Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

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.

_
This does not sound "very rational" to me. Indeed
it sounds to me like one of the classic logical
fallacies. (A follows B. Therefore, A was caused
by B.)


Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

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 seem to remember those smoking warning ads saying
that cancer risk goes down greatly if one gives it
up. But, apart from that, do the effects of smoking
typically begin well after the time the smoking has
stopped and then "escalate slowly" over a period of
time that extends for decades?

Furthermore, smoking physically introduces substances
into the body. Blindfold chess does not.

Also: Smoking is done a little bit at a time, so
it is plausible that the damage done takes place a
little bit at a time with no major effect noticed
on any one smoking occasion. This is less plausible
with an activity that took place on a small number
of special occasions.

Moreover, Paulsen did a fair amount of blindfold
play in Morphy's day without going crazy.


Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

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.

_
It's the "mysterious ways" part of this argument
that, in my opinion, is the big problem. Part of
being "very rational", in my opinion, is not
adopting beliefs for which there is no evidence
and which require "mysterious ways" in order
to make any sense at all.