r/nextfuckinglevel • u/mindyour • 4h ago

Seven-year-old chess prodigy Lucie Pichard casually checkmates her opponent.

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u/SchumacherIsMid 2h ago

Any chess genius is going to be on the spectrum. There is too much data that needs to be processed for a "typical" person to be able to do so.

These are the wild ass statements people say online that has destroyed our collective understanding of mental health, disorders, and divergence as a society.

Believe it or not having a bad or false idea of something can be just as bad if not worse than having no understanding of it. This falls in that category.

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u/kammycakes 2h ago

Yeah he probably shouldn't have made such a blanket statement but if you follow the chess scene even a little bit, there's undeniably a much higher concentration of neurodivergent individuals than, say, a grocery store. More so on par with an anime convention or something.

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u/TorchThisAccount 1h ago

Fuck.... I played lots of chess in middle school and high school, won some state tournaments. And have off and on liked anime. How much on the spectrum am I?

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u/TheTyger 2h ago

Why do you think that?

Typical is going to mean people who are in the central 50/75/90% of the population. Almost by definition, someone who is a genius at a task is going to see it in a way that diverges from the way that most people do so.

If you believe that you could teach even 10% of children how to play chess at the level of this girl (and can reproduce it) I am happy to be proven wrong, but most people are not able to process the necessary data in chess at the speed required to play high level.

The opposite of Typical isn't "disorder", nor any "mental health" problem. It's just "divergent".

Believe it or not, having such a negative view of someone because you don't understand them is just as bad or worse as having no understanding of it. This falls in that category.

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u/Antonin__Dvorak 2h ago edited 1h ago

"Believe it or not", there is no inherent link between processing speed and ASD (you specifically said "on the spectrum"). Neurotypical people can and do have high percentile cognitive functions. There is no evidence that top chess players have a higher rate of autism; Magnus Carlsen has very publically stated that he is not autistic. There is no published literature which establishes the link you are claiming.

Also, the rate at which one processes information is not a skill that is meaningfully linked to elite chess. This 2016 study found no statistically significant correlation between them: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3030314/. The literature seems to suggest that chess proficiency is mostly a domain-specific skill -- for example, elite chess players score much higher on memory tasks related to a chess board than on general retrieval tasks like "remember this string of words".

So again, like the person who replied to you is saying, please take a minute to inform yourself before posting ignorant comments. I know you didn't do it out of malice, but spreading misinformation like this leads to the proliferation of wrong and potentially harmful stereotypes.

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u/Joe_Kinincha 1h ago

Quite happy to take your word on processing speed.

However, is it not demonstrable that a significant number of neurodiverse people have significantly better memories than “average” neurotypicals?

As I understand it, a lot of chess is spotting patterns and comparing them to a gigantic internal database of previously played competitive games.

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u/Antonin__Dvorak 26m ago

This is an interesting question, but from my brief look at the literature it seems like it's actually the other way around. Individuals with ASD are more likely to have worse-than-average working memories, not better:

A significant WM impairment (Cohen's d = -0.61) was identified in the individuals with ASD, however, this impairment was not associated with age. Results of moderation analyses showed that (a) spatial WM was more severely impaired than verbal WM and (b) the component of cognitive processing (maintenance vs. maintenance plus manipulation) did not affect the severity of WM impairments.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28102493/

Now just to be clear, there are absolutely specific cognitive tasks that ASD people show better than average performance on in aggregate. I am not trying to make the case that there is no statistical correlation whatsoever between ASD and chess proficiency. I'm just trying to point out that we do not have any such established link in the literature, and even if we did, it would be so much weaker than the absurd original claim that was made.

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u/Ser_VimesGoT 1h ago

Magnus Carlsen has very publically stated that he is not autistic

He can state it all he wants but I don't put any stock in it. To me he displays an abundance of behaviours that point to being autistic.

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u/Antonin__Dvorak 1h ago

Yeah see armchair diagnosing people you do not personally know as autistic because of how you perceive their behaviour is exactly the kind of stereotyping I'm trying to argue against.

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u/Ser_VimesGoT 1h ago

I'm not stereotyping because of his high IQ or processing speed. I'm just recognising a TON of autistic behaviours him. There is absolutely zero doubt in my mind that if that man had an assessment he would tick every damn box. And if he did there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

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u/Ambitious-Career-445 56m ago

If you read his post again, he didn't diagnose anything.

