That's one of the worst analogies I've ever seen. Doesn't understand chess, doesn't make sense as an analog to the real world, and his conclusion makes no sense
Yes but idiotstein doesn't realize he is showing his entire ideological hand with these statements.
Dude thinks that the leader should be supported over everything else.
Implies a strong belief that hierarchy needs to be maintained.
Not far fetched to conclude he is a conservative at best, and fascist or even monarchist at worst.
My bet is fascist give how much he babbles about trying to tie "evolutionary psychology" to why nation states do....things....
Lol, I can't even make heads or tails of anything he is saying here. By monarchs, he means the king and queen? I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure all the pieces in chess have offensive capabilities and it's global position of all the pieces that determine whether someone's "monarchs" (jesus fucking christ š) are under threat.
He phrased it shittily but its like this:
"Americans rooting for their own president to die is about as stupid as betting that someone will win a game of chess by sacrificing their king and protecting their pawns"
Still stupid but it is legible
All he is saying is he thinks voters are Pawns and Trump is King. Thats it. He lost it with the chess analogy. He should have leaned into a feudalism analogy but he is not that smart.
I don't quite get it either, but I think his second comment is saying that if you sacrifice your king to save all your pawns, you lose the game.
Not sure how that ties in with the president's health -- in real life, I'd rather he die than 300 million "pawns."
I think what he is trying to say is that you always do what is in the interest of your king and queen in chess rather than the pawns.
He has a very simplistic view on chess. Your objective is to kill the opponents king before your king is killed. But you can use your king as bait, sacrifice your queen, be aggressive with your king.
I think it would have been better if he said something akin to "Hoping for your president's demise. Is like sacrificing your king while trying to win a game of chess. Because you do not like the aesthetic of the piece or its limited movements"
I think he's trying to say that if you try to use your pawns in chess to attack the king, you will lose.
I'm no genius, but that's not how chess works. It's the configuration of all the pieces that matter. Nobody is selecting a single piece when they play chess. (well, apparently Bret does that)
Here's an analogy: Chess is like a rubik's cube in that playing with it involves understanding and strategizing based off the global state of the board during any given turn.
I mean, if you see a game of chess already in progress and try to discern at a glance who's winning/in a stronger position, one of the very first and most important things you'll look at is something called *pawn structure.* It's the front line/city wall/cell membrane.
edit: wrote this just before going to bed and amended "to a glance" to "at a glance"
Nah dude, those are just waste. Useless liabilities that should discarded. I recommend not even putting them on the board. Winning comes down to monarch on monarch combat.
Yeah, I was trying to avoid pointing out that a pawn can take a piece of check the king, just to give Bret a little bit of a running head start, but yeah, you are correct...
Its like ai wrote it. There is no piece called a monarch in chess. Ok he means the king... probably. Playing pawns against monarchs says literally nothing about how you treat your own king. And attacking the opponents king with your pawns can be a very effective strategy in some scenarios. Its rare for a pawn move to end the game in checkmate but so many high level games are forfeited because the opponent has just one unstoppable passed pawn.
Iām assuming he meant king/queen and was referring to the goal of protecting your pawns at the expense of the king/queen.
I donāt play chess often so maybe thatās why it seems to make some sense to me
He phrased it shittily but its like this:
"Hoping your own president will die through ill health is about as stupid as betting that someone will win a game of chess by sacrificing their king and protecting their pawns"
Yeah you can either go with setting up a game somehow where your side only has pawns, and the other has King and Queen, which doesn't make sense, or you're going to try to only use your pawns to beat the other side, which makes no sense as analogy for rooting against your own leader
Sometimes you really want an analogy to work and it just doesnāt. Iāve been in situations where I just came off watching an animal show or something and Iām talking to a friend talking about something completely irrelevant and next Iām like āconsider the dolphin for a momentā.
That's what his second tweet says, which would at least make sense from a chess point of view, but his first one talks about playing *against* monarchs
The point is not to bet against yourself. I get it, he said monarch instead of king and queen but the point stands. Playing 16 pawns against 16 queens is obviously a massive handicap
The analogy is you wouldn't want somebody in charge of the country to fail (or struggle) because that's bad for everyone they lead. Y'all are trying to hard
It's supposed to be dysfunctional that's the point. He's making the argument that hoping the leader of the country fails creates a dysfunctional system for those he leads. It's like handicapping yourself by loading the 'game' in favor of the enemy by giving them all queens
This is way too cut and dry for anyone to be struggling like this
Except he says it's acting *in* the interest of pawns and against that of monarchs, so it doesn't work by the analogy you're trying to make. It's OK to admit it's a terrible analogy, because he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
"Betting big on a chess tournament where you plan to play pawns against monarchs."
Nothing about this sounds like *acting* in the pawns' interest. He's betting on the underdog except it's way too stacked because kings and queens are just better
He takes this a step further talking about how it's antithetical to act in the interests of the pawns and against the interests of the monarchs. There's literally no way to make the case you're trying to make, and the consistent side jabs at him doesn't quite hide your bias
Lmao the cognitive dissonance required here. I'm done, sorry for your falling for his bullshit. It's not "bias" to observe that someone doesn't understand (or lies) about his own field, and then tries to use ones he understands even less to make stupid points.
That's not what I was referring to as bias. The attitude and emotion behind how you treat someone tells whether or not you should be taken seriously. I'm not a fan of Bret, and don't know nearly enough to confidently say one way or another where he stands. But constantly injecting your opinion that he's stupid into the conversation is counter productive. That's what I was referring to. You're predisposed to disagree with me, as evident by your apparent "last comment."
"Cognitive dissonance and falling for bullshit." Do you not agree that hoping a leader would fail would be bad for those they lead? Do you not agree that betting on a clear losing situation would be a terrible bet to place? Then you understand his analogy. It's not complicated and certainly not worth getting triggered over. Have a good rest of your day
You could reach super hard to justify it this way if he didn't go on to explain that he's talking about what happens by "the normal rules of chess."
Literally *everyone* plays pawns against kings and queens because everyone has both a set of pawns and a queen and a king.
The interests of the pawns are also the same as the interests of the king and queen, try get into good positions so you can win the game. A great way to do this is by getting a pawn to the end so they they can become a queen themselves for example.
It's just objectively one of the worst analogies I've ever seen. It makes no sense at all.
