David Maddox: Why politicians should learn to play chess
Some of you may remember the debate I started with "Green" James Mackenzie (of Two Doctors and now Steamie blog fame). Sadly I was unable to persuade him that chess is by far a superior game and test of skill and intelligence than backgammon.The Green party's spindoctor, chief strategist and general dogsbody still seems to believe that the random throw of the dice is of more value.
The advantage of chess is that it forces a player to think at least several moves ahead, look at the consequences of an action and the possible counter moves by his or her opponent.
And a story cropped up yesterday which again shows that politicians really need think more than one move ahead and not rely on random events.
In this case the "game" was MSPs vs the children of Scotland - the Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition) Act 2007 which was purely a piece of social engineering aimed at trying to force children from to not eat chocolate, sweets and other unhealthy food by banning their sale on school premises.
But because MSPs (and civil servants) didn't look ahead this had an unintended consequence. The story from yesterday was pupils from Dyce Academy in Aberdeen presenting a petition to have the law looked at again. Their fair trade tuck shop had been forced to shut down because the new law had banned most of their products.
Of course, the youngsters at the school generally had not been affected by the law at all in their eating habits, simply taking the two second walk to Asda to stock up on sweets, chocolates and all the other banned food.
So the only effect of this new law in terms of this school was to prevent teenagers from learning about running a business successfully and promoting ethical standards, instead their fellow pupils were driven into the welcoming arms of a commercial giant and health standards remain unaffected.
If more MSPs played chess they might have realised that social engineering is much harder to achieve than they seem to have thought in 2007.
Here's a prediction on another piece of social engineering. The SNP, Lib Dems and Greens are getting together in the upcoming criminal law act to have a presumption against short sentences of six months or less in favour of community sentences. What's the bet that we see a huge increase in the number of seven month sentences handed out by Sheriffs afterwards?
Labels: chess, David Maddox, health eating, legislating, schools, social engineering
posted by Administrator at
09:31
7 Comments:
Poker is probably a more skillful game than either chess or basckgammon.
Well why don't we just not let them out at lunchtime? A school dinner or a packed lunch. With various options, including a wee bit of chocolate.
No there won't be a huge increase in seven month sentences.
What it would do would be to concentrate minds as to whether someone deserved to be banged up or not.
And if they did, then they would be, and not the piddling little sentences (remember they only do half) that we see just now.
Well the law is clearly an ass in this respect, but you equally clearly don't need to be a chess player to see around the corner.
The admirable Mr Mackenzie is right to look askance at chess; chess is a game in which contestants escape from life, rather than participate.
Back in the real world, the waste of food that is going on at Scottish schools is astonishing; for example, a friend says that huge piles of apples are chucked away at Portree school every week - among the empty crisp wrappers.
"random throw of the dice", indeed? All this demonstrates is a fundamental lack of understanding of Backgammon.
Maybe Mr. Maddox should read "The Player Of Games" by Iain 'M' Banks.
All 'mechanistic' games (such as chess) will eventually inevitably be played better by computers rather than humans. They also remove the element of risk arising from that which cannot be known/predicted, which is an inevitable part of life.
So not only are they restricted in scope, they don't actually teach us the most useful lessons.
And they're less fun, too.
:-)
OK, I accept that there is quite a lot of skill in backgammon, however the fact remains that the random throw of the dice can be and often is decisive while in chess it is always a matter of intellectual ability.
David M
David M,
So then you're arguing that a computer has greater "intellectual ability" than yourself?
interesting...
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