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

edit: forum broke my posts

Yeah so chess worked as a pretty decent means to an end. Who knows, perhaps only because of the temptation of improving my rating was so great and I'd do anything to do so; whatever motivates me! But this could apply to anyone who likes to do well and get the gratification of increasing their rating as they get better. In my case I didn't really accept being at a plateau and insisted on finding the root of the problem.

If I was just taking a class, let's say English or something, I could get a good grade by just "trying," lol. Chess just doesn't give a damn :p It constantly and mercilessly throws you problems and so it's inevitable your mind is going to go through a lot of things to get better at it. Even in philosophy classes, which are challenging, you can get a lot of partial credit if the teacher simply thinks your approach has a lot of promise, even if it has flaws.

I don't think I"ve missed the point at all. It is you who wrote, "real life is nothing like a chess game." What does that mean? You did write the word nothing, did you not? Then you assert its exact opposite with "Chess isn't completely 'isolated' from the rest of life..." later. I took you at your original word, and then later you deny the sense those words conveyed.

And I am not "simply looking for ways to justify chess...."

Let's talk about real critical thinking here. To be a critical thinker, one of the intellectual traits indespensable to it is the idea of fairness. What do I mean by that? Fairness means understanding an argument in the way it is truly intended. To be fair in an argument (not in the disputatious sense), means to fairly represent it. To understand it in its deepest sense without any distortion.

The first tool of the sophist, is a misrepresentation in some way. A critical thinker tries to avoid this. A critical thinker's purpose is not to be "right," but to look for what is right. It is no shame to say, "Oh I didn't mean to be that definite," or even, "Hey, I didn't think of it that way--you could be right."

The critical thinker is concerned with the truth. Not with "winning" an argument. So you can try to deflect and be mildly insulting and dissmissive by constructing a straw dog and asserting that my tone is "psuedo-philisophical," but I am not some innocent that fell off the turnip truck yesterday. I recognize sophistry when I see it.

Indeed.
I still think when you are doing chess problems (or thinking during any chess activity), you are simply training chess. You are finding a way to complete a chess puzzle by going through various chess processes -- not learning how to problem solve on its own. You are learning how to problem solve chess. You are learning how to think critically about chess, not really in general, not necessarily about anything else. This is especially true with young students and people who don't already have strong metacognitive/philosophical/critical thinking skills.

I am not "simply trying to win an argument." Saying chess is "nothing" like life is called hyperbole. It doesn't have to be completely isolated from life to have trivial outcomes on other general skills like critical thinking or reasoning. If you are calling me sophist, then I do not believe you "recognize sophistry when you see it," because then you would see I am nothing of a sophist.

I welcome other peoples' ideas, but at the same time I have a strong opinion about my conclusion that is backed by a lot of experience and understanding. Feel free to prove me wrong if you can, without resorting to semantics or projections.

School in general doesn't demand much of its students.  It's really up to the student to motivate themselves to learn.  IMO you almost have to have a disrespect for the instructor's course.  Set your own goals... and this is very hard of course, to find that motivation within yourself.

What I also liked about chess was (as Elubas said) "it doesn't give a damn."  If you're wrong, you lose, and you'll always lose.  Progress is easily observable and satisfying (because the game and opponent aren't helping you).

In art and literature, things are up for debate.  Although this may be best for teenagers as math and science are still in their foundational stage and don't really involve creativity or critical thinking yet.

I agree completely with everything here, except that a good teacher's class will take into account student goals, personality, circumstances, etc. But yes, most school is still pretty crappy when it comes to student motivation and personal relevance. Chess is really a winning or losing kind of thing, unlike art and literature. In this way, chess gives you the answers, and art/literature makes you think about everything more closely. The "grey areas" of life tend to be better suited to developing critical thinking and reasoning.

I must depart chess.com for now. More when I'm back, I'm sure...

Well, that's not really true... why do I miss certain puzzles?  I've identified in the past both thinking processes and visualization problems and come up with ways to improve them.