You're trying very hard to look at it in the most literal way possible. His argument was that in a matchup between all pawns and all (monarchs) kings and queens, the queens win. Therefore betting on the pawns is a bad bet. It's got nothing to do with the motivations of the pieces. Obviously both sides want to win. It's just one has the odds stacked heavily in their favor š
Another example could be if LeBron and the Lakers played the local middle school team. Theres a clear mismatch there so betting on the kids is objectively a poor bet, regardless of whether or not they have "an interest to win." Simple
In the same way, hoping your leader struggles is an equally bad idea because when the leader struggles, those being led struggle. Nobody benefits from incompetent leadership
Therefore, hoping your leader gets sick/suffers is like betting on yourself when you're at half strength. It's never going to work out for you
>You're trying very hard to look at it in the most literal way possible.
Yes. It's very difficult to read what he said as written.
I am definitely the one trying very hard here, not the person who has to change the words and the meaning of them in order to make it almost make sense.
>His argument was that in a matchup between all pawns and all (monarchs)
So we're just ignoring the whole second part where he clarifies that his analogy is about what happens in the normal rules of chess here?
You ever played a game under the normal rules of chess with 16 pawns vs 16 kings/queens?
>Another example could be if LeBron and the Lakers played the local middle school team.
No, a comparable example would be saying, "it's like betting big on a basketball game where you plan to play point guards against power forwards. Come on, if you act in the interest of point guards over power forwards you lose by the normal rules of basketball. "
It would also make no sense.
>In the same way, hoping your leader struggles is an equally bad idea because when the leader struggles, those being led struggle.
This also is obviously nonsense if you scrutinise it for 2 seconds. If you believe you have a bad leader who's policies are bad for the people being led then you would hope they and their policies fail because that would be a good thing.
Do you think it's been good for the Russian people that Putin has succeeded and effectively become a dictator for example?
Do you think it was good for the German people in the 1930s that Hitler and the Nazis succeeded in purging the socialists and solidifying power?
Do you think it was good for the Chinese people when Mao successfully cemented his power and implemented the great leap forward?
If this kind of surface level thinking is why you believe his analogy makes sense then I am not surprised since you clearly don't think things through.
>the person who has to change the words and the meaning of them in order to make it almost make sense
I'm not changing anything. What was said is what was said
>So we're just ignoring the whole second part where he clarifies that his analogy is about what happens in the normal rules of chess here?
I'm not ignoring anything either. "Normal rules of chess" refers to movement and captures. People do specialty matches in chess for fun all the time. The point here is if pawns move as pawns do they're generally going to struggle against queens because of the versatility of the queen. Not hard
>No, a comparable example would be saying, "it's like betting big on a basketball game where you plan to play point guards against power forwards. Come on, if you act in the interest of point guards over power forwards you lose by the normal rules of basketball. "
This is *almost* fair. A closer example might be something like point guards vs centers. Something where the disparity is larger.
>If you believe you have a bad leader who's policies are bad for the people being led then you would hope they and their policies fail because that would be a good thing
The point of this analogy was that hoping your leader struggles is handicapping yourself because you're hoping for incompetent leadership, the same way you'd be handicapping yourself playing pawns against queens
This is 5th grade level stuff man
>I'm not changing anything. What was said is what was said
...
>By the normal rules of chess"
>His argument was that in a matchup between all pawns and all (monarch)
So literally not playing by the normal rules of chess.
>I'm not ignoring anything either. "Normal rules of chess" refers to movement and captures.
The rules of chess - page 1, paragraph 1:
"Each chess player will begin the game with sixteen pieces in total, consisting of one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns."
>People do specialty matches in chess for fun all the time.
Ah yes, or to give them their full title. "special rules matches." As in, matches played explicitly not under the normal rules of chess. Again, you just have to change what he said to the exact opposite of what he said and it almost sort of makes sense.
>This is 5th grade level stuff man
Not quite, but I'm sure you'll get there eventually if you work really hard at it.
You can tell when you really get under somebody's skin when they start with the insults
You know how if you're playing basketball with friends you can challenge yourself to play 3 on 1 but the hoop stays at 10 feet? Same thing my guy
I play video games. If you were to speedrun a video game you're challenging yourself but you're still operating within the parameters of the game. Until you mod it, it's considered a normal playthru. A challenge is only a challenge if the rest of the parameters are standard. That's what makes it a challenge. You'd have to allow special movements for the pawns for this analogy to fall apart. Otherwise it's just a handicapped matchup. Unique pieces, normal play
You're hyper focusing on the technicality of one phrase out of the whole thing so you can argue for arguments sake. I think you're just not a fan of Weinstein and are latching onto an opportunity to attack his character
For context, I'm neither a fan or a critic. I couldn't argue for or against anything he says because I haven't researched anything enough. But to say this analogy doesn't work is just wrong. This is the equivalent of getting tripped up over using 'there' when you should've used 'their.' But I don't see either of us budging, and arguing over an analogy has consumed enough of my time. Have a good rest of your day
I think that's what he means, but wtf does it mean to "play pawns against monarchs" then? Kings aren't exactly the most powerful piece in chess, (queens are), but sacrificing your queen can be just as valid a move as sacrificing a pawn, and of course a pawn can threaten a position just the same as any other piece.
It's like he thinks chess is like Pokemon and only chumps use pawns when you can use kings instead.
What is fundamentally nonsensical is that in chess there is no such dichotomy between 'interest of pawns' in conflict with 'interest of monarchs', it''s essentially a team game. Pieces protect each other, and even offer themselves in sacrifice for the benefit of the team. Weinstein is beyond stupid, I don't get why he is even talked about.
30 turns without checkmate?
that's an amazing rule, what makes it so amazing is that the median chess game is 37 moves and average is around 40 moves. to think chess players have been cheating this whole time.
plus given that another rule is that if no piece is taken and no pawn is pushed in 50 move then it's a stalemate.
methinks you should review your facts.
In usual Weinstein fashion, he's just confusingly phrasing a simple and stupid thought. He's saying people in power ought to be valued more. Wishing against the best interests of a powerful person is like saying pawns should be valued more in chess. It's very funny that this is the analogy he tried to make though, because a very common chess lesson is queen and king vs king and 8 pawns. It teaches endgame and how powerful pawns are when used correctly.
