or talk in chess forums. But if you want to obtain the best possible results, you need to learn ACTIVELY. What is Active Learning? When you study a chess lesson, you have to WORK on it, you have to ask yourself questions all the time; when you study an annotated game, you should stop at almost every move to try to understand them or even find better moves. You should also try to guess the moves before looking at them. This way you will take time to digest every position, every piece of information so you WILL enjoy your study much more. And as we said before, you need Quality and not Quantity. ExercisesThere are 2 kinds of exercises:1. tactical exercises, (combinations) and2. positional exercises (strategic problems). Everybody knows what the tactical exercises are - solving tactical exercises helps you develop your tactical force, but this is only a part of a complete training program. Positional exercises are less recognized for their importance. However, these are even more important than the first! Positional exercises may be chosen from any stage of the game, but are most often from the middlegame. They are usually normal positions, where there is no tactical blow, trick, or anything to make you say "wow". This is “normal” chess, the 95% of the game where we employ strategy. That is, we use logical thinking, create plans, stop opponent's plans, re-arrange our pieces, provoke weaknesses, prepare an attack, defend etc...etc... - this is chess strategy. The computerChess is a beautiful old game, played on the board. If you want to improve at chess, you must train using the real board and not the computer! We trust that this sounds logical enough to you. It is indeed convenient to use the computer, you do not have to re-arrange the pieces all the time and it is ...modern. But when you prepare for chess, the technology, colors, design and so on do not help that much. They may even harm your progress. Moreover, when you do play chess over the board, you will come to realize that the positions look different than on the 2 dimensions of your screen. All world champions, top-grandmasters and strong players have studied chess at the board. Only after reaching mastery in chess, the use of computers is indeed helpful in the opening preparation for strong competitions. Using chess software, chess engines, watching videos, could have benefits if it is done moderately, but all these bring little progress. Rating, rating, ratingThe continuous pursuit of rating is counterproductive - the beauty of chess will be left behind in the desire for a certain rating or category. The rating is less important and may not always reflect the real value of a player. Maybe he only needs to play more tournaments or maybe he needs a better opening which suits his style of play. A player who wants to improve should concentrate only on understanding chess better and more deeply. At those moments when he wants to study a good lesson or an instructive game, to solve different positions, to understand strategic subtleties and to find excellent moves ...at THAT moment there is progress... and the rating will surely increase sooner or later. Chess is hardNo, chess is NOT hard. Thinking that "chess is hard" is however a reason for stagnation. Chess is complex, indeed, but it is this complexity that makes it beautiful. You have to think positively. Look at the beauty of this game, at the pleasure such a nice hobby brings, to the fact that it develops our thinking. Appreciate that we have a great intellectual game that helps our brain, and is a nice social game, a game where we use our ideas against other humans' ideas. And do not forget: the more you understand it, the more enjoyable it is. By Grandmaster Andrei Istratescu, one of the strongest players in the World.

We have some smart people here. We have chess players here. We even have programmers here. How about if somebody explains to the rest of us how a chess eninge works?

It has long been stated that music and intelligence go hand-in-hand. Some believe this, some don't; we really don't have any conclusive proof to either side. Some of the brightest minds in history have played instruments, such as the great Albert Einstein, who would recharge his magnificent noggin by playing the violin. Or, conversely, some of the best musicians of out time are extremely intelligent, such as Queen's guitarist Brian May, who has a PhD in astrophysics. What are your opinions on the matter? Is there a correlation, r are the above examples coincidences?