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

Surely you can´t calculate real life situations like moves in a chess game. The point is that if you are trained that sloppy thinking will get punished you are motivated to think more accurately.

Yeah, but real life is nothing like a chess game -- you don't think in the same way, nor do you get "punished" in the same way for your choices -- so this "learned ability" in chess does not transfer over to real life. You don't "choose good moves" in life just because you do it on a chess board.

I beg to differ. Chess is quite analgous to life in general--though I would agree that learning to play chess will not make you a critial thinker in the broadest sense.

In chess, as in life, poorer responses eventually leads to negative consequences. As in life, sometimes those consequences are delayed, so it is over the chessboard. A "checkmate out of the blue" isn't possible for no reason. The moves you chose made it possible. So it is in many spheres of life. Poor decisions or irresponsible ones, will eventually limit your options. Good, responsible decisions, tend to increase your options over time. Life is not as mathematically certain as chess--that is true--but to say that it is nothing like life seems a needless exaggeration. I think you can reasonably say, that chess is like life in some ways.

I also question the idea that nothing of chess is transferred into other spheres of life. Total nontransferrence is illogical. If anthing we learned was not transferrable in some ways, then we would never get anywhere. All knowledge depends on transferrence and would not exist without it. Any body of knowledge is a system of knowledge that depends upon and is derived from the core concepts of that discipline. Disciplines are often related to one another, and some depend on others, mathematics and engineering for example. If transferrence were impossible--then the true expansion of our knowledge would also be impossible.

I think there is a correlation between skill at chess and having a good hardheaded reality-based view of life, but it is less clear which causes which. One thing chess teaches that is also applicable to life is to be skeptical of generalities. No good chess player would say "I have two bishops, advantage". A good player would think about whether that generality is applicable to the particular position. Another issue for both chess and life is whether to be bold and decisive or whether to be careful and cautious. On the one hand "look before you leap". On the other hand, "He who hesitates is lost". Chess badly punishes a violation of either principle.

#85 you are missing the point. Chess isn't completely "isolated" from the rest of life, but they are different enough that you don't learn life themes from playing chess. You can fool yourself in some kind of pseudo-philosophical tone by saying "the pawn moves forward in life, and thus, I move forward" but in reality, you are simply looking for ways to justify chess as something that is relevant outside chess.

A few things to consider regarding this thread are:

If you continue to play chess, without much debate, you tend to stretch your preplaying ability, to look beyond the obvious, atleast chessically speaking. We could argue over whether playing chess, is "critical" to fulfillment, stress relief and thus overall well being for some is but, that would require too much thought for some.

When considering what "critical" is and how it applies to everyday life is what really matters when having this debate.

If the term "critical" is only considered to be synonymous with things that aren't trivial in life, that is a subjective matter.

If the term "critical" can be construed as part of what is required to extend one's self beyond a prior ability level in abstract thinking, then chess is completely capable of helping to expand the mind's ability to consider more ideas in conjunction simultaneously.

I have noticed an increased ability to consider the requirements for doing my job, since I began playing chess regularly. I attribute it almost exclusively to playing chess. I went from writing my ideas a bit at a time so that I wouldn't forget, to suddenly being able to think and reach conclusions, then writing it down for submission to others. I do this with the math required to my job or considering the steps and material requirements for those steps also. I used to have to walk around and look at things, visualizing how they'd transpire. Now, I go sit somewhere comfortable and start recording all of the data, after giving it a quick glance. SO it has not only increased my ability to consider more abstract ideas in conjunction simultaneously but, also it has increased my short term memory ability.

They say if you don't use it you lose it and if you exercise it, it is in better shape and or gets stronger.

I kind of think you do get punished in the same way, depending on which way we consider important. Sure, in chess the worst that will ever happen is that you lose a game. Yet this often motivates people to avoid the "punishment" of losing. If you want to avoid the punishment you find the problems with your approach instead of just charge in guns blazing again. So, yeah, looking for the problems in my approach is something I get practice for in chess. You keep insisting this simply can't be the case, but empirically the truth seems to keep suggesting otherwise. If something looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, chances are it's a duck. But you seem to have this strange inflexibility that doesn't care about observations if they support a conclusion that was not what you originally thought.

(The thing about chess is that, unlike many other simpler games where patterns seem to develop automatically after playing a few times, chess is way too complicated to be like that. Patterns will most likely only develop if you come to understand them, and this simply requires some pretty deep self-reflection -- it severely punishes you for being lazy when analyzing where you went wrong.)

Now, to what extent chess helps is rather debatable. I don't suggest the main reason for playing chess should be to develop general skills. The meat of chess is learning the game for its own purposes, its own beauty. I'm just saying other skills developing are non-trivial by-products of chess.

"I guess my point is, you can say this about ANYTHING."

I hear you, but this is why we need to be sceptical. Look for the differences between Candy Land and chess. Just because it's hard to distinguish between certain arguments doesn't mean they are the same argument; it just means one might mistake them for being the same. That's a danger, for sure, but if I am careful enough I can hope to find good versions of this sort of argument while avoiding the bad ones.

"But for every skill chess teaches them, there are 100 ways you can teach them the same skill more effectively. The primary skill they learn by playing chess is, playing chess."