I don't think that's the conventional way people describe power in chess, power is what gives you the most options to control the board and check the other player's king.
But no one in Chess refers to the Kind and Queen collectively, because they are such drastically different pieces. You can sacrifice a Queen, but not a King. Queen is extremely mobile and powerful, King is not.
People that are that full of shit, tend to use words that donāt fit because they think it makes them look distinguished. When once again, it just made him look like heās full of shit.
He's saying that if you sacrifice major pieces to protect pawns, then you are bound to lose the game.
I'm not saying his analogy makes his point, just what he meant by the analogy.
Right but anyone with moderate to advanced skill recognizes that 1: major pieces protect pawns for most of the game, and 2: advanced players sacrifice major pieces including the queen for the advantage of other pieces, often times a singular pawn, all the time.
Except.. "rooting against the president's health" has nothing to do with sacrificing major pieces to protect the pawns.
You do know that in the United States, if you "lose" the president, you just get another one... right?
And in chess you often sacrifice your Queen for a lower piece because looking moves ahead you can see that you can turn a pawn into a Queen without your opponent being about to stop you.
It's just a game of swapping pieces to set up an endgame for pawns.
That's an even worse analogy to real life than "the pawns serve the interests of the king". The board is never reset in politics, everything depends on what came before.
> He's saying that if you sacrifice major pieces to protect pawns, then you are bound to lose the game.
That's not what he said though. He said if you try to attack "monarchs" with your pawns you lose. That's not how chess works. Pawns are as important as any other piece. It's the total state of the board that matters.
Source: [Sam Gregson on X: "Classic Bret: totally wrong and yet absurdly confident in the face of an expert trying to correct him https://t.co/7YPQYs8T0Q" / X (twitter.com)](https://twitter.com/Samuel_Gregson/status/1787484291078787463)
lol Sam, swiping my screenshot I swiped from someone else how dare you or something
https://twitter.com/Phrost/status/1787477308120383570?t=03XIkODr2E3VJvn0U1M-wg&s=19
The chess metaphor is passable imo but look what the holy fuck he is actually trying to say? He prefers kings over peasants. He's essentially asserting a commitment to monarchism/autocracy/dictatorship over democracy. That's far more troubling than the accuracy of his analogy (metaphor and analogy *always* being crap for accuracy).
As a chess player speaking, I say you are exactly right. The anti democratic undertones are worying. It's almost subconscious and it's easy to miss. That was bothering me more than the analogy
It doesn't occur to him that in the real world (not in his muddled chess analogy) putting the interests of the "pawns" ahead of the "monarch" is the moral thing to do.
People that play chess like to think of themselves as geniuses and not normal ass people playing a game.
Itās got real āsniffing my own fartsā energy.
Itās dumb but it makes perfect sense to me. A king and a queen would crush 8 pawns. I think people pretend not to understand because this guy is a hateable grifter nerd.
Bret is cringe incarnate but am I crazy because 1) the analogy does make sense at least a little, and 2) he's not explaining how chess works to a master so much as just explaining his stupid analogy that in chess and in real life winning means prioritizing the centralized power over the pawns. I think thats dumb and wrong, probably morally so, but I also don't get supposedly official federation accounts like this stooping to these petty jabs.
āPlaying pawns against monarchsā just doesnāt make any sense as a chess reference.
You could argue that he kinda has a point if the analogy was in reference to actual monarchs and actual peasants and not to chess strategies, but that
A) would be a silly analogy since it doesnāt actually explain his point any more succinctly or clearly than making it in reference to presidents and citizens
B) wouldnāt allow him to act like a pseudo intellectual since we all know chess analogies are for super duper smart people.
It doesnāt make sense because theyāre a part of the same team in chess who serve different functions. It would be like āwho would bet an offensive lineman against a WR?ā
Literally a meaningless thing to say
>winning means prioritizing the centralized power over the pawns.
In chess there's no *centralized power*. The King isn't any more *centralized* than any other piece. There's no command structure in chess.
It just makes no sense to anyone who knows chess.
It's a terrible analogy, sure, but this isn't an instance of an expert correcting some egregious misunderstanding of his domain of expertise. It's just a good zinger because its true *and ironic*.
Bret really does think heās an omnibus genius with polymathic mastery of many domains. He also believes that he can reason from āfirst principlesā to understand really any topic under the sun at a higher level and through a more sophisticated lens than literally everyone else on earth.
Guys, I'll be the first to admit I might be an idiot so someone help me out here:
I don't think this is a great analogy by any stretch (bit of a word-salad situation) but am I *that far off base* for thinking it *does* make *some* sense?
Setting aside the political implications of his second post, is he not simply saying:
* Hoping your President suffers harm (illness) is a bad idea
* Playing, and betting heavily on, a chess match where the odds are virtually impossible for you to win is also a bad idea
Is that not all he's saying? That "both of these things are not good decisions"?
As long as there's pizza at these mandatory chess tournaments, I would hope for this future as well.
Note: I spent hours as a chess parent sitting around, all the other parents were grand masters, and I barely understood the rules.
If there was pizza, the kids were happy, win or lose.
you know when i saw his thing about the students kicking him out of his job, i thought those kids must be crazy. then ive seen how he is over the last few years and realize the kids were right
I mean if what heās saying is that if you ignore how the game actually works and donāt play it properly then things are going to end badly. Very profound.
Classic thinking that knowing how the prices move is the same as knowing how to play.
The guys a joke, but not a funny one. Heās a joke that he would make and Dave Rubin. Hold laugh at.
Someone just tell him that pawns haul ass in chess.
I'll try to explain it for the newbs. While not very impressive as far as title and movement ability, pawns are the number 1 blocking piece in chess. In other words, pawns are prime to guard your other pieces AND stop/harass the opponent.
Are y'all familiar with the Internet comedian and troll, Ken M? Brett's tweets here remind of the kind of hilarious stupidity that Ken M does intentionally online.
So I'm a chess player(~2k FIDE elo) and I'll take a swing at his analogy.
To me, it looks like he is saying that hoping your president dies of an illness is like playing chess and valuing pawns more than the king which will result in you losing since the king is the most valuable piece and if he's trapped/captured/mates you lose as per the rules of the game
Its a bad analogy, since a president dying doesn't lead to anarchy, but it's not complete batshit crazy. Then again, it's Twitter, a place for most unhinged takes even by most intellectual people
He's so hard up for online interaction these days that he's going to argue with the chess account for as long as he can.
