chess, psychology and perception

I'm verbose, i'm a thinker, i'm philosophical-- and i'm still a beginner at chess. i notice i blunder a lot in two specific ways. I like to learn things by becoming highly specific when working out a problem, if that problem is frustrating and recurring, and then it falls back into the main unconscious part of my mind if it stays resolved. if it keeps recurring i might be getting frustrated. 

Ok i'm a software developer-- and one thing we do is debugging. We also learn about model tuning for AI. The brain is like NI- natural intelligence, but what is that? From a strict materialist perspective, it might be weights or strength of neural connections, and training and tuning is re-weighting them or establishing new connections. what communicates to the system to do that? Well there is the rule that those neurons that fire together wire together but what if you want to learn- against resistance? Pain. that's what i'm getting at. 

I can get so enraged not necessarily when i lose but when i blunder. 

I think we've all been there

I'm learning psychology as i learn chess, because my life is not really that nice right now. I'm doing fine economically but i have no personal life and i'm overloaded so i play chess to relax but it sometimes angers me to lose. I want to escape where i'm at- the city and i want to emerge better. Not about stoicism but about emerging, tuning, training and i think i found a brain purpose of pain. it signals to the system, this has salience. let's fix what's wrong

But i also study perception through this chess. I sometimes don't see the obvious. There are types of blunders. I notice two very odd or specifc recurring blunders

I'm often blind to the bishop. 

I am sure i am not unique. I am sure if something happens with me, it is a human trait. Bishops and also queens from the diagonal are sneaky. I have to work on not blunder there. I guess i am just a straightforward guy in a world that flanks you or slices you. 

The other blunder- this is crazy- but maybe it's the sound the website makes but when an opponent threatens a piece or puts me in check, i often don't see that their very threatening piece is hanging! I know right? 

This is more than about chess. This is about learning to perceive. 

Obviously the time length of the game matters. I play a range- half hour to minute but i like 5 to 10. the 30 minutes are special. i think more. I find its better to play them to learn and then shorter games to practice what you learn

I started playing 4-5 years ago but quit because i kept getting enraged. i guess i'm back at it. my life goes in waves. HMU if anyone wants to buy a 4plex in minneapolis too btw- then i'll be free of this town. that's my bond here. it's a contract for deed with good terms so all you need is the down but yeah. I don't know if that is allowed on the forum but i'm not so much advertising, just plugging. that is the chess piece of my life. that is the blocker. that's keeping me from living because i need to move to a new city like Austin, where people are alive. I don't mind the politics here but the personality is not alive. I've been pretty stressed actually and loaded with responsibilities, so chess came up. I also read a lot of books on history and war and languages and math and stuff, and so chess kind of combines some of those interests. I am not grinding to be all that i can be. I am trying to be grounded, stable and enjoy life but it does make the mind sharper. Chess came from Persia I think. i'm reading a book on their history right now. i have the landmark publisher herodotus too but i am not ready to tackle that and that's more from the greek perspective. 

Anyway it's crazy how the mind can miss what's right there and immediately helpful. I understand how the mind sometimes has to simplify but this seems like pure packet drops-- leaving pieces hanging or missing the fact that others are hanging- mostly diagonal blindness -- especially when their one pawn moves out one or two spaces, or getting intimidated by threats that you miss that their pieces hang. I guess this is human psychology but living starts with seeing. How much of our seeing though and sense making in the world comes from already having learned of a lot of categories. how can we make sense of a board if we don't even know what a fork is? I'm sure magnus has tons of concepts and terms and including idiosyncratic terms for patterns and mechanisms and it just makes him able to see the board so clearly but if you don't know what a fork or skewer is, how much harder it is to make sense of all those pieces. I'm a big believer in learning things slow, deep and thorough, at any age so even if you're just starting something, you can get far if you go about it that way. i have an older friend who can seem to accomplish anything he puts his mind to, success in business, then in national ballroom dance and coaching and then in hunting of all things- though he never did it before. I don't know his secret but learn slow and deep and thorough. make the subject your own and go the distance, or for as far as you do go, be thorough. it doesn't make you a grandmaster but it puts you in the same headspace as them i would think - just earlier on the path

I told you i'm rambling and philosophical. I have to watch those diagonals. They are sneak attacks. 

ps it's kind of weird but a part of you knows in the mind when you have learned something, or it does for me. I joke about the diagonals because a part of me knows they are still a risk factor for me for oversight- that is i haven't fully tuned yet. my brain is not fully there, remapped. the brain kind of knows when it doesn't know. Listen to your brain, take it slow and listen to your own mind. i listen to my own voice now so much more and i learn more than i ever did in school. They make you learn so fast and take stupid tests. It's much more fun to know how life works and develop your own category systems in addition to the ones they give you or society enforces. anyway you see i ramble. happy checking