But I agree that in the very young this doesn't happen... at least not on a conscious level.

Chess seems very black and white, but the way I see it, so is the quintessential "blank canvas."  If you scribble madly with a pen, you can create 100 unique pieces, but they will all look the same, and be very bad.  Which is to say there are many constraints we take for granted.  In chess there are many constraints on which moves are good and bad, but just like a canvas, or unwritten book, it's how you work within those constraints that differentiates everything from beauty to miserable failure.

I don't recall ever using much critical thinking in art or literature.  Philosophy is a good example though.  In my experience math and science are even better.  I think being undeniably right or wrong at the end actually motivates more thinking.  In art I could argue something speciously in my mind, and be so good at it that I never break through that barrier.  In math or, say, programming, if I get to the end, it doesn't matter how supremely confident I am with what I've done, if it's wrong, I'm forced to go back over each element carefully.  So too with chess, if I lose (or get a worse position) I have to question even my proudest moves.

Chess in practice is not black and white. If you can see 10 to the googleplex moves then sure you don't need critical thinking; otherwise you do. The fact that verbal ideas can predict the end result of billions of variations (take for example the amount of possible variations even from a lopsided scenario like rook and 5 pawns vs 5 pawns), says incredibly much.

So chess kind of has the best of both worlds. It's cool that there actually is a right answer (or at least wrong answers) in theory, yet there are so many insights critical to the game that are creative yet in a logical way. For example compared to art, it actually is possible to "call BS" on someone's "interpretation" about a chess position. Interpreting chess positions involves some similar skills to interpreting art (as well as different ones and of course there is a lot more pure logic in chess), but in the case of chess there is this objective standard one must discover and conform their interpretations to if they want to win more games. Again sort of the best of both worlds.

I guess I would add that I think an interpretation has more meaning if it's... let's say falsifiable. If it's not, I feel like all I have to do is say lots of words to myself to convince myself of it -- but how can I know whether the idea is actually good or if I am just getting obsessed with my own ideas? In chess that could be answered by you losing a position despite your strong conviction about it being a good position. Then you alter your interpretations, but it's a purposeful alteration -- you're not altering it because you feel like it, you're doing so because you're learning a new objective thing about the game.

Iwouldsay yes=chess is the platform for critical thinking with every decision that we make

Real life has many opponents competing against you, sometimes known to you, sometimes hidden. Real life has huge number of options available at each turn. Real life deals you bad luck, and your success is largely determined by how you handle hard times. Real life success depends upon how well you communicate with others. Real life success depends upon developing relationships with other people. In real life, it is desirable to help others and try to ease the suffering of your fellow man. I could go on, and after I list a few thousand more, we will eventually get to silly statements like "chess pieces are different colors, just like there are different colors in real life". If researchers were designing something to model life, they wouldn't pick chess or anything close to it.

lol, what would they pick? Math class? Eating lunch?

You are beating down a strawman. The point was never that chess was like life. The point was that it develops skills that could help you in life, logical ones for example. Yeah if I want to learn that life's not fair I have to live life sure. If I want to apply logic to real life situations no I don't have to actually experience those real life situations before I can apply any logical skills I learned.

You complained about us beating down a strawman, saying that chess helps you more than nothing, but you are doing at least the same thing, beating down the strawman that says chess is literally like life.

here is another test- take a sample group and show them your post. the ones that give a crap are nerds. the ones that don't, well, they are normal.

lol, going on a chess site to call people nerds. When people use that word they seem to be implying they think there is something bad about you yet strangely seem unaware of what that is.

There is logic to chess and its a game where knowing more of the right things would make the game more enjoyable. However in real life its not always that easy, eg, I'm a smoker and I know that if I continue to smoke the likelihood of dying to cancer is higher, so , using critical thinking and logic... I should stop, but I enjoy smoking , even though I tried to quit, mainly because of others encouraging me too. Sometimes I wish we did play life like a game of chess, then I would do only what is good for me and make moves that would hopefully benefit me.

are chess players by default, nerds?