Well I definitely wouldn't agree with your "100" number -- looks like a convenient exaggeration. But I would agree that chess is not the best way to develop general skills. On the other hand I'm arguing it's more than merely "better than nothing" -- I don't consider it only microscopically good. Even if the game inspires you to do other things, or shows how cool it is to learn an art, it could push you in new directions. Yeah you'll say that's just speculative BS, but if a person doesn't know what it's like to find beauty (or excelling at something) I'm not sure what will make them search for it. Chess has certainly inspired me to find the beauty in things, and make me more perfectionist.

I am not inflexible, I am skeptical based on my experiences with chess and chess players, and my deep understanding of the learning process. I am not trying to disregard peoples' experiences here -- rather, I believe that chess players, out of enthusiasm and attachment to the game, easily overstate the general benefits of chess outside the chess board. They see a little link to the outside world, and make it into something more significant than it really is.

Now if you're looking for proof of my ideas, you can't really "prove" either way. From a certain point of view, this is just going to look like "my opinion vs your opinion." I am not interested in empiricism here, nor should anyone be in this topic, because there is little to be had.

Anyway, it is a difficult topic to prove one way or the other -- yet its trueness or falseness is just as strong as things that are easy to prove :)

For those saying the burden of proof is on those saying chess helps you: well people like rtr for example said there are countless better ways to develop skills chess teaches you... that's a positive claim that seems about as hard to simply accept without evidence. How do we know math builds skills either then? Math isn't precisely critical thinking -- it's a specific system of rules to apply. I'm just saying if you have a problem with the burden of proof, then apply it to your own position as well.

 I'm sceptical too, doc. That's why I respond to your arguments. I don't accept my position just because I like chess -- I merely use my chess for observations relevant to the question. I have my position after being sceptical about both sides, after looking at counter arguments to my position. And I assess whether I find the counter arguments convincing or not.

Other people might simply assume chess helps you because of their emotional attachment to the game, which isn't a good reason to think so.

The difference is that with math you can much more readily apply number and spacial relationships to the world, than the movement and evaluation of chess pieces.

Personally, I do not believe math is most helpful with critical thinking or reasoning skills. I believe, by far, discussion of literature, real life problems/situations, and philosophy -- in addition to writing -- are the best ways to develop critical thinking and reasoning.

The funny thing is that usually I am on the other side of these debates -- where someone talks about a certain activity that seems totally unrelated to another but connects them in some general way. That vagueness does suck. So we have vagueness. But this, I don't think, is grounds to just give up on trying to answer questions at all. There will be a huge limit regarding how we can answer the question in this thread. But we might as well be as sceptical as we can and try to find something rational when approaching the answer.

"I believe, by far, discussion of literature, real life problems/situations, and philosophy -- in addition to writing -- are the best ways to develop critical thinking and reasoning."

And why is this?

Yes=That is what the gome is about

Because these things offer real context and thought processes geared towards those contexts.

My original post here was deleted by accident, so I'll try to reconstruct it in summary. Basically, I'm a musician and a music teacher. I have met thousands of musicians, music teachers, and music students. I have accumulated a great amount of evidence that the practice of doing music does not make you more intelligent once you put the instrument down.  I used to believe that making music increased intelligence or made someone special in a certain way. My encounter with all these different kinds of musicians made me realize that these people are only especially good at music. Though they are making (musical) choices all the time while playing music, once they exit the musical world (and sometimes even within it), the average musician is not any better at critical thinking, reasoning, or decision-making than the average non-musician. Same as chess.

Although I advocate heavily for the arts in schools, I shudder when someone gives the reason that music "raises test scores" or makes someone "smarter" in any way. That is all very questionable and only perpetuated by junk science and people in the field itself, and it is far from the best reason for arts/music.

Is this based on your experiences, doc? It seems to me certain kinds of musicians anyway are smarter than the average person, at least in the logical philosophical aspect. But I guess you have seen enough moronic musicians to change your mind? :)

I must say my experiences with chess remain very very different. I precisely felt like my mind had stretched itself to a new level of flexibility after "putting the chess book down." Now, maybe this is because I liked critical thinking anyway which got me to play chess, but I don't really think so because it was precisely what it took to move past chess plateaues that forced me to think more critically about how I play; apply logic to chess better; and thus, apply logic.

What got me from 1800 to 1900 for example was learning some important concepts that my mind was not flexible enough (yes in the general sense) to consider. My mind was not flexible enough to think about what I was taking for granted. If someone attacked my piece I thought we must move it away automatically. It never occurred to me to check the assumption that made me think so. Yeah, searching for assumptions is a part of critical thinking. And this is just one example.

And yeah, indeed, it was the same problem that made me assume I have to move pieces away that made me too presumptuous with other things. If I don't consider what I'm taking for granted in other situations I may overlook a good course of action. This is true regardless of whether I played chess, but it was the requirements of moving up in chess that forced my mind to acquire this increased flexibility.

Here's what I think: You were already capable of critical thinking. Then, chess just become one tool for you to expand your thinking, if that's what happened. Just as you would expand your ideas with any other tool or area of life -- so it wasn't chess per se. It was just your method of choice for developing certain ideas.

Things work differently for people who aren't already good at critical thinking and have strong metacognitive skills.