Game of chess

 I was on my flight back from home to Canada and I watched a video of one of the open AI people who is known for being super smart. It was interesting to see his story and what he is up to. From young age he played the game of chess and he went to international tournaments. The video had an animated part where it depicted his traumatic memory of losing to a grown up when he was playing a tournament in a European castle. 

The video was about how they developed an AI to play the game of chess and then Go to beat humans. There is something beautiful about tech people. The way they don’t want to participate in life and they want their bubble and using proxies to access the real world. What if you cannot outsmart everyone? Well you make a tool to outsmart everyone. Even in the games that you don’t like to even play. This is what they feed off of.

Then the video showed how they were working on this protein folding problem which apparently was very important and there was no computer tool available to do so. And by this they gave birth to a generally accessible program which allows people to fold their proteins. 

I never liked the game of chess. I was kinda afraid of even a checker board tiling whenever I saw one. It reminded me of people in life who loved power play and I always saw them like an undying boar. I felt like game of chess is like living forever with one of those people. Unforgiving, clinging, and another thing which I cannot think of. Like the way I assumed they see everyone as winners or losers, black and white, and they don’t have much feeling. They just push people to get what they want. No sense of empathy. I felt like a chess player is an arrogant person with no sense of empathy, looking at smartness as a game to crush someone not to build something. 

Now I have started playing chess. I don’t exactly feel that way. My unloving presuppositions were coming from playing the game in the real world with real feelings. When people do what they want to get what they want. But the game of chess is no hypocrisy, it is silent and focused, moves are clear and the goal is clear. 

The kind of way I wished the real world would be. Clear goals, clear objectives, and less distractions