Is chess good for teaching critical thinking?

[Dinwar]

Heh. As I suspected, it's clear that you have no idea just how many potential moves we're talking about.

This is not a substantive argument. If all you have are cheap "HA! Gatcha!" tactics, I think we're done here.

If daring and crazy is the epitome of critical thinking, my observation is that most of them hardly need any teaching at all.

You're also not reading what I wrote. Hornblower, and his actions, are the epitome of critical thinking. Dairing and crazy are often simply stupid and not infrequently suicidal. It's situationally dependent. My point was that you can't simplify things down to "That was daring; obviously you're not thinking critically about the subject".

I never even used the word "epitome" in the part of the post you were responding to. I used the word "result". Result=/=epitome. The connotations are completely different.

 

[Zelenius]

I don't think chess can teach critical thinking skills.

At the lower levels, it's merely learning the rules. This may be analogous to learning the rules of debate, but it's certainly not identical to it--the rules of chess, like all games, are arbitrary, in a way that the rules of debate and argument are not. Further, chess has a limited scope, while critical thinking really doesn't.

At the higher levels it's worse. "Extra Credits" did an episode about ballance in videogames that highlighted the issue with chess: the fact that the game is so perfectly ballanced means that the overwhelming majority of tactics have been tried, perfected, named, and classified. One learns to recognize tactics and utilize counter-tactics. In argument and debate this is akin to someone who merely shouts out the name of the fallacy they think the other party is using (not that fallacy sniping isn't fun--it's just neither critical thinking nor useful).

You can use it as an analogy, or as a teaching tool, but to say that it teaches critical thinking because of that is to say that Skittles teach the principles of stratigraphy. It's useful, but only in a limited sense and over-extending the metaphore can be very, very hazardous to your end goal.

Perhaps Go would be a better option--it's not perfectly ballanced (in fact, handicaps aren't uncommon at all, while they're unheard-of in chess), and there's a lot more wiggle-room, at least in Western cultures.

Finally! I've been waiting for a post like this. For me(at least until recently) and some chess playing buddies, to simply question if chess teaches critical thinking is almost blasphemy. Many see it as the ultimate critical thinking pursuit, especially if they are involved in teaching chess in the schools(which explains their bias to a large degree).

Your criticisms do make sense. I do not believe that simply learning to play chess is all that is necessary to become a critical thinker, especially in adults. I do believe it can still help improve critical thinking skills, and even if it doesn't, it may help improve concentration and analytic skills, which are necessary for deep critical thinking. Maybe it can even help prevent dementia, but we need more research in this area.

 

[Rasmus]

I don't see the relation at all.

Tactics, yes. But critical thinking?

How?

Chess seems not to have a lot to do with double blind tests, theories or the evaluation of evidence.

Critical thinking is about finding out stuff and discovering rules. There are no rules to be discovered in chess, are there?

 

[Zelenius]

Chess is fantastic for teaching critical thinking. Just look how well it worked out for Bobby Fischer.

I knew someone was going to say this! This is just one example. Can you name any other chess Grandmasters who were insane conspiracy theorists?

Actually, due to compartmentalization, some brilliant people who flawlessly apply critical thinking in their work(research science, computer programming, mathematics etc) can still have irrational beliefs.

Make no mistake about it: I never suggested learning to play chess can make a person immune to irrational thinking, especially if a person has a pre-existing mental illness. But I still believe it is helpful for teaching the basics of critical thinking in schools.

 

[Zelenius]

I don't see the relation at all.

Tactics, yes. But critical thinking?

How?

Chess seems not to have a lot to do with double blind tests, theories or the evaluation of evidence.

Critical thinking is about finding out stuff and discovering rules. There are no rules to be discovered in chess, are there?

Actually, there are various competing "theories"(if you can call it that) about the best way to play chess. I don't think chess fanatics argue over them as much as they used to. Computers probably played a role in "proving" which theories or approaches are superior.

As for "discovering" rules in chess - while there are set, unchanging rules in chess, each player has their own "rules" governing how they will play. We have to discover and understand what these personal "rules" are so we can properly defeat our opponent, among other things.

 

[psionl0]

Whenever I lose at chess it is because I failed to see a possible move. Chess playing might help you to examine all sides of an issue (although I doubt that that particular chess skill is transferable).

IMO writing computer programs has no equal when it comes to learning proper reasoning skills. If critical thinking means a willingness to honestly evaluate preconceived beliefs then neither activity will encourage that much.

Regarding the GOP platform, they seem to equate critical thinking with Outcomes Based Education - the biggest scourge ever inflicted on the education system.

 

[Weak Kitten]

I remember playing chess with my father when I was a child. Learning the game was great fun and I enjoyed discovering new moves and seeing how my dad would react.

Then my dad made the mistake of giving me a book on chess. All of the joy and magic was lost when I realized that every pastern of movement I could possibly think of had already been cataloged and charted. At that point I felt that the game was simply a mater of memorizing and cataloging a huge number of moves. Difficult, yes, but really more tedious then enjoyable.