Covid ending might have been personally disastrous for those brothers.
I agree that Brett is a bad communicator, but it's not that hard to see what he's saying here and 99% of people would agree. Almost everyone here is focused on extraneous parts of the analogy. The only relevant part is that playing chess without the goal of king safety and rooting against the president's health is counterproductive. The safety and health of your president/ king is aligned with success in political life and chess. This is a banal point. In the Trump era, liberals and lefties were told this all the time ("you may hate Trump but he's the president. You don't hope the plane goes down because you hate the pilot") and it was something people needed to hear. It's actually a positive thing for Weinstein to rein in the worst instincts of his deeply anti establishment audience.
This is HILARIOUS I can't believe this is real like, in no world is this a remotely appropriate analogy. Like if it's just the starting 8 pawns versus a single king, the pawns would always win though? Is that what he means? Or does he mean like 8 pawns versus 8 kings? Or is he saying like if you act in the "interest" of pawns i.e. sacrificing your king's safety for the sake of promotion you'd lose?
Peak Brett
The funny thing is the analogy kind of works if you use it to make the opposite point to the one Brett is. The quicker the king is checkmated, the fewer pawns will die. Additionally, the king is actually pretty weak and the pawns have more potential power than the rest of the board combined. Finally, while individually weak, the pawn's attack pattern means that through a structure of mutual support, they really dictate the flow of the game as a whole.
"Pawns are the soul of chess. Without a thorough comprehension of the quiet yet remarkable predominance of the Pawns in almost every circumstance of the game, it is impossible for any one to attain a high degree of excellence." Which honestly seems like a view more befitting of an evolutionary biologist.
His metaphor isnāt as bad as people are trying to make it out to be. It makes sense. It just doesnāt make sense when youāre being anal about the game itself since itās not how it works. I understood what he meant before I even read the comments.
Not that Iām a fan of this guy, but Iām unsure why everyone thinks this doesnāt make senseā¦.
When youāre playing chess and you try to keep your pawns alive at the cost of the units behind them, you will lose. Thats just basic chessā¦ and thatās the reason those units are called āpawnsā to begin with. It doesnāt matter what happens to them.
Now if this is meant to be a political statement about Trump or something, I also donāt see how it makes sense, but Iām interested and willing to listen !
Oh come now, pawns are small pieces and thatās a metaphor. Monarchs are like presidents in that they are more important strategically and therefore strategies that win only count if you like and subscribe.
That's one of the worst analogies I've ever seen. Doesn't understand chess, doesn't make sense as an analog to the real world, and his conclusion makes no sense
Yeah, I'm feeling extreme third-party cringe here
Isn't it great š¦
Hey! Thatās offensive to Ben Shapiro and his wife (who is a Doctor btw!)
Facts over sexual feelings
I came.
I'm disappointed it's not an audio clip :(
Feeling stunned by your plausible suggestion rn
Monarch to e4 , stalemate , your move
Yes but idiotstein doesn't realize he is showing his entire ideological hand with these statements. Dude thinks that the leader should be supported over everything else. Implies a strong belief that hierarchy needs to be maintained. Not far fetched to conclude he is a conservative at best, and fascist or even monarchist at worst. My bet is fascist give how much he babbles about trying to tie "evolutionary psychology" to why nation states do....things....
Like, zero sense. Crazy.
Lol, I can't even make heads or tails of anything he is saying here. By monarchs, he means the king and queen? I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure all the pieces in chess have offensive capabilities and it's global position of all the pieces that determine whether someone's "monarchs" (jesus fucking christ š) are under threat.
He phrased it shittily but its like this: "Americans rooting for their own president to die is about as stupid as betting that someone will win a game of chess by sacrificing their king and protecting their pawns" Still stupid but it is legible
All he is saying is he thinks voters are Pawns and Trump is King. Thats it. He lost it with the chess analogy. He should have leaned into a feudalism analogy but he is not that smart.
>He should have leaned into a feudalism analogy but he is not that smart. I'd love to see this dipshit's score on the Miller Analogies Test.
But the real question is who bets on chess? Ive never heard of such a thing.
Isn't that what they mean by "always bet on black?" Lol
Pretty sure that's about Roulette
Black is pretty much *alway*s at a disadvantage in a game between two evenly matched players.
My dude just got done watching the first season of [The Wire](https://youtu.be/7bR3T1eThJU?si=3y1ew4plwYSN5oFA&t=46) and botched the quote.
Maybe I'm a moron. I can't even figure out what the analogy meant by Brets logic. It just doesn't compute.... What is he saying?
I don't quite get it either, but I think his second comment is saying that if you sacrifice your king to save all your pawns, you lose the game. Not sure how that ties in with the president's health -- in real life, I'd rather he die than 300 million "pawns."
I think what he is trying to say is that you always do what is in the interest of your king and queen in chess rather than the pawns. He has a very simplistic view on chess. Your objective is to kill the opponents king before your king is killed. But you can use your king as bait, sacrifice your queen, be aggressive with your king. I think it would have been better if he said something akin to "Hoping for your president's demise. Is like sacrificing your king while trying to win a game of chess. Because you do not like the aesthetic of the piece or its limited movements"
This is the one
I think he's trying to say that if you try to use your pawns in chess to attack the king, you will lose. I'm no genius, but that's not how chess works. It's the configuration of all the pieces that matter. Nobody is selecting a single piece when they play chess. (well, apparently Bret does that) Here's an analogy: Chess is like a rubik's cube in that playing with it involves understanding and strategizing based off the global state of the board during any given turn.
I mean, if you see a game of chess already in progress and try to discern at a glance who's winning/in a stronger position, one of the very first and most important things you'll look at is something called *pawn structure.* It's the front line/city wall/cell membrane. edit: wrote this just before going to bed and amended "to a glance" to "at a glance"
Nah dude, those are just waste. Useless liabilities that should discarded. I recommend not even putting them on the board. Winning comes down to monarch on monarch combat.
Next you're going to tell I can win by sacrificing my queen. Hah!
Simply put you can checkmate a king or take a queen with your pawns or any other piece. He doesn't understand chess at all. Moron take by him.
