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<freewheel>
Development in the individual is accompanied by a tremendous amount of short-cutting. For example, although pretty much every point on our skin is capable of sensing temperature, we do not pay attention to said temperature unless it falls outside the range of what is unremarkable. Babies learn this skill—that of filtering out the normal—remarkably quickly.
Along the same lines, in later life we do not walk into walls, or off of cliffs—at least not willingly—because we are aware of the consequences. Optical illusions fall into this category as well, I think.
And while such developed behavior has a tried-and-true quality about it—especially when we are interacting directly with our environment—experience shows that an unthinking application of this principle—aka "linear thinkiing"—unnecessarily limits our options.
Chess gives players an opportunity to develop beyond the boundaries of such a limitation, as the ability to pause and reflect on the consequences of some chosen path (i.e., a move), one all too often reveals subtleties that force a re-evaluation of how good or bad any given path might be.
On the scale of "linear" vs "lateral" thinking, chess keeps the player at the "linear" end, as there are only so many different things that can be done and rules that have to be followed if the game is to make sense in its present form.
Perhaps one of the strongest efforts to inject some "lateralism" into the game was an innovation attributed to Bobby Fischer, in which the game starts with the pawns arranged traditionally, on the second and seventh ranks, whereupon the two players take turns placing their respective pieces (king, queen, bishops, knights, and rooks) on the first and eighth ranks before any pawn or piece sallies forth for battle.
But I digress (even if this is a freewheel)...
Grokking the idea of not rejecting things out-of-hand is, in my opinion, made a little easier if you play chess like you mean it, because you will encounter enough situations where your initial impression was dead wrong to start to develop something of a reluctance to simply give in to your knee-jerk reaction.
But I am beginning to repeat myself, and it's getting (for me) somewhat late.
Today was a reasonable day, in terms of what I wanted to get accomplished. Tomorrow will be better.
A whole lot better!
Cheers...
Development in the individual is accompanied by a tremendous amount of short-cutting. For example, although pretty much every point on our skin is capable of sensing temperature, we do not pay attention to said temperature unless it falls outside the range of what is unremarkable. Babies learn this skill—that of filtering out the normal—remarkably quickly.
Along the same lines, in later life we do not walk into walls, or off of cliffs—at least not willingly—because we are aware of the consequences. Optical illusions fall into this category as well, I think.
And while such developed behavior has a tried-and-true quality about it—especially when we are interacting directly with our environment—experience shows that an unthinking application of this principle—aka "linear thinkiing"—unnecessarily limits our options.
Chess gives players an opportunity to develop beyond the boundaries of such a limitation, as the ability to pause and reflect on the consequences of some chosen path (i.e., a move), one all too often reveals subtleties that force a re-evaluation of how good or bad any given path might be.
On the scale of "linear" vs "lateral" thinking, chess keeps the player at the "linear" end, as there are only so many different things that can be done and rules that have to be followed if the game is to make sense in its present form.
Perhaps one of the strongest efforts to inject some "lateralism" into the game was an innovation attributed to Bobby Fischer, in which the game starts with the pawns arranged traditionally, on the second and seventh ranks, whereupon the two players take turns placing their respective pieces (king, queen, bishops, knights, and rooks) on the first and eighth ranks before any pawn or piece sallies forth for battle.
But I digress (even if this is a freewheel)...
Grokking the idea of not rejecting things out-of-hand is, in my opinion, made a little easier if you play chess like you mean it, because you will encounter enough situations where your initial impression was dead wrong to start to develop something of a reluctance to simply give in to your knee-jerk reaction.
But I am beginning to repeat myself, and it's getting (for me) somewhat late.
Today was a reasonable day, in terms of what I wanted to get accomplished. Tomorrow will be better.
A whole lot better!
Cheers...