It seems to me that chess is good for teaching about how simple rules can still lead to complex outcomes. However I really don't know if it teaches critical thinking. Chess seems to have a sort of rigidity all its own, when you reach a certain point in the game you either make the prescribed move or you lose. If you try to get creative you usually fail and heaven forbid that you question the rules themselves.

 

[fuelair]

Which is what?

Did you really not see what was coming?????!!

 

[This is The End]

Strategic and tactical thinking yes, critical thinking, maybe.

Don't forget paranoid thinking. In the "extreme suspiciousness" sense of the word paranoid, not necessarily the insane part.

 

[Checkmite]

Chess doesn't teach critical thinking any more than mathematics does. It's good practice in logic and deductive reasoning; but it doesn't teach any of these things. You have to learn them separately.


I believe that you guys have it backwards; I believe that chess does not make you good at these things, but rather that becoming good at these things can help you improve in chess.

 

[Checkmite]

I knew someone was going to say this! This is just one example. Can you name any other chess Grandmasters who were insane conspiracy theorists?

He's not "just one example"; he was allegedly "the greatest player ever", and he seemed to possess very weak critical thinking skills despite his rarely-matched mastery of chess. This suggests very strongly that chess does not impart these skills.

When Garry Kasparov was defeated by the IBM machine, he insisted that the machine was a fraud; that the technician operating the computer was telling it what moves to play. Essentially, he was claiming that he was beaten by the technician, not the machine. Yet the technician was in plain sight, entering nothing but Kasparov's moves into the computer. I personally happen to think Kasparov is a greater player than Fischer; but whether or not you agree, he was the undisputed world champion at the time and he demonstrated a blatant failure of critical thinking.

 

[Zelenius]

I think chess is good, period. As a tool for critical thinking, my intuitive feeling (that is, conclusions I've reached without full knowledge of every step of the processes involved) is that computer programming is probably better.

When your stuff doesn't work, it may be because the computer didn't understand something you told it to do (call it analogous to attempting an illegal move in chess). If that's the case, it will immediately inform you of that fact, making those errors easy to identify.

The errors that are most difficult to find (or the outcomes you didn't expect) are the ones that occur when YOU didn't understand something you told the computer to do, necessitating a debugging process which is essentially a search for flaws, mental shortcuts, and hidden assumptions in your own thinking. There's often an "Aha!" moment waiting at the end of that search, where you go, "Man, what a dope I was". I guess my feeling is that it's more helpful because you're confronted more directly with that. It's not a matter of having been outsmarted -- at least, not by anyone other than yourself.

I agree. I am not currently a programmer but I studied it thoroughly and did it for a few years(and occasionally still do it but as a hobby). I agree that the thought processes used in programming are similar to chess as you point out. In fact, they both rely on algorithms. And silly little mistakes can be very frustrating.

Of course, the degree to which you are exercising your mind and using critical thinking depends on how complex the program is supposed to be; similarly, in chess, it's not really a brain workout if you always win because you always play much weaker opponents. It's much better to play people who are superior to you. Perhaps an example of a very complex program is to program a computer to play chess at Grandmaster level. Interestingly enough, I don't think a person writing such a program even needs to be especially brilliant at chess to get a computer to play at Grandmaster level - they merely need to know the rules and to play competently. This leads me to the mind-twist of thinking if it requires more critical thinking skills to write a chess program that plays chess at Grandmaster level or to "program"(through intense study and practice) yourself to play at Grandmaster level.

This also leads me to wonder if playing chess without seeing the board(you communicate moves using algebraic chess notation to a surrogate) is an even better brain exercise. To play in this manner competitively requires an incredible amount of mind visualization, probably beyond the ability of even most experienced chess players.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

It's the abstract concept represented by me tipping the board up and making your pieces fall offf.

Ah yes... The famed '32 pickup' variation.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

He's not "just one example"; he was allegedly "the greatest player ever", and he seemed to possess very weak critical thinking skills despite his rarely-matched mastery of chess. This suggests very strongly that chess does not impart these skills.

When Garry Kasparov was defeated by the IBM machine, he insisted that the machine was a fraud; that the technician operating the computer was telling it what moves to play. Essentially, he was claiming that he was beaten by the technician, not the machine. Yet the technician was in plain sight, entering nothing but Kasparov's moves into the computer. I personally happen to think Kasparov is a greater player than Fischer; but whether or not you agree, he was the undisputed world champion at the time and he demonstrated a blatant failure of critical thinking.

Perhaps the machine was watching which flavor of yogurt he selected for clues...

(yah, I know that was Karpov, nor Kasparov. Same sort of drama though)

 

[Dymanic]

This is not a substantive argument.

As an argument against this: "Chess has been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years--we've had ample time to figure out all the potential moves", I'd say that it goes well beyond substantive.

If all you have are cheap "HA! Gatcha!" tactics, I think we're done here.