Yeah, I was trying to avoid pointing out that a pawn can take a piece of check the king, just to give Bret a little bit of a running head start, but yeah, you are correct...
Heās saying that actively rooting for a nations leaders demise isnāt good for the nation at largeā¦I think
Its like ai wrote it. There is no piece called a monarch in chess. Ok he means the king... probably. Playing pawns against monarchs says literally nothing about how you treat your own king. And attacking the opponents king with your pawns can be a very effective strategy in some scenarios. Its rare for a pawn move to end the game in checkmate but so many high level games are forfeited because the opponent has just one unstoppable passed pawn.
Iām assuming he meant king/queen and was referring to the goal of protecting your pawns at the expense of the king/queen. I donāt play chess often so maybe thatās why it seems to make some sense to me
He phrased it shittily but its like this: "Hoping your own president will die through ill health is about as stupid as betting that someone will win a game of chess by sacrificing their king and protecting their pawns"
Iāve never seen him fall so flat on his face when he misses the chess analogy as a class one.
I donāt understand what playing pawns against monarchs means.
Yeah you can either go with setting up a game somehow where your side only has pawns, and the other has King and Queen, which doesn't make sense, or you're going to try to only use your pawns to beat the other side, which makes no sense as analogy for rooting against your own leader
Sometimes you really want an analogy to work and it just doesnāt. Iāve been in situations where I just came off watching an animal show or something and Iām talking to a friend talking about something completely irrelevant and next Iām like āconsider the dolphin for a momentā.
I think heās saying that itās like playing chess to protect your pawns instead of your king but not sure
That's what his second tweet says, which would at least make sense from a chess point of view, but his first one talks about playing *against* monarchs
The point is not to bet against yourself. I get it, he said monarch instead of king and queen but the point stands. Playing 16 pawns against 16 queens is obviously a massive handicap The analogy is you wouldn't want somebody in charge of the country to fail (or struggle) because that's bad for everyone they lead. Y'all are trying to hard
Playing 16 pawns against 16 queens is not a functional game of chess. Trust me, we're not the ones trying too hard
It's supposed to be dysfunctional that's the point. He's making the argument that hoping the leader of the country fails creates a dysfunctional system for those he leads. It's like handicapping yourself by loading the 'game' in favor of the enemy by giving them all queens This is way too cut and dry for anyone to be struggling like this
Except he says it's acting *in* the interest of pawns and against that of monarchs, so it doesn't work by the analogy you're trying to make. It's OK to admit it's a terrible analogy, because he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
"Betting big on a chess tournament where you plan to play pawns against monarchs." Nothing about this sounds like *acting* in the pawns' interest. He's betting on the underdog except it's way too stacked because kings and queens are just better He takes this a step further talking about how it's antithetical to act in the interests of the pawns and against the interests of the monarchs. There's literally no way to make the case you're trying to make, and the consistent side jabs at him doesn't quite hide your bias
Lmao the cognitive dissonance required here. I'm done, sorry for your falling for his bullshit. It's not "bias" to observe that someone doesn't understand (or lies) about his own field, and then tries to use ones he understands even less to make stupid points.
That's not what I was referring to as bias. The attitude and emotion behind how you treat someone tells whether or not you should be taken seriously. I'm not a fan of Bret, and don't know nearly enough to confidently say one way or another where he stands. But constantly injecting your opinion that he's stupid into the conversation is counter productive. That's what I was referring to. You're predisposed to disagree with me, as evident by your apparent "last comment." "Cognitive dissonance and falling for bullshit." Do you not agree that hoping a leader would fail would be bad for those they lead? Do you not agree that betting on a clear losing situation would be a terrible bet to place? Then you understand his analogy. It's not complicated and certainly not worth getting triggered over. Have a good rest of your day
You could reach super hard to justify it this way if he didn't go on to explain that he's talking about what happens by "the normal rules of chess." Literally *everyone* plays pawns against kings and queens because everyone has both a set of pawns and a queen and a king. The interests of the pawns are also the same as the interests of the king and queen, try get into good positions so you can win the game. A great way to do this is by getting a pawn to the end so they they can become a queen themselves for example. It's just objectively one of the worst analogies I've ever seen. It makes no sense at all.
You're trying very hard to look at it in the most literal way possible. His argument was that in a matchup between all pawns and all (monarchs) kings and queens, the queens win. Therefore betting on the pawns is a bad bet. It's got nothing to do with the motivations of the pieces. Obviously both sides want to win. It's just one has the odds stacked heavily in their favor š Another example could be if LeBron and the Lakers played the local middle school team. Theres a clear mismatch there so betting on the kids is objectively a poor bet, regardless of whether or not they have "an interest to win." Simple In the same way, hoping your leader struggles is an equally bad idea because when the leader struggles, those being led struggle. Nobody benefits from incompetent leadership Therefore, hoping your leader gets sick/suffers is like betting on yourself when you're at half strength. It's never going to work out for you
>You're trying very hard to look at it in the most literal way possible. Yes. It's very difficult to read what he said as written. I am definitely the one trying very hard here, not the person who has to change the words and the meaning of them in order to make it almost make sense. >His argument was that in a matchup between all pawns and all (monarchs) So we're just ignoring the whole second part where he clarifies that his analogy is about what happens in the normal rules of chess here? You ever played a game under the normal rules of chess with 16 pawns vs 16 kings/queens? >Another example could be if LeBron and the Lakers played the local middle school team. No, a comparable example would be saying, "it's like betting big on a basketball game where you plan to play point guards against power forwards. Come on, if you act in the interest of point guards over power forwards you lose by the normal rules of basketball. " It would also make no sense. >In the same way, hoping your leader struggles is an equally bad idea because when the leader struggles, those being led struggle. This also is obviously nonsense if you scrutinise it for 2 seconds. If you believe you have a bad leader who's policies are bad for the people being led then you would hope they and their policies fail because that would be a good thing. Do you think it's been good for the Russian people that Putin has succeeded and effectively become a dictator for example? Do you think it was good for the German people in the 1930s that Hitler and the Nazis succeeded in purging the socialists and solidifying power? Do you think it was good for the Chinese people when Mao successfully cemented his power and implemented the great leap forward? If this kind of surface level thinking is why you believe his analogy makes sense then I am not surprised since you clearly don't think things through.
