Queen's Gambit

Another thing people fail to understand is that the ability to work obsessively hard is not always a choice. Some people are obsessed with learning something and others get easily bored and seek diversion. To say this is a “choice” is myopic. How many people are even capable of studying chess eight hours a day without wanting to defenestrate? Damned few! Yet some people do it happily. Is it a choice to be being okay with having that kind of obsessiveness? I don’t think so.

those eight IMs won't walk into mate in one like morphy's opponents. Also, pretty sure magnus would be able to do it.

Now to address your points...
1. I am not entirely sold into the idea that some people are born with more "physical potential", physical potential in what? height? then yes... but strength? not so sure. Unless a person has some condition which stops him from working out, people can work out and become extremely strong if they want. To quote the best MMA fighter "There is no talent here, this is hard work, this is an obsession, u can become anyone if u put in the time"

2. Some people maybe a bit smarter but as i have said, chess has nothing to do with being smart. Chess is a skill like any other skill and can be developed through constant effort, sincere devotion and obsession.

3. Michalangelo was considered extremely talented and he wrote "if people knew how hard i worked to achieve my mastery, it won't seem so wonderful after all"
One more quote i read in some other language, translated to english "I have realized that after u put your blood, sweat and tears into something and let it occupy your mind to the point where nothing else fits and u maintain that for 20 years, at the end of all that people will call you talented"

An ancient stoic quote "Do not assume that just because something seems impossible to you that it is impossible for others as well... but do realize that if something is within limits of human potential then u can do it too"

I have noticed that successful people and the greats don't really put that much emphasis on talent and regularly deny being "just talented" while normal people over glorify talent.

IQ tests don't measure all forms of intelligence(of which there are many)... but my point still is that chess has nothing to do with intelligence so why are people pretending as if it even matters here?

Sanity is somewhat over-rated.

You are correct that there are many types of intelligence.  Although many types are not aligned with chess skills, some are. Having a photographic memory helps as well.

 

Yet as I said, for ideological reasons this kind of thing must be ignored.

To look out into the world and view all kinds of variability in humans and then somehow claim that the brain is immune to variability is preposterous on its face. And of course strength varies just as testosterone levels do. There are hundreds of football players who work out every day for the same number of hours, and some get stronger. Hand-eye or foot-eye varies. Messi was spotted as a child as having exceptional skill and was developed from there even though almost every male in Argentina plays a lot of soccer, and many of them every day for hours on end as they see it as a way out of poverty. Agility varies. Everything varies except for brains, right? Ridiculous.

There is no proof that if instead of messi someone else was worked on that much he would not have developed into a good player so your point is moot.

As i said, training matters. If someone does something for 20 years with lots of hours put in and with the right training approach then nothing is really out of limits.

Also, i have said it many times now.... YES iq levels tend to vary but there are many kinds of IQ... plus u are deliberately ignoring that intelligence has NOTHING to do with chess so mentioning "brain" and "intelligence" is completely irrelevant

Also funny how u mentioned messi since when asked, messi said that he sacrificed a lot to achieve his dreams and worked extremely hard for it. He said that u have to sacrifice everything to reach your dream. He wasn't like "eh what? i was just naturally talented lel"

Your arguments are simply not credible, and that’s about as mildly as I can put it.

Rats. We know that some rats and mice solve mazes faster than others. Indeed, rats these days solve mazes faster than they did in the early days of behavioral studies. We’ve actually inadvertently selected for rats that are smarter at maze solving. This ear is confused? Toss it out and get another.

Find a group of animals. In each group there will be ones that are faster, those that are more agile, and those that are stronger. Is it because one little gazelle had better training?

We know that variability in abilities exist in animals, both mentally and physically, and yet humans are immune to such variability? Do you really believe this or are you just making an argument.

And thousands of kids are scouted for special soccer camps and lots are singled out for their talent. Not all the talented make it to the next level and fewer amongst those become elite. They all try hard. All of them. Some try even harder than those that succeed.

And yet we are to believe that this is caused by study and training. It strains credulity, my friend.

Of course Messi worked hard. So does everyone else. This isn’t an argument. The question is, what separates him from the rest? The sheer volume of work? Umm... no.

People who are blinded by ideology are impossible to discuss things like this.

 

Look at the gold medalist for 100 meter. Is the fact that this man is always a descendant of Africa found in either the USA or a Carribean island nation a coincidence?  Is it purely hard work and only African descendants from these regions work hard? Or is there a genetic superiority for speed at play?

