FACT: You can't improve at chess
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Feb 12, 2025
0
#562
I’ve studied psych ops at war college & must disagree. If you have read the book Flow, this is disputed. Also the pioneering current work being done on the role of positive psychology in coaching, at the University of Pennsylvania, indeed supports this rebuttal.
MikhailTalfan23 wrote:
I’ve studied psych ops at war college & must disagree. If you have read the book Flow, this is disputed. Also the pioneering current work being done on the role of positive psychology in coaching, at the University of Pennsylvania, indeed supports this rebuttal.
What's disputed?
Obviously, people can improve at anything. If they couldn't, they wouldn't be able to write. They have to write to tell you they can't improve.
They may need to sort out their minds a bit, though.
Feb 12, 2025
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#564
@optimissed
What was disputed in a Ph.d thesis, is the brain wave activity via CT scans and rate of retention & learning pattern. Clearly this disputes earlier learning patterns from the book, The Bell Jar.
What was disputed in a Ph.d thesis, is the brain wave activity via CT scans and rate of retention & learning pattern. Clearly this disputes earlier learning patterns from the book, The Bell Jar.
idk, I'm better at bullet chess than when I first learned the rules.
MikhailTalfan23 wrote:
@optimissed
What was disputed in a Ph.d thesis, is the brain wave activity via CT scans and rate of retention & learning pattern. Clearly this disputes earlier learning patterns from the book, The Bell Jar.
What was disputed in a Ph.d thesis, is the brain wave activity via CT scans and rate of retention & learning pattern. Clearly this disputes earlier learning patterns from the book, The Bell Jar.
But the Bell Jar, a popular book with many, although it was banned because it was considered obscene, was a semi-autographical work of fiction. Therefore, there could be no firmly held proposition regarding learning patterns, in the Bell Jar, to dispute.
Feb 13, 2025
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#567
Optimissed wrote:
MikhailTalfan23 wrote:
@optimissed
What was disputed in a Ph.d thesis, is the brain wave activity via CT scans and rate of retention & learning pattern. Clearly this disputes earlier learning patterns from the book, The Bell Jar.
What was disputed in a Ph.d thesis, is the brain wave activity via CT scans and rate of retention & learning pattern. Clearly this disputes earlier learning patterns from the book, The Bell Jar.
But the Bell Jar, a popular book with many, although it was banned because it was considered obscene, was a semi-autographical work of fiction. Therefore, there could be no firmly held proposition regarding learning patterns, in the Bell Jar, to dispute.
Maybe he’s thinking of The Bell Curve, a flawed wok of scholarship that manipulated data to achieve the predetermined conclusion that Anglo-Americans are intellectually superior.
Maybe. I haven't heard of the thing you mention. A Bell curve is very different from a glass jar in which specimens may be kept. 
One of the cleverest people I ever knew was a Turk I lived with for about eight months. Apart from his determination to call a tea towel "a cloth" .... meaning that it could be used on the floor!!
Feb 13, 2025
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#569
The Bell Curve was published in 1994 and received a great deal of criticism at the time. One of the authors, Charles Murray, had been pushing anti-tax, anti-welfare, anti-immigration policies with shoddy scholarship since the 1960s. The thickness of the book, which is well-written despite flaws in the scholarship, gave comfort to a lot of racists as it seemed to justify their views: Black people and immigrants are pulling the nation downward.
Perhaps folks in Britain ignored the book because its focus was on US data.
2000Tops wrote:
the OP is correct, some people are able to improve overtime because they have a natural ability to get to that level, then they plateau. Practice will only make you better up to a limit imposed by your genetics.
The belief in "natural chess ability" is, IMO, complete nonsense.
No infant is born with a latent chess Elo. Chess is simply: a learned skill.
I view it as comparable to learning a trade, like carpentry. Or perhaps like learning a foreign language ...
In either case, there are steps you can take to improve your learning. If we hit a plateau, it's because we've stopped learning, or stopped learning properly - not because of a limit imposed by some undiscovered "chess genome" in our DNA ...
Ziryab wrote:
The Bell Curve was published in 1994 and received a great deal of criticism at the time. One of the authors, Charles Murray, had been pushing anti-tax, anti-welfare, anti-immigration policies with shoddy scholarship since the 1960s. The thickness of the book, which is well-written despite flaws in the scholarship, gave comfort to a lot of racists as it seemed to justify their views: Black people and immigrants are pulling the nation downward.
Perhaps folks in Britain ignored the book because its focus was on US data.
In 1994 I was just finishing my philosophy degree. I was also working 10 hours per week for our local council and winding down quite a complicated business. I was also responsible for getting our child to and from school since his mum was working full time, home maintainance in all aspects, running the local chess club, keeping myself fit and various other stuff, so I wasn't aware of the book. Obviously it had nothing to do with philosophy!
