there’s an interesting (but not necessarily causual in either direction) link between chess and depression https://www.chess.com/blog/AstroTheoretical_Physics/chess-pl...
either how, RIP
When applied to war we celebrate the general’s brilliance. When applied to economics we say they had excellent foresight. When applied to any human endeavor, except chess, the accomplishment is celebrated as a human achievement.
This is due to humans placing great value upon thinking and planning ahead. Only the intelligent exhibit this behavior.
But, having watched some of Naroditsky's videos, it seems pretty clear that he was in fact very intelligent as well as very good at chess.
(from Wikipedia)
Intelligence is multifactoral. Being good at chess was one aspect of intelligence in the complexity of Daniel's life, and in anyone's life.
Formal definitions aside, it isn't possible for "stupid" people to be good at chess. There also is no other animal or known alien that is good at chess. Thus being good at chess is a strong sign of an intelligent human.
We can't go the other way. There are plenty of humans generally known to be "intelligent" who are not good at chess. There is a lot more than intelligence needed to be good at chess (practice and study come to mind, there might be more).
While there are no known aliens that are good at chess, that doesn't preclude that we may discover them in the future. (not in your lifetime though - the speed of light is too slow for them to learn the rules of our chess and communicate back proof that they are good, no matter how intelligent they are)
If it's a given that you are an intelligent person if you're good at chess. Because his parent comment relies on the assumption that there being good at chess means to be intelligent.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9879926/
Playing competitive chess may trigger depression because of the constant comparison of people better than you.
A former chess world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, has turned into a sort of self satire seeking out cheaters in online chess. Basically everybody is cheating according to him, he even implied Hikaru Nakamura, the 2nd strongest player in the world, could be cheating.
Eventually his sights fell on Danya. At first I thought they were both kind of playing it up as a sort of a joke. For instance after the accusations Danya did a video where he something absurd like a dozen different cameras watching him play from different angles. And in response Kramnik mentioned some petty absurdity that I can't even recall at this point - maybe there was a laptop on a chair or something? And this sort of nonsense continued on for some time.
I still think Kramnik is doing it as a half-serious joke, but Danya clear took it very seriously. He believed that his reputation had been ruined (even though just most people think Kramnik is the one who has mostly destroyed his own reputation and mostly just seen as a bit 'kooky' now a days) and Danya became a dramatically different person over about 2 years.
Previously he was kind of a happy go lucky blitz obsessed guy. But he gradually became increasingly morose and insecure. He also seemed to be losing weight, though I have no idea if that is accurate - I'm basing it solely on outside appearances which can be misleading. In any case, this was almost certainly related, and it makes the whole situation far darker.
As it is, he's already behaved in awful ways: accusing children of cheating without evidence, for example, and effectively doxxing them.
Staying on the Internet and be dependent on it in some way financially working as a streamer with all the short form communication and negativity online. Together with cyber bullies etc. A lot of things creating a perfect storm for what seemed to be a sensitive and very nice guy. Easy to say that his family and real life friends should have seen it too and make him change path but in reality it is difficult. Especially since things that make it worse like sitting down and playing chess all day / night and not getting enough sleep, together with cyber bullies is also the things that you love, you earn money on and you have many of your friends there.
I was an avid watcher of his Stream while he was regular streamer and commentator (amongst the best in the world), unfortunately saw the effect of his once idal Kramnik's accusations had on him, having to constantly prove himself, even in is his last stream [1], playing beyond exhaustion to the point his friends had to get him to physically switch off his stream, but he didn't want to because he was worried that if he had good results off stream that people would raise questions.
Kramnik was an ex World Champion became unhinged and started accusing many GMs who beat him in short time controls of cheating, absurd claims made from his bedroom watching streams, even accused #2 GM Hikaru that he had access to an evaluation bar which his editors added on his games he reviews before publishing them to YouTube [2]. In addition to the effect he had on Danya he also drove GM David Navara to depression [3] who he is currently trying to sue for defamation.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbk-mvBmLUM
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1dtlvcb/kramnik_beli...
[3] https://www.chess.com/blog/FormerProdigy/because-we-care
yuvadam•54m ago