Lol u are completely blind if u think that all the kids singled out for soccer camps "try hard", no... the main difference between people who succeed and those who don't is strictly the fact that those who succeed work harder or are more creative in their approach or training.  

As i said, regular people base everything on talent while great people completely deny this notion. It says something right?

Plus u are yet to tell me how ANY OF THIS matters in chess... where intelligence has absolutely no meaning.

You obviously are not an athlete.

Alan wells, a british man, beat many people of african descent in the olympics to win the gold medal. According to you this feat should have been impossible since people of african descent are just genetically much superior in athletics.

It also has a LOT to do with culture, you are forgetting this.  I can make the exact same argument as well... most scientific inventions were done by a particular group of people, does this mean that other races are genetically inferior in science?  A particular culture develops around a particular community. It's a very important distinction.

For example, indians living in india tend to show more excellence towards theoretical maths while those living in USA from birth tend to show a lack of such speciality but tend to score higher in pure and applied physics.   Same genetics, same everything but they excel at different things. It will blow your mind to know how big of a factor culture has to play

Was the USA at that olympics?

@kartineya saying that it’s cultural is ultimately unfalsifiable. You can keep backing up to that position. The truth is that in the US everyone sprints in school. Literally everyone. In mostly white school districts it’s not uncommon that everyone on the team is white. They generally have access to more money, better training facilities, and all the things you’d expect to make them better had it all been a matter of simply talent. And yet, by and large, state and regional champions are black. There are exceptions, but that doesn’t deny a strong statistical relationship, despite disadvantages.

If you say “culture explains the difference” you’re a poor social scientist. It’s entirely unfalsifiable at this point.

You know, you say you study psychology, but you make so many research design mistakes. First, there is a relationship between IQ and chess playing ability. It has been shown many times in studies.

Secondly, IQ and intelligence aren’t the same thing. It’s a proxy for intelligence that is more or less appropriate in a given situation. It has been shown many times that chess masters have better memories (not measured by IQ), and much better pattern recognition skills than average people. Prodigies show these skills at a very young age. As noted previously, prodigies visualize positions almost spontaneously without training while very young. This is not trained. Playing blindfolded is an extreme example of this that’s extremely difficult to learn, but some just see the board in their head like it’s second nature.

Jeez. All these arguments are just ridiculously bad and fly in the face of the science.

Adriaan de Groot, the Dutch chess master and psychologist, performed experiments on related topics in the 1940s through the 1960s. He discovered that amateurs and masters both evaluated chess positions to a similar degree of depth.

William Chase and Herbert Simon further expanded upon de Groot’s work and discovered that masters were no better than amateurs at remembering “scrambled” chess positions, but excelled at recalling “real” ones.

These studies and others indicate that, despite popular belief to the contrary, chess expertise requires chess-specific pattern recognition rather than the kind of rote memory many lay people assume chess masters possess.

"Although it is widely acknowledged that chess is the best example of an intellectual activity among games, evidence showing the association between any kind of intellectual ability and chess skill has been remarkably sparse. One of the reasons is that most of the studies investigated only one factor (e.g., intelligence), neglecting other factors relevant for the acquisition of chess skill (e.g., amount of practice, years of experience). The present study investigated the chess skill of 57 young chess players using measures of intelligence (WISC III), practice, and experience. Although practice had the most influence on chess skill, intelligence explained some variance even after the inclusion of practice. When an elite subsample of 23 children was tested, it turned out that intelligence was not a significant factor in chess skill, and that, if anything, it tended to correlate negatively with chess skill."

You can check the research paper here  (PDF) Does chess need intelligence? — A study with young chess players (researchgate.net)

As i said, chess is nothing but a skill. Being good at chess has NOTHING to do with being intelligent or having good memory. As mentioned above, random people were able to recollect "scrambled" (completely random placement of pieces in random boards) just as well as chess masters

So using your logic and reasoning, it is safe to say that people of a certain group are just genetically superior in terms of science? are indians genetically way superior in maths by that logic?  if that is the case then why do indians living in the USA show no significant excellence at math compared to their resident indian counterparts? 

What about chess? if you look at most of the world champions then u will find out that most have been from russia. So are russians genetically way superior to everyone else when it comes to chess? are white people genetically superior to the other races when it comes to chess?