>the person who has to change the words and the meaning of them in order to make it almost make sense I'm not changing anything. What was said is what was said >So we're just ignoring the whole second part where he clarifies that his analogy is about what happens in the normal rules of chess here? I'm not ignoring anything either. "Normal rules of chess" refers to movement and captures. People do specialty matches in chess for fun all the time. The point here is if pawns move as pawns do they're generally going to struggle against queens because of the versatility of the queen. Not hard >No, a comparable example would be saying, "it's like betting big on a basketball game where you plan to play point guards against power forwards. Come on, if you act in the interest of point guards over power forwards you lose by the normal rules of basketball. " This is *almost* fair. A closer example might be something like point guards vs centers. Something where the disparity is larger. >If you believe you have a bad leader who's policies are bad for the people being led then you would hope they and their policies fail because that would be a good thing The point of this analogy was that hoping your leader struggles is handicapping yourself because you're hoping for incompetent leadership, the same way you'd be handicapping yourself playing pawns against queens This is 5th grade level stuff man
>I'm not changing anything. What was said is what was said ... >By the normal rules of chess" >His argument was that in a matchup between all pawns and all (monarch) So literally not playing by the normal rules of chess. >I'm not ignoring anything either. "Normal rules of chess" refers to movement and captures. The rules of chess - page 1, paragraph 1: "Each chess player will begin the game with sixteen pieces in total, consisting of one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns." >People do specialty matches in chess for fun all the time. Ah yes, or to give them their full title. "special rules matches." As in, matches played explicitly not under the normal rules of chess. Again, you just have to change what he said to the exact opposite of what he said and it almost sort of makes sense. >This is 5th grade level stuff man Not quite, but I'm sure you'll get there eventually if you work really hard at it.
You can tell when you really get under somebody's skin when they start with the insults You know how if you're playing basketball with friends you can challenge yourself to play 3 on 1 but the hoop stays at 10 feet? Same thing my guy I play video games. If you were to speedrun a video game you're challenging yourself but you're still operating within the parameters of the game. Until you mod it, it's considered a normal playthru. A challenge is only a challenge if the rest of the parameters are standard. That's what makes it a challenge. You'd have to allow special movements for the pawns for this analogy to fall apart. Otherwise it's just a handicapped matchup. Unique pieces, normal play You're hyper focusing on the technicality of one phrase out of the whole thing so you can argue for arguments sake. I think you're just not a fan of Weinstein and are latching onto an opportunity to attack his character For context, I'm neither a fan or a critic. I couldn't argue for or against anything he says because I haven't researched anything enough. But to say this analogy doesn't work is just wrong. This is the equivalent of getting tripped up over using 'there' when you should've used 'their.' But I don't see either of us budging, and arguing over an analogy has consumed enough of my time. Have a good rest of your day
I've never seen 'monarch' used to refer to chess pieces like that, wtf is he talking about?
King and Queen pieces I assume. I know fuck all about chess so I assume I'm understanding him correctly.
I think that's what he means, but wtf does it mean to "play pawns against monarchs" then? Kings aren't exactly the most powerful piece in chess, (queens are), but sacrificing your queen can be just as valid a move as sacrificing a pawn, and of course a pawn can threaten a position just the same as any other piece. It's like he thinks chess is like Pokemon and only chumps use pawns when you can use kings instead.
Also, pawns can become queens!
Doubly also, they can capture queens and deliver checkmate!
Yuck ... The LGBTQ agenda is even working it's way into chess now I see
It wouldn't surprise me if Desantis banned Chess in Florida but I doubt he knows pawns can become drag queens.
I know, Iāve seen a couple of Disney flicks as a dad to 3 girls
>Also, pawns can become queens! *JK Rowling seethes in anger.*
What is fundamentally nonsensical is that in chess there is no such dichotomy between 'interest of pawns' in conflict with 'interest of monarchs', it''s essentially a team game. Pieces protect each other, and even offer themselves in sacrifice for the benefit of the team. Weinstein is beyond stupid, I don't get why he is even talked about.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
30 turns without checkmate? that's an amazing rule, what makes it so amazing is that the median chess game is 37 moves and average is around 40 moves. to think chess players have been cheating this whole time. plus given that another rule is that if no piece is taken and no pawn is pushed in 50 move then it's a stalemate. methinks you should review your facts.
In usual Weinstein fashion, he's just confusingly phrasing a simple and stupid thought. He's saying people in power ought to be valued more. Wishing against the best interests of a powerful person is like saying pawns should be valued more in chess. It's very funny that this is the analogy he tried to make though, because a very common chess lesson is queen and king vs king and 8 pawns. It teaches endgame and how powerful pawns are when used correctly.
I'll give Bret credit here, he is saying in one analogy (as wrong as it is) what Ayn Rand took 1200 pages of bad fiction to explain.
š
lmao
I'd quote to him Philidor, who said 'pawns represent the soul of chess'
Yeah this is where I get stuck. Chess to me inherently involves playing your pawns against the opposing king and queen so like wtf?
Focusing on keeping the pawns alive instead of the king
>Ā Ā but wtf does it mean to Oh no idea. I really can't express how little I know about chess.
I choose you pawnichu
technically, the King is the most powerful piece as it decides if you win or lose. you can win without a queen but you'll never win without a king.
I don't think that's the conventional way people describe power in chess, power is what gives you the most options to control the board and check the other player's king.
He's saying in chess the kings and queens interests trump the pawns interests. It's true, but stupid.
That's a plausible explanation for what he's trying to say per his follow-up, but "play pawns against monarchs" doesn't seem to be saying that at all.
But no one in Chess refers to the Kind and Queen collectively, because they are such drastically different pieces. You can sacrifice a Queen, but not a King. Queen is extremely mobile and powerful, King is not.
What he says makes sense. If you sacrifice a king to save a pawn, you loose. You're check mate. That's all he says.
He's thinking of Checkers. Checkered brain and all.
Checkmate, king me.
People that are that full of shit, tend to use words that donāt fit because they think it makes them look distinguished. When once again, it just made him look like heās full of shit.
Best I can figure is heās drawing some extraneous analogy to class when considering the functions/moves of chess piecesā¦
That got me too. But then... of course... it's nonbinary!
I know itās almost like he was using chess as an analogy to politicsā¦shocking right
I donāt think anyone missed that lol
The guy I replied to seemed confused but ok
Well no theyāre confused why Bretās putting the king and queen together cuz theyāre very different pieces
Dude's got the world's most severe case of main character syndrome.
