Chess – Radical behaviorist leftist

Competition, handicaps and behavior

With me joining the recent chess boom, including me playing the game as well as watching and reviewing the mini-series “The Queen’s Gambit”, some thoughts naturally arose about competition, different skill levels and ways to maintain a healthy amount of (competitive) behavior. This is an opportunity to ponder unequal starting positions, different skill levels, odds games, handicaps, also more generally fairness and equality because this generalizes from simple games to real life.

Let’s start with something commonly seen. Consider the following humorous video where monkeys are paid unequally for the same action:

For some reason we understand that the monkeys reaction makes sense. If we tried to explain what is happening, it would be fruitless to refer to a “sense of fairness” as what we are dealing are not abstractions but always some behavior. Moreover, we don’t really know the exact history of the given monkeys – it appears that grapes are already more reinforcing than cucumbers. What can probably be said that these monkeys lived together and were fed similar food – in this setting a fellow monkey getting a luxury food is an evocative stimulus for getting the same item – this is set up in the video as well. Once no reinforcement (grape) arrives we have a negative punishment situation (removal of a reinforcer). Now from classical theory we know what kind of behavioral reactions we get following this kind of punishment – we see counter-coercion (also known as counter-aggression).

Now let’s switch to another setting – one of behavioral science’s favourite animal – pigeons. I will be referring to a very fine article by John V. Keller “B. F. Skinner, K-pulses, and the Development of Paradigms of Social Behavior” in the 2019 Q1 edition of the Operants journal.

Despite the complicated title the article deals with so-called “social behavior” in pigeons. Two pigeons had to peck a button for food and only the first pigeon to 10 presses gained the reinforcement – in other words there was a competition contingency. This is what transpired by the words of the author:

In my first experiment with this schedule I saw quickly that it wasn’t going to work. One pigeon (Bart), although he was only slightly faster, was winning virtually every bout. Homer was rapidly tailing out into extinction.
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by this result. Pure competition often has the effect of producing permanent losers and winners in the game of life. Just ask any economist about laissez faire capitalism!
Keller (2020) – B. F. Skinner, K-pulses, and the Development of Paradigms of Social Behavior

All right, no surprise here – no reinforcement, no behavior. What if we change the conditions? Why not introduce a handicap? (should we call it a “fairness measure”?):

The handicap, in this case, was an adjusting one. When a bird won a bout (i.e., received reinforcement at the end of an FR 10), its next ratio was increased by one, whereas its opponent’s ratio was lowered by one. Voila! This worked like a charm as you can see in the film clip.
It’s clear that both birds competed on every trial with great vigor. Their individual rates approached three responses per sec and rarely did the winner’s handicap grow to more than a response or two.
Keller (2020) – B. F. Skinner, K-pulses, and the Development of Paradigms of Social Behavior

Note: FR 10 means that the reinforcement schedule is a fixed ratio 10 – every tenth response is reinforced.

Are we seeing a pattern here? Access to reinforcement results in more behavior. Now if we apply this to human behavior or, returning to chess, as in the beginning of the post – playing a higher rated opponent and losing every time is not fun (i.e. behavior is not reinforced). Therefore we introduce odds games to even out the chances and ensure reinforcement to maintain behavior and fun play for both players.

Put simply, to have behavior we need reinforcement. This brings us to a very interesting idea that is the General level of reinforcement introduced by Joseph Cautela (1984). Here we will mention a related article. It discusses behavior of yet another animal species – dogs, as well as humans. The title is Understanding Depression in Dogs and Humans by Craig Mixon in the website DogScience. This is a very worthy additional read.

