Should Presidents Be able To Spot Three Move Forced Checkmates?

[David Sklansky]

So change the chess problems into those where some cannot be solved.

And why do people keep bringing up the facts that some math challenged people have made good leaders and that some brilliant people have made bad ones? Neither fact negates my point.

Also some of you wish to reduce my point to a triviality like it would be slightly better for the president to be able to run a five minute mile than to have an otherwise equal president who couldn't. Except that it is far more likely that his lack of anlytical skills is going to screw the country up than his lack of running skills.

Take the idea down one more notch. x+y =40 x times y =384.
Is it OK if the president is unable to clearly explain how to figure out what x and y are?

[David Sklansky]

I treat you with kid gloves. Because you are the only poster ever to have caught me in a major mistake.

[Lestat]

I think presidents should be idea men. Men with vision. Men with people skills and the ability to be a diplomat and to coordinate and bring things, people, and ideas together (notice that it would be almost impossible, or very rare indeed, for a genuis mathematician to be any kind of a successful diplomat). They should have the ability to lead and inspire patriotism and trust. (I should include women too now).

The genuis of the details, what's practical, what's not, can be worked out by others. What I object to is your insinuation that intelligence is always better. It can never hurt, I agree. It can never hurt to be good looking either. But it's not always necessary. Even a mediocre smart person knows how to surround himself with those who clearly ARE intelligent enough to bring about those things he wants to get done.

[PairTheBoard]

David often accuses me of being the only one in the crowd who misses his point. Since he has raised this point repeatedly on SMP, let me see if I can state it clearly here.

Per DS, analytical abilities of the kind that allow people to do math, science, and now chess problems, are employed with much greater consequence in a much wider range of human activities than most people imagine.

That's David's basic idea. He's been trying to better specify the "analytical abilities" and qualify/quantify the "much greater consequence" and "much wider range" phrases for years now. I don't see that he's made much progress in this OP.

PairTheBoard

[jogger08152]

You underestimate the difficulty of a good mate-in-three.

[jogger08152]

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Learning to perform forced check mate problems does not mean that a person has anything more than a workable long term memory. There is a step by step procedure that one can follow for solving these type of problems.

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Chess nit: in general the preceding is not true. The only memory required to solve these problems are the rules of chess (i.e. how the pieces move and what defines checkmate). When I solve these puzzles or workout a checkmate over the board in a game, I'm usually not recalling anything from memory at all.

[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed with certain exceptions, EG Q-sacrifice theme of a smothered-mate.

[pokervintage]

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The point is that the ability to look ahead and visualize the possible consequences of various actions is an important attrribute for a president to have

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You should have said that in the first place. With this I agree. But you are wrong when you say that he can't just turn to an expert for help. Of course if he is able to choose the right expert then he is probably smart enough to visuallize the potential results of action he is considering.

Either way, end game chess is not a good indicator of this ability.

pokervintage.

[ALawPoker]

David, do you have any thoughts on my first reply here? I think you're missing an important concept of how democratic governance works (though, it's sort of separate from the point you're trying to make).

Imagine the NFL did not keep score, and for whatever reasons it was near impossible for casual fans to keep score themselves. It was just play after play, and a fan's approval of the team's performance was dependent only on his own interpretation of what he saw in front of him. Do you think Bill Belichick would be the success he is now?

Probably someone like Parcells (or other hard nose, old fashioned types) would be a more "successful" coach (unless of course, Belichick changed his style to be regarded as a good coach). Do you see my point? Clearly being analytically smart still might help a President achieve this "subjective success," but it isn't critical, and morons who honestly believe in what they're doing may accidentally be perfect for the role.

But you are of course right that analytical intelligence would help, if the President's motivation was actually to make things objectively best. The people arguing that point are very wrong, and would probably agree if anyone but you had posted this.

[BDaws]

Is there a website or something that employs a similar test? I have never really played chess and I want to determine how difficult this is.

[MisterJed]

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I think you're missing an important concept

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I think you're missing an important concept, it's called an inconvenient truth, have you even heard of al gore???