Feb 13, 2025
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#572
Optimissed wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
The Bell Curve was published in 1994 and received a great deal of criticism at the time. One of the authors, Charles Murray, had been pushing anti-tax, anti-welfare, anti-immigration policies with shoddy scholarship since the 1960s. The thickness of the book, which is well-written despite flaws in the scholarship, gave comfort to a lot of racists as it seemed to justify their views: Black people and immigrants are pulling the nation downward.
Perhaps folks in Britain ignored the book because its focus was on US data.
In 1994 I was just finishing my philosophy degree. I was also working 10 hours per week for our local council and winding down quite a complicated business. I was also responsible for getting our child to and from school since his mum was working full time, home maintainance in all aspects, running the local chess club, keeping myself fit and various other stuff, so I wasn't aware of the book. Obviously it had nothing to do with philosophy!
I finished my PhD in 1994 and was teaching courses on race relations in the US. The book was relevant to my work. I read a portion prior to book publication because it appeared as an article--either in The Atlantic Monthly or The New Republic.
Divya Deshmukh, rating increasing steadily since 2012, with a plateau for the period 2020-2022, then increasing again: https://ratings.fide.com/profile/35006916
psylowade wrote:
Pashak1989 wrote:
You are right. Magnus Carlsen was born with a 2800+ rating.
He had rapid improvement - which I explained in my post if you read it.
I'm asking for an example where it's SLOW and steady improvement over a long period of time
I started at 600 in 2018, and am now 1900+
Ziryab wrote:
Optimissed wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
The Bell Curve was published in 1994 and received a great deal of criticism at the time. One of the authors, Charles Murray, had been pushing anti-tax, anti-welfare, anti-immigration policies with shoddy scholarship since the 1960s. The thickness of the book, which is well-written despite flaws in the scholarship, gave comfort to a lot of racists as it seemed to justify their views: Black people and immigrants are pulling the nation downward.
Perhaps folks in Britain ignored the book because its focus was on US data.
In 1994 I was just finishing my philosophy degree. I was also working 10 hours per week for our local council and winding down quite a complicated business. I was also responsible for getting our child to and from school since his mum was working full time, home maintainance in all aspects, running the local chess club, keeping myself fit and various other stuff, so I wasn't aware of the book. Obviously it had nothing to do with philosophy!
I finished my PhD in 1994 and was teaching courses on race relations in the US. The book was relevant to my work. I read a portion prior to book publication because it appeared as an article--either in The Atlantic Monthly or The New Republic.
Oh, OK, I can see that it would be. Race relations in the USA is quite a challenging subject, I should think. I can imagine quite a difficult balance needs to be maintained and even tailored to the requirements of the composition of different classes.
All told, did the book gain any traction and if so, did that result in a worsening of the situation at any point? I believe I can see an overall improvement in race relations in the US but it really does seem to be one step forward and then half a step back, much of the time.
Feb 14, 2025
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#576
Hard to measure the effectiveness of a book. People bought it and read it. Occasionally, someone will deploy it in an argument. It occasionally comes up in forums here.
Because it deals with IQ, it seems as though it might be what the poster was thinking about when they mentioned The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel doesn’t seem to fit what was put forth.
Yes difficult to improve consistently over time, once you hit the dreaded "barrier". But I say it is possible to make significant jumps over the short term, with some kind of lifestyle change such as giving up smoking and getting lots of fresh air, engage in other physical activities instead of sitting in front of your TV or computer. Sports psychology for chess is an idea that I have considered.
I could use myself as an example, but my OTB tournament days and my internet days are separate. I have a return after 20 years to a major open tournament later this year. My OTB ELO is barely over 1800, but I predict 200-300 improvement based on casual results. Plus I feel stronger. I'll bookmark this discussion then
Apr 30, 2025
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#579
I don't agree with the post entirely, I believe you CAN improve at Chess. The question is are you doing what it takes to improve at Chess, and that's not a simple answer because that means different things for different people.
16 days ago
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#580
IMO its not skill but mental agility that limits improvement. Skill is moving pieces based on rules; mental agility is the ability to constantly reconfigure patterns of play based on creativity and mental agility to see possibilities.
Its a question I have asked as well - practice, in my opinion, has only made me faster at recognizing patterns. Improvement comes not in WHAT you see/think but HOW you see/think, and that, IMO again, IS limited by mental agility.
IDK what y’all think I gained 250 elo since new year because I started playing regularly. Earlier I used to play twice a week and was stuck at 700-800 for 1 year. You can always gain elo.