Is there any chance that a 1300 rated player can beat a 2700 rated player?

"Uh, no actually. Common myths suggest that, not any sort of real research. You're making the claim that children learn faster despite having no evidence whatsoever except for widely held pop culture beliefs. I think you can do better but maybe you can't."

But I don't think that's the case. Are you really so sure there isn't research on this? That seems like kind of a baseless claim too unless you have been doing a lot of research on psychology. Right?

But I did just give an example, about that girl who couldn't learn language. (It was a semi-famous psychological case study, although my memory of it is a little fuzzy.) (And there's the same idea I brought up, that brain differences will probably result in advantages and disadvantages, which I'm sure could be googled.) So it seems kind of dishonest on your part to act like I'm not connecting my thesis to anything.

"okay here goes

the people who start playing chess when they're 6 (fischer, etc) and then CONTINUE playing, for their ENTIRE LIVES, at a very intense level.... are

get this... 

THE BEST PLAYERS! woah! 

So yes, the players who have spent the most time on chess and have the most innate ability are the best. Bing zap, surprised? I'm not."

Well, sure, there is reason to think what you think, but there are certainly alternative conclusions you can make from this, too.

For example, if you don't think that kids study very efficiently, then it's unclear just how useful an extra 10 years of kid experience should logically be. Everything else being equal it should help, but by your logic, not necessarily that much, since adult experience would be weighted much more highly than kid experience. And so a potential problem comes in in which, what we would logically predict from your thesis, doesn't seem to turn out that way in the real world.

And I'm wondering why we couldn't see some outliers. I wouldn't expect the average super GM to have started chess at 30, but you would think that at least one time in history that might be the case, or something remotely close to that -- some sort of outlier if you will. It's just a little fishy. But this is what I mean when I say you're acting more conclusive than is justified: there are still alternative ideas one can espouse from the same info that you're using, like I have been doing.

ha, your new here, huh?

I don't know, personally I think my ideas are more logically consistent than yours. But in any case, how do you propose to measure intelligence here such that you can so clearly rank you above me, someone you hardly know at all? It just seems like a really hard thing to do, given all the different meanings of intelligence and variables in the world.

Yeah an adult might be able to duplicate it, but the fact that Karpov could do the same despite not having the intelligence advantage of an adult, seems pretty darn meaningful.

It's possible that it could be purely explained by the amount of study time, but that seems really presumptuous to go from saying, that could be the case, to saying that actually is.

The devil's advocate would say that it's also speculative to just flat out claim the opposite as well, that kids must be better learners. Both claims might turn out equally silly. Except that this latter claim at least has the sheer data on its side. Can you explain a 0% rate of someone learning chess in their 20s and becoming a super GM? Sure, you can explain a lot of it based on free time, but the entire 0% rate? That's a huge gap to explain and you might only be able to explain part of it.

And there's a lot of connections we can make to this with other things. A tennis player at age 25 will physically be better than one who is 30, but the 30 year old will be more likely to have a wiser approach to the game and to learning. So it's not crazy to think that you can have more wisdom while still being at a disadvantage. You seem to be creating this halo effect in which you see certain positive characteristics of an adult, and therefore, assume that the adult must be better in every respect. The real world is way more complex than that.

And, well, becoming a GM before 13 is even more impressive, which Karjakin did. So I guess he started at age 2 or something :)

"That still doesn't mean magical child learning power is the reason for this. Probably if the thirty year old super genius took an anti aging pill for 30 years and focused 100% on chess he could make a go of it. "

Right, just like how there is a chance that a 1300 player can beat a 2700 player. But it's an unimpressively low chance.

"A lot of people seem to think the 6 year old has magical chess learning powers when that's genuinely not reality."

Well, learning powers, yes, but not magical ones. Just that brain differences, for example, might help them get really good at something like chess. There are specific skills kids probably have.

Now, take these 13 year old GMs and then ask them about politics, and they might not have that much good to say about it. That's one thing you don't really ever see: 13 year olds who would make good presidents or mayors. And intuitively that gives you the idea that, skills like chess are ultimately pretty specific, and when it comes to different types of things, you don't see the 13 year old prodigies. Logically this all seems pretty sensible: that's why a father can still feel like he needs to teach his kid a lot, even if the kid is way better than him at some specific thing like chess.

"Also: 

"free time" 

Has literally nothing to do with "magical child learning power" and I already addressed it. "

Right, but I didn't say it did. So it's kind of a non-point on your part. I can say computers literally exist -- I'd be right, but I wouldn't be furthering my argument.

I'd rather be a GM at 13.

No, not at all. Anything that can separate you from the pack like that, (an artist, inventor, musician, etc) sounds very freeing and incredibly impressive. The mainstream get distracted and do things how everyone else is doing them. Exceptional people just trust in themselves and end up accomplishing things that seem impossible. That's why we look up to them, sometimes for guidance -- they have overcome the mainstream tendencies in a way that most of us have not. I could not be any less kidding.

Well no I'm saying that there are multiple variables that affect learning. Certain things about being an adult make learning easier (wisdom, etc), and certain things about being a kid make learning easier (flexibility, lack of prejudices, freshness).