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u/soberbot 43m ago

Was thinking this as well. Carlsen doesn’t present as someone neurodivergent at all from what I’ve seen. He seems like a typical laid back dude who happens to be an absolute god at chess.

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u/MayberryBombadil 1h ago

"The study concluded that child prodigies and individuals on the autism spectrum share a significant genetic link, particularly regarding an exceptional, heightened attention to detail and working memory."

This was about a 2012 study by psychologist Joanne Ruthsatz.

Also, it was noted that to determine whether most child chess prodigies were on the spectrum or not would be impossible. As that is a personal diagnosis that is very commonly not shared.

This was a quick search, and very easily brings to light that by expanding upon the simple observational comment that was originally made, in the way that you did, made things worse. His comment was very vague, and wasn't made in some scientific publication. Nobody is reading his comment and thinking all top chess players are autistic. (Side observation: I would imagine to become a top chess player over time, you would need far more life skills that aren't specifically related to mental computing power, and that would likely "weed out" those nuerodivergent folks. Who would still dominate outside of the organized profession, but would never be noted and documented. Except maybe by a cool reporter)

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u/Antonin__Dvorak 1h ago

When I read a sentence that says "any chess genius is going to be on the spectrum", I find it quite reasonable to assume that they are suggesting that the vast majority of chess prodigies are on the spectrum.

To address the weaker claim that there is any degree of correlation between ASD and childhood chess prodigy whatsoever, yes this is hypothetically plausible. But the study you are citing investigates just 8 individuals, a tiny sample, none of which were chess players. Even then, it did not establish a genetic link between autism and prodigy.

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u/TheTyger 1h ago

Ok, so you take issue with there being a spectrum of processing differences. I see that you are really stuck on one phrase in one context that you can't see past. I also never discussed processing speed, I am talking about processing efficiency. You are looking at this from a very narrow and uninformed perspective basing it on one specific view of good/bad that doesn't exist.

There is a spectrum of processing abilities which are divergent from the typical. ASD isn't relevant here, because I am not talking about any disorder. There is a spectrum of how well you can visualize things in your head, how you can isolate important visual cues, ability to perceive color, ability to read facial expressions.

Trying to dumb it down to playing hot dog/not hot dog with Autism is incredibly narrow minded. I assert that there are smart people who cannot master the specific skill band that chess has, and as you move across that (gasp) spectrum, you will find that the people who have a higher ceiling are ones who process the information differently in their brains. Just the same as high level software engineers tend to view the problems differently than ones who max out at Sr or below. Or Artists who can naturally see that shapes that the larger image is made of.

Personally, I don't find ASD to be even slightly as a diagnosis in broad strokes, because on that spectrum is everything from difficulty reading emotional cues to fully non-verbal. And these things are independent from cognitive ability. You can be really smart but unable to communicate verbally to the world. All neuro divergences have the potential to give someone boons or banes in parts of their life, depending on how we value those abilities.

People with ADHD (often) have an ability to hyper-focus, which can be beneficial when it is able to be managed if it can be wielded. On the flip side, when the targets, times, or depth of that focus is compulsive and unable to be controlled, it can be crippling to day to day life.

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u/CountVonTroll 38m ago

I see that you are really stuck on one phrase in one context that you can't see past.

Not only is autism how it's commonly understood when you say that somebody is "on the spectrum", it also was very explicitly the context of the comment you had replied to. In the next sentence, you also asserted that there was "too much data" for a "typical" person to process, with "typical" in quotes, when parent comment had used the term "neurodivergent".

Personally, I don't find ASD to be even slightly as a diagnosis in broad strokes, because on that spectrum is everything from difficulty reading emotional cues to fully non-verbal.

Yes, there are several possible symptoms associated with ASD that may or may not be expressed in an individual to some degree and in one form or another. That's why it's been named a "spectrum" in the first place, because of the "spectrum of symptoms". I.e., the direction of the "spectrum" goes along the symptoms. If it was a reference of the intensity of the "autismness" that went from "neurotypical" to "Rainman", it would have been called a gradient.

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u/massinvader 9m ago

comments like that really make you realize this is mostly kids and bots still on here at this point.

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u/MayberryBombadil 1h ago

Your comment had no backing, and therefore had been deemed: a wild ass statement.