Does chess develop "critical thinking" etc. (away from the board)?

No.

Chess is an endeavor with many paths.     If we take our time on our moves planning things out, then YES, I would say chess will develop our "critical thinking" for when we are away from the Board -- as we apply similar thought patterns to other tasks.

For instance when we drive a car,  we anticipate future dangers by driving slower when a lot of cars on the road or weather is not ideal.    However our chess and driving will suffer when games ( or driving ) are speeded up -- giving us less time to think / react -- more prone to mistakes.

Eh, I think it does. In a rather vague/general way of course. The logic of chess made me appreciate logical things more in general. And on the other hand certain things I learned helped me with chess.

At least, it can. If someone just hates critical thinking though then just forcing them to play a game that involves critical thinking might just bore them.

Physics / math help more IMO.

There's a lot of logic in chess, but, at least IMO, you don't really even start using it until you've mastered basic stuff like not dropping pieces and checking if your opponent's replies immediately kill you.  And honestly this is stuff the great majority of players don't do.  At least not consistently.

Anything "can" help someone in very particular circumstances.

In general, learning to play chess does not give someone any kind of philosophical or intellectual compass in life. It does not improve life decision making or general reasoning because life isn't moving a bunch of chess pieces.

The only way chess would develop "critical thinking" away from the board is if someone started seeing the world as a bunch of chess pieces and on a move by move basis. I would worry a lot about that person more than I would congratulate them for learning such a thing.

Post #4: I actually disagree -- I'm going to put chess above math and physics on this point. Although it's funny because a few years ago I probably would have agreed, perhaps with "irrational" engine evaluations in mind. But sometimes I would explore those lines and see the logic -- I might see a line where one side captures a piece and instead of recapturing the engine just plays another move that threatens something greater -- it made me realize, there is a logical proposition that usually holds that makes us recapture pieces, but really, once there is a situation where it doesn't hold, suddenly recapturing might not be the best move. Even when I attack someone's piece, I think to myself, I'm arguing that they can't afford to go through with their plan because the piece is more important, rather than blindly assuming they will "automatically" move the piece away. And that's just one example -- almost everything in chess, positional or tactical, seems to be logical like that.

It's true that people will fail to see the logic in chess -- ok. But that has more to do with people than chess.

edit/delete: my post got mixed up or something

"In general, learning to play chess does not give someone any kind of philosophical or intellectual compass in life. It does not improve life decision making or general reasoning because life isn't moving a bunch of chess pieces."

I sort of agree but I sort of don't. Sometimes it's the most general connections between things that can create epiphanies. I could literally go from not knowing a certain concept at all to totally grasping it (and being able to apply it on and off the chess board), because I was inspired.

Being proactive is an example. I pretty much take pride in proactivity now; sometimes if a door is opened electronically and the door in front of me is open I'll push the button again just in case it has been too long since someone else pushed the button (which means the door might suddenly close) -- I did not used to do that. And while I'm sure proactivity was not incomprehensible, it wouldn't occur to me a lot of times until I saw it a lot in chess.

You're going to need to give me more than a circular argument if I am to believe your conclusion in this post.

As I said before, in that sense, anything can lead to a connection. The rare connection made from the chessboard to life is very rare, and usually better accomplished through another means.

Choices and metaphors are involved in anything. Does not mean anything is optimal as a learning tool. The problem is that people push chess by saying it helps people to make good choices in life. This is complete rubbish. By that logic, playing monopoly, watching TV, putting on your shoes, or pretty much anything could help people make good choices in life. But as a pedagogical tool, it is near worthless.

It was a general statement, of which I cannot (nor do I intend) to offer empirical proof. Whether people are wise enough to consider the idea is another thing.

I mean, chess won't guarantee a damn thing, just like smoking won't guarantee lung cancer. Will it improve your odds of being more logical? I think so.

Sure I consider it. That's why I'm responding to it and not just stating my conclusion.

I agree.  I see it as self-serving promotion.

Because as I said before, it takes a relatively advanced level before you start trying to find out what's wrong with your move (for example).  Most players only calculate what they want to see.

Well that's the thing. When we argue with generalities things become vague. But vagueness of argument doesn't make it bad. Saying how chess benefits you is not really the kind of thing you can measure, but since when is being able to be measured a requirement for existing?

I don't think other games do the same because they're just not nearly as deep. Well actually there have been some difficult video games like Demon's Souls on the PS3 where you have to be rather strategic and proactive. Again, I can't just point out exactly where that will happen, but if I want to learn to be strategic and proactive, I will do so by putting myself into situations where I need to be strategic and proactive. When I see myself doing that and applying those general things to new things, I'm not just going to deny what's in front of me.

Now, unfortunately, some people will use my same reasoning to justify anything. Unfortunately it's hard to distinguish good forms of this argument from bad ones, because the differences can be subtle. Ok -- that is a practical problem, but again it's not going to make me, personally, deny things that are obvious to me as I experience them.

Even when you're thinking about your moves in chess, that has nothing to do with thinking about choices in real life. One doesn't suddenly think about their real life options just because at some time they were considering different options on the chess board.

Believe it or not I'm actually really sympathetic to this point.

This sort of argument is in the unfortunate situation where many similar versions of it are really bad, which makes them all look bad. It's sort of like how people will go from saying that "some ways in which women are are related to culture"; therefore, every single difference between women and men must be explained by culture.

The sad thing is, sometimes the reason really is culture; but, it's hard to distinguish those cases from the cases in which the person is exaggerating and the reason isn't culture.

I've toyed with the idea of making a small series of videos on logic in chess.  Stuff you hear lectures say / annotators write like "this square is better" and of course they're right, but I don't think it's apparent to newer players... and although it seems like a small point, this sort of logical thinking opens up a lot a good moves that may have been missed without it.

Things like what new squares does this piece influence?  What old squares does it leave behind?  I wonder if newer players think this way.

Or lets say there are two open files, the e and d files, which is better to control with your rook?  What if you're checked on the e file by a rook in the endgame, which side of the board do you want to step your king?  Do newer players think this way I wonder?

Well, you say you don't intend to prove anything, and you're holding up to that lol. I don't see why you couldn't "suddenly start thinking about real life options" just because I was considering different options on the chess board, to be honest :)

Note that I'm not for teaching chess in schools -- becoming a better critical thinker is a plausible by-product of playing chess... however, that is a pretty weak justification for saying let's add a game into the curriculum. Ideally we would want more than just a little by-product that isn't even guaranteed to happen.