I said before that if you took a kid with the intelligence of a full blown adult, he might become a GM at 10 or something. Although... it's also possible that certain traits are mutually exlcusive to some extent. For example, the wisdom that helps adults learn in many ways, also develops prejudices that might keep them from seeing an otherwise good solution that contradicts those prejudices. So there is room for nuance in this issue.

"Get it through your head that I'm not arguing whether or not people who start at an early age have an advantage in eventually becoming a GM"

That's not what I view you to be arguing. I brought up free time, but it was a sidenote, and not a direct response to your actual argument. I am controlling for free time when I'm talking about kid improvement.

It took them a very long time and we still have no super GM. And they clearly had already started chess at those ages. I'm saying, what if they were new to the game at 20 or something. Since as you said, it doesn't take that long to get to 1700 for some people, it shouldn't make that much of a difference. But it, literally, never happens.

This is based on what? A TV show you saw where a chess player was portrayed as socially awkward? I don't know of any kid that spent more than a few hours a day on chess. School socializes them, and tournaments socialize them. Working with coaches socialize them. Playing video games and watching TV doesn't socialize you. And you wont be having much sex before 13 anyway (lol).

There are some abusive parents, like Kamsky's, which will screw up your childhood and make it only focus on chess, but this wasn't everyone's story. All present day 2700 players were these super-kids, and many are married, and seem totally normal in interviews.

Sure, in theory there is every kind of set. But it's possible for it to never exist in reality.

And really the number of combinations available today are relatively small. Number of 1300s multiplied by number of 2700s is probably tens of millions of combinations.

Well, I'm controlling for free time, because free time is an external factor, not an internal one. When you control for free time, you know how much of a kid's improvement should be attirubted to his brain, and how much was just because he had more free time than an adult. That's what I thought you wanted anyway, and you're getting mad about it?

"As for no super GM with a low start date? Well no shit moron... There are only like 30 super GM's in the ENTIRE WORLD."

This is a world in which I can be a moron for being correct... so I can't win. If I point out a wrong fact, I'm dumb for being wrong; if I point out a correct one, I'm dumb anyway. I guess every single point I make I have to do an obviousness check. Seems like it would make things pretty inefficient.

We could broaden it to 2600 GMs. We can broaden the history, to hundreds of years (I already mentioned it, but you made a strawman of my position or just didn't care to read it). That gives way more room for an outlier.

And again, these players had already been very experienced with chess, if they were already 1700 or 1800. That problem stands.

"And if you admit a child with the brain of an adult would learn faster you admit adults learn faster. No magical child learning power, no bullshit, adults learn faster. Glad you agree with me. "

Well no, I'm saying if you took all the features of an adult that increase learning, and none of the features that decrease learning, then that person would learn faster. But that's some sort of hybrid human; in the real world, some developments in your brain will make you learn better in some ways and worse in others.

"See what happened here? How you couldn't follow the main point and got completely routed?"

Hmm? All of these points, from both of us, seem pretty relevant. They're all about learning and age.

If it's equally possible for children and adults, no matter the number we have today, we should expect to see a 50/50 split, and certainly not a 99/1 or 100/0 split.

Well, yeah, that's what we're discussing. I know that restricting for higher ratings/classes, will inherently reduce how many people get there. Shouldn't you be smart enough to know that I know that?

I'm not the ultimate arbiter on what rating level we should look at. 2500? 2600? 2700? Yeah, when you narrow the sample, you have to ask yourself if you made it too narrow. Well, that's the risk you take when you talk about this topic, not sure what you want me to do about it. It intuitively seems weird that you can't find one example of a really high rated/skilled GM, maybe 2600 or so, over hundreds of years.

Yes, that could be because I made my domain "too" narrow. Kind of hard to say what the perfect domain is for this question, though, so it's hard to blame me for that too much. There's nothing inherently good about using "GMs" as the domain here, either.

"Your response is to switch up the goal posts and insist that, because I don't know of any one individual who fits a very narrow criteria of circumstances within a frame of an already minuscule pool of 1300 individuals then I must accede to children "learning faster". "

But I didn't say you "must" do anything. I said that I was offering up alternative interpretations of what you were talking about -- that's not forcing you into a conclusion, it's just raising scepticism about your points. So you're just misreading what I'm saying and then calling the misinterpretation moronic. As the person who is misreading the comment.

""Well no, I'm saying if you took all the features of an adult that increase learning, and none of the features that decrease learning,"

Very true, adults however, learn faster. "Free time" isn't a feature we're discussing by the way. Get that through your dumb head before we go any further. "

Which is precisely why I'm controlling for free time? You know what that means, right?

"It doesn't happen often because it's an extremely unlikely set of circumstances which need to be fulfilled. "

But that's my whole point. An 800-2500 change and a 1700-2500 change is rather similar in difficulty, given your logic. And that's why I'm complaining that you can't also give an 800-2500 example, because it shouldn't be that hard if you're able to give a 1700-2500 one. Even an 800 eventually becoming IM or FM would be pretty legit, doesn't have to be a GM.

And, I'll say it again because you'll forget, this point I'm making does not mean you have to think that kids learn faster. It's simply a counter point. It might well be that when you do all the math, it perfectly makes sense that you find the results you have, and kids don't learn faster at all. I'm just saying that, without doing the math, I have a suspicion that this is telling us something. Suspicions aren't outright claims.