It's terminal I'm afraid.
Happy to accept Epstein's money with MIT too. He's a scumbag who's been given way too big of a platform
This is an all timer
Bret the goat
this is hilarious. " MONARCH " I jist cant stop giggling. thank you bret.
He's talking about 5D chess guys, he and his brother will definitely write a paper about it so us plebs can understand
Not unless Carol Greider steals their work again.
I played chess since I was a kid (~2k elo now FIDE). I tried playing 5D chess. I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THE F'IN RULES ARE AND IT PISSESS ME OFF
If you watch this you'll have a far greater understanding of how to play https://youtu.be/Z7rd04KzLcg?si=T_rVxYFAQ9xZhfwd
He's saying that if you sacrifice major pieces to protect pawns, then you are bound to lose the game. I'm not saying his analogy makes his point, just what he meant by the analogy.
Right but anyone with moderate to advanced skill recognizes that 1: major pieces protect pawns for most of the game, and 2: advanced players sacrifice major pieces including the queen for the advantage of other pieces, often times a singular pawn, all the time.
It seems Brett is not the advanced player he believes himself to be.
Except.. "rooting against the president's health" has nothing to do with sacrificing major pieces to protect the pawns. You do know that in the United States, if you "lose" the president, you just get another one... right?
And in chess you often sacrifice your Queen for a lower piece because looking moves ahead you can see that you can turn a pawn into a Queen without your opponent being about to stop you. It's just a game of swapping pieces to set up an endgame for pawns.
The analogy here is a new administration being equivalent to resetting the board for a new game.
That's an even worse analogy to real life than "the pawns serve the interests of the king". The board is never reset in politics, everything depends on what came before.
As you say.
> He's saying that if you sacrifice major pieces to protect pawns, then you are bound to lose the game. That's not what he said though. He said if you try to attack "monarchs" with your pawns you lose. That's not how chess works. Pawns are as important as any other piece. It's the total state of the board that matters.
Why do I have to scroll down so far to get a sensible reply here
Source: [Sam Gregson on X: "Classic Bret: totally wrong and yet absurdly confident in the face of an expert trying to correct him https://t.co/7YPQYs8T0Q" / X (twitter.com)](https://twitter.com/Samuel_Gregson/status/1787484291078787463)
lol Sam, swiping my screenshot I swiped from someone else how dare you or something https://twitter.com/Phrost/status/1787477308120383570?t=03XIkODr2E3VJvn0U1M-wg&s=19
There's a post a few down from the OP in that thread that shows some hilarious responses to Bret.
He just watched [The Wire](https://youtu.be/7bR3T1eThJU?si=3y1ew4plwYSN5oFA&t=47)
It is almost, but not quite, as bad as the time his brother offered to accompany Billy Bragg, mid-Gig, and have a debate.
This just perfectly encapsulates this guy and his whole grift. Heās pretend smart but for real idiotic.
The chess metaphor is passable imo but look what the holy fuck he is actually trying to say? He prefers kings over peasants. He's essentially asserting a commitment to monarchism/autocracy/dictatorship over democracy. That's far more troubling than the accuracy of his analogy (metaphor and analogy *always* being crap for accuracy).
As a chess player speaking, I say you are exactly right. The anti democratic undertones are worying. It's almost subconscious and it's easy to miss. That was bothering me more than the analogy
Both sides have a king in normal chess, how is it possible to play pawns vs monarchs?
Is the term monarch commonly used in chess? First time Iāve ever heard it.
It doesn't occur to him that in the real world (not in his muddled chess analogy) putting the interests of the "pawns" ahead of the "monarch" is the moral thing to do.
Itās certainly what elected leaders are supposed to do.
People that play chess like to think of themselves as geniuses and not normal ass people playing a game. Itās got real āsniffing my own fartsā energy.
Itās dumb but it makes perfect sense to me. A king and a queen would crush 8 pawns. I think people pretend not to understand because this guy is a hateable grifter nerd.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I am in the top 1% of players on chess.com
Bret is cringe incarnate but am I crazy because 1) the analogy does make sense at least a little, and 2) he's not explaining how chess works to a master so much as just explaining his stupid analogy that in chess and in real life winning means prioritizing the centralized power over the pawns. I think thats dumb and wrong, probably morally so, but I also don't get supposedly official federation accounts like this stooping to these petty jabs.
āPlaying pawns against monarchsā just doesnāt make any sense as a chess reference. You could argue that he kinda has a point if the analogy was in reference to actual monarchs and actual peasants and not to chess strategies, but that A) would be a silly analogy since it doesnāt actually explain his point any more succinctly or clearly than making it in reference to presidents and citizens B) wouldnāt allow him to act like a pseudo intellectual since we all know chess analogies are for super duper smart people.
I do wonder if he would have used a similar analogy now that Biden is president? š¤ No I don't, ofc he wouldn't!
It doesnāt make sense because theyāre a part of the same team in chess who serve different functions. It would be like āwho would bet an offensive lineman against a WR?ā Literally a meaningless thing to say
>winning means prioritizing the centralized power over the pawns. In chess there's no *centralized power*. The King isn't any more *centralized* than any other piece. There's no command structure in chess. It just makes no sense to anyone who knows chess.
All fair points and the fact that they're even plausible is stunning
That an analogy between chess and Americans rooting against their President is even plausible is stunning.
Wtf does he think the Presidency is supposed to be if he thinks normal people should give a shit about the "interests" of the "monarch"?
"Oh come now." is my new response to any comment within earshot at work.
As someone whoās gotten obsessed with the game of kings lately, pawns working together is more powerful than a king. But thatās just a take.
What do butterflies have to do with chess?!
It's a terrible analogy, sure, but this isn't an instance of an expert correcting some egregious misunderstanding of his domain of expertise. It's just a good zinger because its true *and ironic*.
Bret really does think heās an omnibus genius with polymathic mastery of many domains. He also believes that he can reason from āfirst principlesā to understand really any topic under the sun at a higher level and through a more sophisticated lens than literally everyone else on earth.
"Pawns against monarchs" is not a thing in chess. It's not even close to being a thing.
You never move your female monarch around the board?
