Here in germany 6-7 year olds go to school alone in the morning around 6:30 when it's still dark outside. They either walk or take the bus/train, it's working perfectly fine.
May I ask which place you choose? I'm not from the US, but I really would also love to find and live in a somewhat more friendly and "welcoming" society. :)
I moved to Tokyo, Japan. I'm not sure "welcoming" is the best descriptor for Japanese society, but "peaceful" is a pretty good description of the culture, unlike what I see in America these days.
If you're looking for a place where you can blend into the culture and easily make local friends, it's probably not a great choice, but I could say the same about many, many places (I frequently read articles about US expats complaining about this in western Europe, and frequently moving back), but if you can get a good job here and don't mind a degree of social isolation and can learn enough of the language to get by, I think it's a good choice. It's not an easy place to move to for westerners, however, by most accounts (for social reasons, not logistical/administrative ones). Personally, I didn't have too much trouble, but I know I'm not typical. If you're a tech worker (this is HN after all) and can get a good tech job here, it's really easy to move in, as far as the visa is concerned.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. I already thought about going to at least visit Japan, it sounds like a good place, maybe I'm going to visit and see if could think about living there permanently.
Why does he have to be bad at chess if he doesn't like playing online? Also I think "Playing with your grandpa." was just a metaphor for, playing with people you like. Some people just play games to have fun, you know, not everything has to be a competition.
Because their argument wasn't "competitive gameplay is terrible for society", but "chess is bad".
But even if it was the former argument: that's unquestionably false too. Just look at professional sports like soccer or Basketball. Surely you're not going to argue that this is bad...? Because that's fundamentally the same, just on a different topic
Which is not really wrong. Chess can be fun, but I always thought it is pretty fascinating that the chess champions are viewed by the media as some kind of genius. I mean, it's just a game, not more but also not less.
But playing Chess at any serious level (more than a couple hours a week) has some non Chess side effects; it teaches you to examine your own behaviour, it teaches you that even if you're very good you can still lose (and hopefully how to lose well), and it teaches you that the other side gets a vote (get a turn, no action happens in a vacuum).
Something that I believe sets chess aside from most other pursuits (e.g. sports, other games) is the lack of luck; it’s almost all skill. You and your opponent both have everything laid out in front of you, and if you’re skilled enough you can see more than they see, etc etc
There is absolutely randomness and variance in chess. And variance/randomness is important for any sport, that is what makes it exciting and worth playing. If there were no randomness then every game against the same team and players would be the same.
And anyway, sports are vastly more complicated than chess is. Just simply dribbling a basketball while bipedal walking is beyond the capability of replication by robot at the current moment. But a home computer from 20 years ago would beat >90% of the world in chess.
A computer being better than everyone doesn't mean that chess isn't complicated. With that logic, games like CSGO would not be complicated because you could create a bot that headshots everyone at first sight.
Also, there being variance doesn't mean that there is randomness. There is no random element to the game of chess. All the variance comes from human decisions. It's an unsolved game, so there is no way to guarantee a win.
I don't know how you are defining randomness, but the best player doesn't win the game every time, which is about as much proof as you need that there is a degree of randomness.
Define random in terms of sports, the same conditions apply to chess. The wind affecting trajectory of a ball could be similar to environmental factors effecting cognitive performance.
I wouldn't use the term "random" either. What randomness exists for baseball? Slight curve of a bat? Maybe that is part of the game and should be calculated into by the player and isn't randomness at all but part of the game. "Randomness" exists in almost every competitive activity, its called variance.
It's not even worth discussing, you don't even understand the terms you are using.
> There is no random element to the game of chess.
No idea how you are defining random. What random elements exist for cricket? The same things you would define as random for a sport would be the same for chess.
The sad part is I am better at chess than you are. And have a deeper understanding of the game. Unless you are CM rated or above, highly doubt it.
> A computer being better than everyone doesn't mean that chess isn't complicated
Less complicated than any sport that a computer can't be better at than humans.
By definition there are more moving variables in 99% of sports than chess. 5 on 5 basketball, at any time any player can be in an almost endless number of positions on the court in an almost endless number of contortions with different velocity and acceleration of multiple components of the body. The mental intelligence required to teach a robot how to walk and run is significantly harder of a problem than beating the best chess player in the world.
Chess isn't complicated. There is a finite number of moves a player can make at any one turn. And there is a finite number of unique possible games that can be played in chess, which means its solvable (not neccesaeily that it will be solved). You can notate an entire chess game on a napkin, you can't even fully quantify any sport with full length video footage. Comparing the vast complexity of physical movement to pieces on a board. Its a joke, you're a joke.
So take a game AI from Deep Mind, link it to some AI that can build a world model, categorize images, put it in a robot, maybe an LLM so it can talk to you, give it some goals. See what happens.
I don't think that's true, let alone self-evident.
In any case, a life spent solving crossword puzzles would almost certainly deliver more positive net effects to the "player" (and society at large) than a person spending a lifetime getting good at chess. It really is odd that chess is considered so refined, laudable, etc. We probably shouldn't put it on a pedestal any higher than where we place video games.
(In fact, video games might actually be better—and I'm not saying that as someone staring up from a batch of sour grapes and/or looking for an excuse to play video games; that's not how I spend my time.)
I recently played God of War on PS5 when visiting a friend, what I noticed was that it was feeling really slow/sluggish, you press a button to punch someone and the whole character animation feels like it take 2-3 seconds. I also think, that in most of the games I've seen, the running animation still looks really stupid, especially in games that try to look realistic, it doesn't bother me that much in games like Zelda. But these days I mostly play round based JRPGs on my switch, so I really don't care that much about graphics or framerates. :)
The problem for me is, that I don't want to use a site where I can stumble upon gore, obscure sex stuff or some ragebait political stuff in the first place.
As someone who mostly plays (J)RPG's nowadays, I have to say that there never was a better time for the genre. So many great new stuff and ideas, but also some incredible remakes that came out in the last few years.
What works for me most of the time on youtube is to just avoid clicking on videos where people put their faces on the video thumbnail, those things always make me angry when I see them. Fortunatly youtube stoped showing me suggestions on the frontpage because I disabled watch history, so I only see the thumbnails on the sidebar when watching a video.
