Did you know that Fischer had no chess talent?

Im thinking 9999 hours

What Anand's doing while the rest of us use Tactics Trainer:

aw\]

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 That's about how well all these people who claim that there is no such thing as talent would do against Fischer.

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 LOL.

The analogy comparing chess talent with athletic or singing talent is a false one. Chess is a game of the intellect. Being a runner like Usain Bolt is a matter having the genetic blueprint and optimum environment for superior muscle development and athleticism. But chess is a different beast. Since what matters for chess is your brain, there is a distinct difference between chess talent and athletic talent because the brain is much more modifiable by experience than your muscles. The brain is radically plastic. It is more or less constantly rewiring itself on a day to day basis. This is what learning is essentially: brain plasticity at the synaptic level. 

Now imagine this: you practice chess 5 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 5.5 years. That would bring you to 10,000 hours of experience. Research on expertise generally tends to show that true expertise at a skill requires about 10,000 hours of practice. But the thing is, few people have the motivation, grit, and determination to put a solid 5 hours of chess study/practice everyday for 5 years. You can vary the parameters any way you like. One hour a day, every day, would take 27 years to reach the highest levels of chess skill. 

So in terms of some chess genius like Bobby Fischer, his "talent" can easily be explained in terms of his ridiculous determination to devote his entire waking life to the study of chess from a young age. 7 hours a day would take 4 years to get to the 10,000 mark. More than enough time to explain Fischer's "talent".

Is there some genetic difference that separates someone like Fischer from the average chess player? Yes, no doubt. But this genetic difference is likely not a "chess gene", or anything like that. Just like there is no "reading gene" since reading is a recent cultural invention, there is no "chess gene" since chess is a recent cultural invention, and there could have been no selection pressure on people to be good at chess.

Now it does happen that certain genes likely play a role in the development of cognitive modules that do have an affect on the ability to learn chess rapidly and efficiently. Some of the modules might be for cognitive faculties like quick counterfactual reasoning, visual memory, pattern recognition, etc. Other modules might be motivational circuits that allow for a obsessive-compulsion drive to excell at a single task, to devote one's entire energy's into that one task. Combine all these things together and you have you someone with a "talent" for chess. But genetic "talent", in order to turn into grandmaster skill, must be trained for thousands of hours. Most people do not devote their lives to chess. They simply don't have the gumption, the drive, nor the proper cognitive modules that would allow one to learn rapidly, giving a sense of "talent" that would motivate one to get even better.

In summary, "talent" is a complex, emergent property that depends on numerous factors, including genetic dispositions for the optimal development of general-purpose mental systems as well as environment factors such as 10,000 hours of practice. While athletic talent can be more reduced to genetic factors, the fact that chess is a purely cognitive skill tells us that chess skill is more modifiable by practice, since the brain is the most plastic organ of the body and the brain is the seat of chess skill. If you didnt fuck around, and seriously studied/practiced chess for 10,000 hours, you would probably be better than 95% of all current chess players. And I'm not talking about causal practice/play. I mean serious dedication, where you eat, sleep, and breathe chess, day in, day out, for years and years and years without burning out. No doubt, there are genetic factors separating people capable of this training regime from people who are incapable, but this does not  mean that "talent for chess" is a simple natural kind. Just like there is no "talent for reading", but rather, general cognitive modules that can be readapted for culturally specific skills, there is no "talent for chess", only a combination of dispositions, some cognitive, some motivational. There are no chess genes. Does this mean talent somehow doesn't exist? No. It just means that talent is something complex that emerges from the combination of both genetic dispositions and environmental influence. It is an achievement, not an innate given.

p.s. For the recond, I am a PhD student studying the philosophy of cognitive science. 

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Not exactly an O Henry twist, that...

Honestly, I stopped paying attention once you brought up that "10000 hour" canard.

He agrees that talent exists. That makes him ok in my book. And I agree with him about the chess gene idea.

Wash U has a beautiful campus. What are you going to do with your fancy degree?

Did someone say Chess Genie?

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Can I ask why? It's a totally legit and well-established research finding. Go onto google scholar and search for "10,000 hour expert" and you will find numerous studies all pointing towards the same thing. Take the following article that is on chess specifically:

Guillermo Campitelli and   Fernand Gobet -  Deliberate Practice: Necessary But Not Sufficient Current Directions in Psychological Science October 2011 20: 280-285, doi:10.1177/0963721411421922
"The mean values of total practice, individual practice, and group practice when attaining master level were 11,000 hours, 4,300 hours, and 6,700 hours, respectively. These results suggest that Simon and Chase’s (1973) estimate of 10,000 hours reflects the average amount of practice rather than the minimum requirement. Based on our data, we estimate that the minimum amount of time of dedication to achieve master level is 3,000 hours"

 So yeah, what exactly do you find wrong with the 10,000 hour estimate? It's a well-supported scientific hypothesis, and has been specifically confirmed in the case of chess expertise.

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My dream is to be a professor at a nice university teaching philosophy and doing research.

L2Troll....

No kidding? We never would have guessed from reading the preceding paragraphs.:D   >:[ 

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It might very well be true that 10,000 hours of practice is required for true expertise, but common sense tells me that it does not guarantee anything. If you have no chess talent at all you can practice 10,000 hours, or even 100,000 or more, but you still won't be as good at chess as Fisher was.

I have a similar issue with it -- there are some for whom significantly less than 10,000 hours will be sufficient as they have a natural inate affinity.  Take Samuel Reshevsky for example.

In addition, 10,000 doing what exactly?  I could while away 10,000 on chess practice against weak opponents and I don't think I would be an "expert" at the end of that time.  Quality of study is as important, if not more, than quantity.

At the end of the day my belief is that you can be very successful either primarily on the back of hard work or on the back of raw talent.  No-one makes it right to the top without both though.

Reshevsky well before his 10,000 hours: