How We Think: Part Infinity

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Intuition, Right-Brain, image, wholistic, feeling, wordless, outside the box ...
non-thinking thinking, irrational, timeless, creative

Logic, Left-Brain, sequential, objects, within the box (and maybe consciousness)...
general thinking and concrete variations (sequences of moves), mental work and very tiring

Our intuitive Right-Brain thinking isn't so tiring we think, but an emotional component can quickly drain us and a paradigm shift can be overwhelming.

Our logical Left-Brain thinking is incredibly tiring when we focus on doing it for long. That's probably because it's unnatural to use our minds consciousness for work. We're used to just doing and using our conscious logical side to observe and redirect our efforts. Perhaps setting goals or some kind of guidelines is what that part of our mind does best. After all a plan is how to step-by-step reach a final wholistic conclusion.

Where do we fail?

When we're overloaded with variables, when our memory fails in the middle of a task, when we can't imagine and remember subtotals and other work-in-progress, when emotion overwhelms us, when our intuition and logical solutions clash, when we have biases which subconsciously distort things and sometimes when we just can't decide between two things. It's the conscious mental work we haven't been doing as humans which we aren't so good at (duh).

When I think of a move to play, make the move on the board and instantly realize it's a bad move, that's a disaster. Why couldn't I have evaluated the move before seeing it on the board?

When I think of several moves and I analyze each, but find each lacking and then for some unknown reason I either play the first move or some other next move without much further analysis, that's a potential disaster. Why would I be so weak as to give up on finding good moves supported by calculation?

When I get to a tough situation and can't find a passable move I fail. Then I bring the game to my friends and they see immediately what I should've done. How can that be when I'm the better player? How can the kibitzer who isn't involved in the game immediately see the/a good move, but I the player involved see nothing?

When I want to play a move, but can't discover if it's good though calculation and later I discover I wasn't even using my skills to properly calculate I wonder why I have these skills if during a game I'm not going to use them.

During a normal day a person may make hundreds of decisions, but during a day of blitz chess or tournament chess we have to make many times more. It's no wonder we get tired and the blood sugar drops to turn us into blithering idiots.

Given all these and other difficulties it's a wonder any of us can play consistently good chess games.

I decided to browse the net for what other people have to say about Intuition and Logic. Below are a few links for some of the most interesting posts I read.

How to successfully integrate intuition and logic

Logic vs intuition

Intuition

Transcendence through intuitive thinking

Bias vs logic in decision making

I won't say these were entirely enlightening, but I do like the idea of 'listening' to both Intuition and Logic to get closer to 'the answer' instead of trying to prove one is better than the other. I also like the idea (found on a post and somewhere else in a book by a chess player) that having an intuition doesn't mean we shouldn't check the calculations to see if it holds up to logical scrutiny. After all, intuited ideas have to be squeezed into the peg hole of a move (or move-sequence) on the chess board.

Perhaps where I missed moves I was looking in a too-narrow way instead of starting from the broad range of possibilities. I need to do more exploration of a position! Having a rigid ideology can be limiting. Having no ideology can be useless for finding one answer, even with a goal. Having a method, goal and just enough standards/ideology/belief-system to filter out truly bad moves might be better.

The suggestion we decide best with 3 candidate solutions/answers seems unfair because chess rarely offers up two, three or any particular number of potential solutions. Still, knowing we do best with three (candidates to choose from) can give us something to aim for.

I've also read in several places that we shouldn't be satisfied with one run-through of our method of finding a move and that if we have dissatisfaction in the candidates we should simply go back and find others. Make the method a loop with each iteration providing more information for the next go-round.

I especially like that we can think about chess positions and our plans as a combination of positions with static qualities the Right-Brain can get or reject as missing something and as starting points for various potential dynamic plans/options the Left-Brain can piece together. Aiming for sound solid safe positions won't get you anywhere unless the opponent simply walks his king out to greet your army. Aiming for dynamic plans may leave your defenses full of holes. Having both a whole position the Right-Brain can like and dynamic potentials the Left-Brain can find and work its way through seems like a better fit of our brains to the chess play task.

How can this all be pieced together to make a regular system? I think we have to accumulate information about the position each time it is changed by a move, so our current internal image of the position is complete. But, more than that we must explore possibilities to know where that position might be changed and what it could become. This exploration doesn't appear on the gamescore, but it's essential to really understand the potential. This wide-open view of the positions and their potentials is a bit brute-force, but it opens our eyes. After that we begin narrowing down with forcing or strategically important moves & sequences. To do that we have to know what those terms mean, but that can be learned. Essentially it's what has to be (or can be) done to effect the game's outcome to make a win from an equal start or to save a draw from a bad position. Knowing what our opponent's plans could be is as important as finding our own way forward.

After that it's the narrowing to move-sequences and one final move to be played. That's concrete conscious calculation and shouldn't be done too extensively to safe energy. Each position requires what it requires and we have to do what's needed...but no more.

Sometimes that final move choice is a matter of realizing which moves are awful and just playing what remains that seems okay. Sometimes there are several playable moves and we might seek to play them both in some order. Sometimes the playable choices lead in very different directions and we have to make that choice of direction to get the move.

One of the hardest choices to make is to wait. It seems anti-game or something, but once you've got a good position it's not easy to automatically make it better (or to harm the opponent's position). So, you wait. Or, as Jerry Brown, governor of California once said, to choose  to not do anything is still a choice. Another great tactic top players use is to seek a position where their opponent has no useful moves and must wait. At that moment one player may be able to do useful things while the other cannot. That's a tremendously advantageous situation.

Should we therefore aim for a position or to have a plan to accomplish? I think, as I suggested above, we aim for both as they're both useful. Intuit a position, create a plan or goals and go to it.

Enough for now.