Stumbled upon this stunningly brilliant game between AlphaZero and Stockfish, after I watched The Queen's Gambit (thanks to Youtube's stealthy recommendation engine).
It's an objective lesson in human biases. Incredible.
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We know that the human mind is flawed, but to see it exposed multiple times on a tiny 64-square board is so humbling. All human chess theories go out the window (e.g. "pawns are the soul of chess") when you watch AlphaZero. We think we know shit, but turns out we don't know shit.
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A few of my take-aways from this inhuman game and how it translates to life:
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* Sacrifice things: we don't cut losses quickly & often enough. We are conditioned to like owning stuff and afraid of losing them. Always on the lookout for things we can remove from our life. A0 is ruthless when it comes to trading material things for positional advantage.
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* You have more time than you think. Once you have something good going on in life, the natural human instinct is to rush it, to do something right away (again, for fear of losing it). A0 shows that you don't have to rush. Instead, apply slow-but-persistent pressure. Nurture it.
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* When things get tough: remember what your core strengths are, you can give up other things, but you must keep your core strengths.
(A0 chose to trade his rook for a rook, when he could've given up just a bishop - because his bishop is his strongest piece on the board.)
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Anyway, there are more, but in this single game there are multiple mind-blowing moves that 99.99% of all humans (or Stockfish) could have never predicted.
A0 chose to give up things when we wouldn't. It chose to sit back and wait when we wouldn't. It just plays a different game.
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If you think about this and how these sorts of mental loopholes apply in real life, you'd realize how incredibly far from optimal we really are. In politics, in businesses, in life. Everything. We think we know shit, but we don't know shit.
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