wrote in message
ups.com...
..
Would you like to say more about your idea? Did you mean a correlation
that
average IQ produces average chess players? Does average IQ produce
average
piano-players? Or does IQ not measure piano playing? How does IQ measure
the
abstract spatial sense that master chess players have - and which I
defined
[citing de Groot] previously?
OK. Let me elaborate.
Intelligence is a high-dimensional phenomenon. If you take people with
high ability for differential toplogy, you will find that their average
ability to write poems is higher than overall average. But many
individual topologists may have no poetic abilites whatsoever.
Understood.
IQ tests are nothing more than a bunch of puzzles, chosen from a very
small set of patterns. Because they are intellevtual puzzles, the
ability to solve them is going to be significantly positively
correlated with other intellectual abilities.
Okay, but I think this neds more definition. For example, even though the
puzzle is intellectual, is it solved intellectually, or by rote memory?
But there is no magic nor
much science to these IQ tests, and the ability to do well on them is
certainly not the "cause" of intelligence.
Agree. It correlates ONE aspect of what is generally termed intelligence,
with some [small] patterning knowledge, or pattern awareness.
So, returning to chess and IQ, the abilities towards them are also
positively correlated. Especially since a lot of chess involves logical
thinking and problem solving.
Yes. This is a sociology. Its also true that people who go to college have
typically higher IQ range than those who do not. But please consider the
concert piano player again - the question is how much pressure to apply to
the 10,000th note with the little finger of the left hand, and this is
resolved not by 'logical thinking and problem solving'.
How many mathematicians could cite a string of 10,000 numbers? :0
But this is only to address part of the question - the other part is the
/level/ at which people play chess, and if there is any correlation with IQ.
I would say there is, but again for sociological reasons or even
physiological ones! Isn't the chess player the same sort of person who stays
indoors and solves intellectual puzzles and reads for his college degree?
Rather than go mountain climbing, for example. Or perhaps rehearses a
sport - since that also requires study to develop a physiological
'intelligence'.
What this man Gardner has done is to state that there are all sorts of
intelligences, and lists 9 specific ones - which include linear processing &
math skill as a discrete intelligence. I think IQ is the best measure of
this particular intelligence, but others include the Kinesthetic [you use
Greek word for body, soma?], and also there is a musical intelligence which
is a very deeply patterned activity, quite beyond any calculus or
rationcination [Greek again, ratio = measure, or beyond normal 'thinking'].
This is a bit boring, so I'll tell you in a minute what I insist a bit on
this music parallel.
That is, if you take a sample of great chess players and have them take
an IQ test in their language (yes, there are IQ tests in Russian),
I have Russian friend in Petersburg, also Moscow, and a local chess player
is for Baku. Anyway, I have much correspondance with Russians.
the
average of their scores will be probably higher than 100 and even than,
say, 130. But there will be some who will score as low as 105 and as
high as 200 (these are just my guesses). This is purely a 2-dimensional
probaility distribution whose components are positively but not
perfectly correlated.
Okay! Its interesting to specualte on the range of IQs among chess players.
Here is another speculation [guess]: that very strong players will have
higher IQs, but most chess players [say 90 of them] will not vary
significantly from their social group, and those who do not play chess.
To return to the question that started this thread: judging from the
way Kramnik plays chess and the way he talks and the way he carries
himself, I would estimate that his IQ score would be at least 170, if
he ever took such a test. Probably, higher than 190. Ditto for Kasparov
and probably Anand. Topalov? Probably somewhat lower: he seems to be of
a single-track (chess) mind, as exemplified by his stupid following of
his manager Danailov's advice. But still above 130.
Oddly, I might agree with you that Topalov would score less on IQ than for
example Kramnik. But that is because I do not attribute IQ as a good measure
of creativity - which you see - is the other essential factor here. Kramnik
may have phenomenal logical processing skills, and I am sure he has, but how
do these massively complex positions which Topalov achieves come to him? I
don't think he has the same process.
Anyway - there's lots of guessing in what I wrote. But I wanted to share
something from another top player
---
I was interviewing Adorjan, and [I think I made this a formal question to
him, anyway, we wrote thousands of words to each other on the subject], and
to provoke a response on this 'high dimensional intelligence', to use your
phrase, I asked him something like if seeing ahead in the position was like
having a movie camera in you mind, on fast-forward?
He replied mysteriously, and said, "I do not see the baord, I do nto see the
pieces."
)
And he himself used a musical metaphor - the same I offer you above - ie,
how does the concert pianist play all those notes in the right sequence and
at the 10,000th note know the exact pressure to exert on the key?
This of course is consciously a counter metaphor from him, and not really a
suggestion that high level chess is like playing music, as much as to say
that it is NOT like 'seeing ahead', or some description of what is
concretely visual.
The mind googles! But Adorjan by not agreeing to this visual metaphor also
concludes with this Dutch researcher de Groot, that for 'master' play there
is no visual dependency.
Cordially, Phil Innes