I agree about chess.
Actually, any sport isn’t entirely fair.
Because some people are just born with better natural abilities.
Like, a young Magnus beating an adult Kasparov, who’s been playing chess at an extremely high level his whole life.
It just doesn’t seem right to me.
But on the other hand, it seems like there’s nothing better anyway.
Most sports are extremely subjective.
I also have a rather controversial point of view — you might find it controversial, maybe…!
For example, if you take one person who trains in something for their whole life, in some sport, and then someone else with extremely rare genetics achieves the same in a month.
So for me, any sport or self-improvement is more about comparing my results to myself.
There are tons of sports where anthropometry, height, body proportions, natural abilities decide everything.
And all those stories about “hard training and effort” are great, but there are simply people who are just born with it.
That’s it.
It’s the same with chess, more or less.
Edit:
Actually, the same goes for many skills — sometimes something just doesn’t click, and it’s not something you’re naturally gifted at.
Self-development, hobbies, and so on are exactly why you should try as many things as possible up to a certain point in your life, because you definitely have talent in something — you just might not know what it is yet!
It’s the same with the problems in education.
For example, a child might be really good at math but struggle with humanities, and for some reason, they try to make them better at humanities, when really they should be strengthening their strong points. And what they’re not naturally good at can just be left as is, or developed only at a mediocre level.
Honestly, in my opinion, intelligence is hugely overrated.
The most capable people in their fields can be completely not smart in general, or even borderline autistic, really.
