Ok, but Don't Tell Chess Bloggers or their Readers

Caruana not exactly selling the game.

Maybe chess is ultimately meaningless, as Fabiano Caruana says in passing in this short video, but we shouldn’t confuse that claim with the further claim that it is without value. (Somewhat analogously, one can be skeptical of animal rights - especially of the claim that dogs and cats, or apes and dolphins, have or ought to be recognized as having the same sorts of rights as humans - withough thinking that animals have only instrumental value and can be (mis-) treated by humans in any way whatever.)

Chess has instrumental value. It’s good for helping young minds develop and older minds stay sharp, and playing chess at the club is good for helping us meet our social needs. It also lets us experience and even create beauty (maybe not in the contemporary Italian Game - one of many reasons for “The Policy” - but it’s not hard to find), which is at least arguably a fundamental human need. Even when chess is not beautiful, it’s generally interesting, and that too gives the game value.

The critic might reload, suggesting that opportunity costs need to be taken into account, and whatever goods chess might provide can be had elsewhere, with greater value to humanity as a whole. There’s religious work, philanthropy, medical missions, fundraising for good causes, running for political office (just kidding), volunteering to tutor struggling students, etc. Maybe even something like working on one’s musicianship would count, as more people are likely to receive pleasure from one’s ability to sing or play an instrument than from our chess games. Thus chess is (ultimately) meaningless, and while it may have minimal value it would be better for us to spend money on chess books and starting spending it on mosquito nets for those living in countries where malaria is a desperate problem, and to stop spending time on chess and spend it instead volunteering to tutor struggling math students or teaching piano at a local school.

There’s something to that, and I wouldn’t want to discourage people from any of those activities. Indeed, it’s worth thinking seriously about whether we should be spending more of our time and money on things we believe to be of ultimate or at least great importance - and then acting accordingly. But are we really forced to choose between chess and more meaningful activities? In the sense that we don’t have infinite time or money, we must choose to sacrifice some of those resources for X rather than Y. But even if we think that Y is more valuable than X, does it mean that we must only engage in Y-ing?

I can think of at least four reasons why one might answer “no”. One is the claim that nothing has intrinsic value, and so it’s solely up to the individual. That’s not a claim I would endorse - it seems flatly false to me. Some atheists hold to it and some don’t, but I’m a theist and have no inclination to accept it.

A second reason is a bit funny: one might think that there for any X there might be a more valuable Y, and so since there is no best aim one should just pick some good aim and stick with that. I think there are arguments where that sort of objection makes sense, but it’s not clear that this is one of them. For instance, while one might say that the aim of saving 501 people is better than saving 500, and 502 is better than saving 501, etc., why not say “my aim is to save as many people as I can”? It might be possible to reframe any aim in that way.

A third reason: it’s not possible for one to only engage in Y or in activities that are directly instrumental to doing Y. Let’s suppose that I’m convinced that I should use my resources to save as many lives as possible. That means working to make money (unless I myself am doing the live-saving, e.g. by being a doctor). Am I to work 24 hours a day, every day? It’s a physical impossibility. Even if much of my time is spent instrumentally, I’m almost certainly going to burn out, alienate my family, and bore my friends to death if all I do is work and do what’s directly necessary to bringing in more money. We need leisure, to do things and spend time on things we enjoy, that make our lives valuable, and that aren’t done for the sake of something else. (“Need” is too strong a word, perhaps, but it contributes something valuable to human flourishing that a one-note approach to life doesn’t - and for almost all of us, it ends up helping us do better when it comes to recharging us for the important aspects of life.)

Fourth: If we’re doing everything for the sake of something else, then…what’s the point? We’re not viruses: there is more to a flourishing human life than existing for the sake of passing on our genes. There is more to life than working so we can have enough money, so we can buy a home and food, so we can have the strength to go to work, so we can have money, so that…etc. This is not to say that playing chess is more important than saving lives, but it is to say that saving lives is valuable because there’s more to life than saving (or creating) lives; it’s in part so that we can do things like enjoying each other’s company while giving ourselves a mental and aesthetic workout by playing chess. (Also true: competition can be both enjoyable and beneficial as well.) Note too, by the way, that we’re not only benefiting ourselves, but others as well. We’re spending time with them, letting them enjoy our company as we enjoy theirs. We’re helping them get that mental workout too, and giving them the chance to experience and create beauty on the 64 squares.

A last objection (for now). Yes, the critic might say: chess, even if meaningless, has value, and it’s okay to spend time on things which have less intrinsic value than other things. Moreover, one need not engage only in more important activities or in activities that have instrumental value in the service of those more important activities. The “useless” is a respectable category. But within the category of the “useless” - those things we do which aren’t intrinsically important but are done for their own sakes - couldn’t we do better than chess?

I’ll offer three quick responses. First, if I’m choosing an activity because it’s important, then it’s no longer “useless”: I’m turning it into an instrumental good. Second, a world with more leisure activities is richer than one with only one, or at least with fewer than there are now. Suppose one thinks that what’s generally referred to as “classical” music is the greatest and most noble “useless” activity there is. (You might disagree; if so, pick your own.) Does that mean that a world where everyone is a musical descendant of good ol’ J.S. Bach is better than a world where many are, but in which there are many other musical genres, to say nothing of dance, painting, sculpture, literature, film, and so on? This seems to me obviously false. Third, who is the “we” in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph? Magnus Carlsen is clearly a talented person, but it’s highly unlikely that he would be a composer or musician or sculptor or dancer of the same caliber as he is as a chess player. The pleasure that he and other greats of the game have given chess fans is something valuable, something to be cherished, and it’s at least far from clear that the world’s store of beauty and entertainment would have been enhanced by making Carlsen a composer and Vladimir Kramnik a painter (some of you may recall “a painter paints”) and Alireza Firouzja a fashion designer (ok, scratch that one, maybe).

In short, Caruana may be right, but there is room in life for saving lives, listening to Bach’s Mass in B-minor (and you should!), and for playing and enjoying chess, too.