I don't want to belabor an argument about whether it was rational to believe that
Norphy's insanity was called by his blindfold play. I could cite mdeical
statements of later doctors (from a later time than Morphy, after other tragedies
affecting chess players), but that is not my key point.

People are awed at blindfold chess displays, and some people warn that such an
awesome display is very dangerous. Predisposition: playing chess blindfold may or
may not be a dangerous activity.

Morphy dies insane.

Lends some support to the hypothesis that blindfold chess is dangerous. Do you
believe it? It is only a single example, but if you already thought it might be
dangerous, this might make your belief a bit stronger.

As to the notion that since it occurred many years later, blindfold chess could
not have contributed: how is this less believable than the notion that having
smoked years ago can greatly increase your chances of getting lung cancer?

I don't know myself what I would have thought of the risk of blindfold chess if I
lived in those days. I feel that both believing it caused insanity and believing
it did not were both well within the bounds of what a reasonable person can
believe. Although I do not believe that the Atkins diet is a healthy plan, I am
not about to say that the followers of it are being irrational (as I might say,
for example, about believers in astrology; pinning down exactly where things
become irrational is not so precise).

One of the reasons that we realize that playing 8 games blindfolded is not a
mental health risk is that we also realize that it is not such an awesome
intellectual achievement. Reading the old statements about individual blindfold
performances is amusing; they talk about how these feats of memory will be
remembered throughout human history. But if we accept that they believed that
this mental task stretched the bounds of human achievement, I think we must also
accept the notion that this also might cause such a strain that the mind might
break down in mysterious ways as a result of this.

Jerry Spinrad