On Nov 6, 1:24 pm, "j.d.walker" wrote:
On Nov 6, 7:27 am, Taylor Kingston wrote:

Alas, if only it were that simple. People have widely varying
definitions of "that which is right," often including provisos to the
effect that it is right to kill those who have slightly different
definitions. In life, as in chess, general principles apply only so
far. Eventually one must get down to concrete specifics.

I admit there are obstacles. Since we have a chess playing audience
here why not consider this in a chess context for the sake of
discussion.

If you try to develop good judgment in chess you must learn and think
more about "chessic" cause and effect. When you make mistakes and
lose, you must try to learn why you went wrong and how you will
improve in the future. This refines your good judgment. As you
proceed through the cycle of learning, playing, digesting results, and
reassessing your game, it gives you feedback via your results at the
board.

I believe that if you do not try to improve your good judgment that
you are headed for worse results. If some one set out with the intent
to always look for the 2nd best move, they would be following bad
judgment on the whole. I would expect their rating to plummet.

Back to the generalization...

Although various people may have directly opposite views as to what is
right, that is a different matter than trying to figure out what is
best for an individual making choices for his/her own life. Even so,
on the macro scale, if everyone decided to always pursue the 2nd best
idea, I believe the collective results would likely be a very sorry
mess making our current troubled world look like a relative paradise.

On the whole I agree with you, with a couple of caveats:

1) An important difference between chess and life is that in chess,
paranoia is an entirely valid world-view. Your opponent IS out to get
you (unless you're composing helpmates). In life, some people are out
to get other people, but it's not a good idea to assume that of every
one.
2) I respectfully disagree about your "2nd-best move" concept. In
chess, probably 99.9% of all players come nowhere near playing even
the 2nd-best move as a general rule. They are more likely to choose a
less good move, even a rather bad one. Allowing for obvious exceptions
like forced recaptures, I dare say someone who could unfailingly play
what is objectively the 2nd-best move on the board would almost
certainly be a high-ranking GM, probably even a world champion.
Likewise, in life, I'd say people on the whole often fail to make
choices anywhere near as good as 2nd-best. Just as with chess moves,
most choices in life are not either/or; one usually has multiple, even
myriad alternatives. People often make disastrous choices, which is a
major reason we have wars, crime, hatreds, and all the other self-
inflicted ills man is prone to. Rather than 2nd-best giving us "a very
sorry mess," I think most people woudl be very happy with the world
that 2nd-best would provide.

Then again, this disagreement may be purely semantic, depending on
how one defines "second best." I'm using it in the sense of, say, the
2nd-best choice among 10 or 15 alternatives. If your'e thinking of it
as a choice between only two alternatives, that's a horse of a
different color.