Grand Mastery
Just this morning I was reading the second part of a fascinating interview with Viswanathan Anand, the current World Chess Champion and one of the most pleasant human beings you might find at such an exalted level. What really intrigued me was his very historically-minded response to this question: "After 20 years of dedicating your life to the sport, a piece of code on a PC is your equal. After all your years of effort, a “mindless” program can match you. Do you feel that way sometimes?". Here's an extract:
"There must have been a point when the information in the libraries was more than that was contained in your head. There are lots of things that humans used to do, which we no longer do better than machines. It would be interesting to compare it with those moments.
"In 1997-98 we felt this very strongly. Now there is hardly any interest. Because it is over, you know it is like running against a car. There are some things we do much better than computers but since most of chess is tactically based they do many things better than humans. And this imbalance remains. I no longer have any issues. It is a bit like asking an astronomer does he mind that a telescope does all the work. He takes an image, does image processing. He uses a computer which counts the pixels. Does he feel bad? He is used to it. It is just an incredible tool that you can use.
"Once you are past the initial tussle with your ego, then it just feels natural. Right now it is not an issue. I know my PC is stronger than me at any given time, and to have a chance against it I would spend a couple of weeks thinking about computer chess. How to play against machines. You stop doing anything imaginative, and you become very disciplined tactically. I can probably still compete against it, but what's the point?"
The World Chess Champion's answer is a manifestation of his mastery. The point, to him, is that to compete with a specialised instrument is pointless. In fact, you would have to degrade your imaginative human complexity in order to do so. Yes, it breeds discipline; but what he implicitly says is that the strategic imagination is compromised by the extreme tactical discipline.
To put it in another way, learning to react excellently in the short term leads to a kind of blindness in your strategic horizon. You lose long-term vision if you don't use your assets and skills properly.
I've seen this in real life. I've seen very bright people come to the end of the 20th century thinking that we were about to leave the 20th century behind. What happened subsequently was that the 21st century left them behind, trapped in some sort of conceptual limbo where you listened to gurus whose research was five years out of date and you never surfed the Internet for yourself but got some lackey to do it for you.
That is where the strategic vision died, for those people. Maybe they should play more chess.
"There must have been a point when the information in the libraries was more than that was contained in your head. There are lots of things that humans used to do, which we no longer do better than machines. It would be interesting to compare it with those moments.
"In 1997-98 we felt this very strongly. Now there is hardly any interest. Because it is over, you know it is like running against a car. There are some things we do much better than computers but since most of chess is tactically based they do many things better than humans. And this imbalance remains. I no longer have any issues. It is a bit like asking an astronomer does he mind that a telescope does all the work. He takes an image, does image processing. He uses a computer which counts the pixels. Does he feel bad? He is used to it. It is just an incredible tool that you can use.
"Once you are past the initial tussle with your ego, then it just feels natural. Right now it is not an issue. I know my PC is stronger than me at any given time, and to have a chance against it I would spend a couple of weeks thinking about computer chess. How to play against machines. You stop doing anything imaginative, and you become very disciplined tactically. I can probably still compete against it, but what's the point?"
The World Chess Champion's answer is a manifestation of his mastery. The point, to him, is that to compete with a specialised instrument is pointless. In fact, you would have to degrade your imaginative human complexity in order to do so. Yes, it breeds discipline; but what he implicitly says is that the strategic imagination is compromised by the extreme tactical discipline.
To put it in another way, learning to react excellently in the short term leads to a kind of blindness in your strategic horizon. You lose long-term vision if you don't use your assets and skills properly.
I've seen this in real life. I've seen very bright people come to the end of the 20th century thinking that we were about to leave the 20th century behind. What happened subsequently was that the 21st century left them behind, trapped in some sort of conceptual limbo where you listened to gurus whose research was five years out of date and you never surfed the Internet for yourself but got some lackey to do it for you.
That is where the strategic vision died, for those people. Maybe they should play more chess.
Labels: Anand, Chess, History, Strategic Thinking
etched with acid at 11:54:00 am
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