You know, I started out with what I thought was a suitably non-confrontational tone: "I think you may be underestimating the combinatorial possibilities in chess". I was thinking that perhaps you might take the opportunity to investigate the matter for yourself before arguing the point further, but you obviously chose not to take that opportunity. That you now claim to be a victim of "gotcha tactics" suggests that you've finally gone ahead and done that. Though a little more effort on you part might have made the process less painful than it had to be, at least you ended up learning something. You have (I'm guessing) now added a new phrase to your vocabulary: "Shannon number", and now know that the game-tree complexity of chess exceeds the number of atoms in the observable universe by many orders of magnitude. So, the way I see it, you're just another satisfied customer reporting that the "E" in "JREF" is working.

My point was that you can't simplify things down to "That was daring; obviously you're not thinking critically about the subject".

I don't disagree. It is not my position that critical thinking and creative thinking are mutually exclusive; merely that they are not particularly compatible. For me, the creative process typically involves two phases. The first is to generate as many ideas as possible, the rule being that there are no rules; nothing is too crazy to consider during the first phase. The second phase involves shooting down the ideas that obviously won't work, for whatever practical reason(s). If there's anything left, those are the ideas that may be worthy of further consideration.

You noted: "In a conversation, however, there is a much broader range of options for each next step; it's not unreasonable to say that they're functionally infinite", and I agree with this as well (mostly). It reminds me of something Steven Pinker once said: "Virtually every sentence that a person utters or understands is a brand-new combination of words". It's a rather remarkable observation, actually. The architectural space of, say, the English language may be somewhat larger than that of chess, but still, finite -- yet within that space (just as within the architectural space of chess), the combinatorial possibilities are, as you said, "functionally infinite".

 

[Puppycow]

Chess is fantastic for teaching critical thinking. Just look how well it worked out for Bobby Fischer.

I knew someone was going to say this! This is just one example. Can you name any other chess Grandmasters who were insane conspiracy theorists?

He's not "just one example"; he was allegedly "the greatest player ever", and he seemed to possess very weak critical thinking skills despite his rarely-matched mastery of chess. This suggests very strongly that chess does not impart these skills.

When Garry Kasparov was defeated by the IBM machine, he insisted that the machine was a fraud; that the technician operating the computer was telling it what moves to play. Essentially, he was claiming that he was beaten by the technician, not the machine. Yet the technician was in plain sight, entering nothing but Kasparov's moves into the computer. I personally happen to think Kasparov is a greater player than Fischer; but whether or not you agree, he was the undisputed world champion at the time and he demonstrated a blatant failure of critical thinking.

Fischer and Kasparov are the two examples that came to my mind. Both were world champions for some time.

Have you heard of Garry Kasparov's strange historical theories?

 

[psionl0]

Upper-level chess isn't played move-by-move; there are standard suites of moves, standard gambits or tactics, that each player will use. This cannot be done with critical thinking--once you find yourself entrenched in such patterns you've become dogmatic. The reason chess can be played that way is because there are a limited number of potential options for each player.

I remember an analysis that goes something like this:

If each player has about 20 different moves he could make at each turn and a typical game lasts about 30 moves each then there are about 20⁶⁰ or about 10⁷⁸ different possible positions that could result. Even if only a very small fraction of these positions were worth considering, that's still a lot of computing power that would be needed.

At competition level, few chess players are going to tread an "unknown path" but that doesn't mean that chess theory won't continue to evolve.

 

[Puppycow]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Sarfati

Jonathan D. Sarfati (born 1 October 1964) is a former New Zealand national chess champion (1987-1988)[1] and creationist author with a PhD in chemistry.[2] Sarfati works for Creation Ministries International (CMI), formerly part of Answers in Genesis (AiG), a non-profit Christian Apologetics ministry specialising in Young-Earth creationism. He is the author of many articles and books about creation science.

http://www.chess.com/groups/view/christian-chess-players

Christian Chess Players

God is everywhere! And so are we. International
Formed: Jan 18, 2008
A group for Christian chess players to discuss the bible, speak freely about their salvation, and associate with other followers of Christ from around the globe!

 

[Meed]

I knew someone was going to say this! This is just one example. Can you name any other chess Grandmasters who were insane conspiracy theorists?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korchnoi

The World Championship match of 1978 was held in Baguio, Philippines. There was controversy off the board, ranging from X-raying of chairs, protests about the flags used on the board, hypnotism complaints and the mirror glasses used by Korchnoi. When Karpov's team sent him a blueberry yogurt during a game without any request for one by Karpov, the Korchnoi team protested, claiming it could be some kind of code. They later said this was intended as a parody of earlier protests, but it was taken seriously at the time.

 

[DrDave]

I'm intrigued how that code would work in a game with as many possible moves as chess

Blueberry yoghurt = Take that pawn on queen's bishop 4 with your knight
Raspberry mousse = Pawn to kings rook 3
etc.