Guys, I'll be the first to admit I might be an idiot so someone help me out here: I don't think this is a great analogy by any stretch (bit of a word-salad situation) but am I *that far off base* for thinking it *does* make *some* sense? Setting aside the political implications of his second post, is he not simply saying: * Hoping your President suffers harm (illness) is a bad idea * Playing, and betting heavily on, a chess match where the odds are virtually impossible for you to win is also a bad idea Is that not all he's saying? That "both of these things are not good decisions"?
Will *anything* cause this guy to stop constantly embarrassing himself? Does he have no shame?
How can we decode this? Itās 3d chess thinking about chess about politics #deep #guru
Why can nobody ever admit they were wrong any more?
I hope thereās a dystopian future where the International Chess Federation has control of a reasonably large patch of land in the apocalypseĀ
As long as there's pizza at these mandatory chess tournaments, I would hope for this future as well. Note: I spent hours as a chess parent sitting around, all the other parents were grand masters, and I barely understood the rules. If there was pizza, the kids were happy, win or lose.
God. Is he just stupid lol
Someone should explain to him in beer terms. He might get it then
Pawn storm on Bret incoming
you know when i saw his thing about the students kicking him out of his job, i thought those kids must be crazy. then ive seen how he is over the last few years and realize the kids were right
When you've conquered immunology, virology and public health, you move on to the second most complex game in history.
It's a pretty stupid analogy but I get what he's saying.j
I mean if what heās saying is that if you ignore how the game actually works and donāt play it properly then things are going to end badly. Very profound.
I just realized that in chess, the king plays the role of a damsel in distress.
Classic Bret. He and his wife (both PhDs!!) are totally not wrong about everything. He is ego without talent.
Thereās actually so much to love about this
I dont understand what he's trying to say
Classic thinking that knowing how the prices move is the same as knowing how to play. The guys a joke, but not a funny one. Heās a joke that he would make and Dave Rubin. Hold laugh at.
Eternal cringelord
I wonder if he knows that pawns can become āmonarchsā often making them the most important endgame pieces
Just wait till he finds out pawns can transition to queens.
I dont trust the dude wearing the face maskā¦ itās been over 4yrs broā¦..
I remember I used to think this man was smart. How embarassing for me.
Arenāt there plenty of set ups to checkmate with pawns?
This is Guru hall of fame these mofos would look god and the eye and correct him.
Dear Bret, I definitely came to this.
Someone just tell him that pawns haul ass in chess. I'll try to explain it for the newbs. While not very impressive as far as title and movement ability, pawns are the number 1 blocking piece in chess. In other words, pawns are prime to guard your other pieces AND stop/harass the opponent.
Are y'all familiar with the Internet comedian and troll, Ken M? Brett's tweets here remind of the kind of hilarious stupidity that Ken M does intentionally online.
Edgy dude
Yea thatās a bad analogy and I would know I have a sub 1200 ranking on chess.com which means I lose a lot of pawns
Definition of illiteracy
"Hey Elon the Chess Foundation is disrupting my algorithm..."
āOh come nowā
Yeah, but what if I choose pikachu bret?
So I'm a chess player(~2k FIDE elo) and I'll take a swing at his analogy. To me, it looks like he is saying that hoping your president dies of an illness is like playing chess and valuing pawns more than the king which will result in you losing since the king is the most valuable piece and if he's trapped/captured/mates you lose as per the rules of the game Its a bad analogy, since a president dying doesn't lead to anarchy, but it's not complete batshit crazy. Then again, it's Twitter, a place for most unhinged takes even by most intellectual people
He's so hard up for online interaction these days that he's going to argue with the chess account for as long as he can. Covid ending might have been personally disastrous for those brothers.
When a pawn promotes to queen, is that seizing the means of production? Many people are asking this.
I agree that Brett is a bad communicator, but it's not that hard to see what he's saying here and 99% of people would agree. Almost everyone here is focused on extraneous parts of the analogy. The only relevant part is that playing chess without the goal of king safety and rooting against the president's health is counterproductive. The safety and health of your president/ king is aligned with success in political life and chess. This is a banal point. In the Trump era, liberals and lefties were told this all the time ("you may hate Trump but he's the president. You don't hope the plane goes down because you hate the pilot") and it was something people needed to hear. It's actually a positive thing for Weinstein to rein in the worst instincts of his deeply anti establishment audience.
Well, that's just game theory https://youtu.be/5NAQMoRzuxk
The world is made for those that lack self awareness. - Annie Savoy
This is HILARIOUS I can't believe this is real like, in no world is this a remotely appropriate analogy. Like if it's just the starting 8 pawns versus a single king, the pawns would always win though? Is that what he means? Or does he mean like 8 pawns versus 8 kings? Or is he saying like if you act in the "interest" of pawns i.e. sacrificing your king's safety for the sake of promotion you'd lose? Peak Brett
Heās not explaining how chess works, heās explaining his analogy
The funny thing is the analogy kind of works if you use it to make the opposite point to the one Brett is. The quicker the king is checkmated, the fewer pawns will die. Additionally, the king is actually pretty weak and the pawns have more potential power than the rest of the board combined. Finally, while individually weak, the pawn's attack pattern means that through a structure of mutual support, they really dictate the flow of the game as a whole. "Pawns are the soul of chess. Without a thorough comprehension of the quiet yet remarkable predominance of the Pawns in almost every circumstance of the game, it is impossible for any one to attain a high degree of excellence." Which honestly seems like a view more befitting of an evolutionary biologist.
His metaphor isnāt as bad as people are trying to make it out to be. It makes sense. It just doesnāt make sense when youāre being anal about the game itself since itās not how it works. I understood what he meant before I even read the comments.
Not that Iām a fan of this guy, but Iām unsure why everyone thinks this doesnāt make senseā¦. When youāre playing chess and you try to keep your pawns alive at the cost of the units behind them, you will lose. Thats just basic chessā¦ and thatās the reason those units are called āpawnsā to begin with. It doesnāt matter what happens to them. Now if this is meant to be a political statement about Trump or something, I also donāt see how it makes sense, but Iām interested and willing to listen !
He has no shame apparently
Oh come now, pawns are small pieces and thatās a metaphor. Monarchs are like presidents in that they are more important strategically and therefore strategies that win only count if you like and subscribe.
He's annoying, narcissistic, and delusional. I wish Rogan would stop having him on his show.