The author states that reinforcement is the energy that powers behavior. This is where the idea of general level of reinforcement comes in – much overall reinforcement results in a very vigorous and active organism while a low level gives a moping, sad individual – we often designate such state of affairs as “depression”. The article provides a neat connection to this blog’s leftist side:

Some celebrities receive continuous reinforcement across the board, by which I mean that they are in a position in which they can draw continuous reinforcement for absolutely everything they do. They can find people who want to listen to everything they have to say and people who will pay them just for the chance to spend time with them. For some celebrities, there is not anything they do for which they cannot find someone who will reward them in some way for doing it.
People who live their lives on a dense schedule of reinforcement tend not only to be busy, they also tend to be extremely happy.
When reinforcement falls below a certain level, people and dogs just stop responding. However, that should come as no surprise. Remember, reinforcement produces the energy that makes behavior happen. Therefore, when no reinforcement is forthcoming, lethargy soon follows. What you get, then, is an inactive organism that just tends to mope around.
When someone falls into a low energy, dysfunctional funk as a result of a thin schedule of reinforcement, that is by definition, depression.
Be they dog or human, that’s what’s happening when you are dealing with a depressed subject. They are operating under a schedule of reinforcement that is so thin that there are just not enough rewarding stimuli in their environment to keep them active and functioning effectively, not to mention happily.
In that sense, many people who are depressed due to ratio strain may actually be suffering much more from a situational problem rooted in environmental factors than from a true psychological disorder in the sense that one usually thinks of such things.
Mixon (2009) – Understanding Depression in Dogs and Humans

If stated differently – “successful people” are happy not because they are busy, but rather the other way around – they are busy because they are happy. Expressed with less psychologization and more in the vein of this post (and more generally of the RBL blog) – one gets reinforcement not exactly because one acts, but rather one acts because one’s behavior is reinforced. Keep in mind the principle of selection by consequences!

Extending the discussion of basically what is equal (or at least more equal) access to reinforcements (what can be called rights), let’s visit a discussion about economic inequality, where the oft-cited economist in this blog and Greek MP Yanis Varoufakis makes insightful commentary:

You see for a while now . . . hard work can no longer be relied upon to lift people from poverty. This is the tragedy of the last 30 years.
But let’s finish off positively. And let me convey to Larry [Summers] my kind of socialism, the kind of ideal that fires me up. It will be a sporting parallel. But it’s not going to be the Olympics. It’s going to be the national football league, your NFL. Where in the interests, remember of competition, not fairness, teams face a harsh salary cap and the best young players are forced to sign up for the weakest of teams. So by preventing the successful team from monopolizing the best players, the NFL’s constraints liberate the true spirit of competition.
Yanis Varoufakis (2020) – What to do about economic inequality

The point is hopefully clear – to have vigorous and happy individuals with a great deal of behavior, as well as to ensure competition which does not lead to monopolies or oligopolies, we have to secure a society where the distribution of income and (more importantly) wealth is more equal. Could anyone argue that wealth does not provide enhanced access to reinforcement?

The societal tendencies in the global post-2008 COVID-19 economy, however, are quite the reverse – inequality is rising. Without taking care of material inequalities any proposals to fight “psychological problems” like depression or demotivation are misled – hiring additional psychologists, ensuring the work of suicide hotlines, spreading positive thinking or the “Law of attraction”, establishing happiness economics are reactionary rumblings to maintain the status quo.

Radical behaviorist leftist analysis of the Queen’s Gambit (2020)

Let’s try something new for this blog – a short radical behaviorist leftist analysis of the recent chess based series The Queens Gambit. I will just highlight and comment on some aspects of the series of interest, without digging too deep for this first time.

As is customary online, here’s a warning that there are SPOILERS ahead!

Background or socio-economic status

The series is based in the US and is a story about Beth Harmon – a chess prodigy and a woman chess world champion, dominating over the chessboard while at the same time grappling with various substance abuse problems.

One of the main themes of the series is the protagonist’s upbringing. After her mother’s death in a suicidal car crash, which Beth survived, she went on to live in an orphanage. Her mother and father were divorced and, as is revealed in the last episode, even though “her mother came from money and married into more of it”, Beth did not reside in a wealthy neighbourhood as she and her mother lived in a trailer. Afterwards, already in her teenage years, Beth was adopted. This already is quite unlikely, because, unfortunately, most adoptions happen up to the age of 5. Speaking about adoptions and troubled mothers, further points are provided by Jody Allen Crowe in his fine book “The Fatal Link” (2008). Though the book focuses on fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), the common denominator here is a problematic maternal context:

Adopted children, unfortunately, are at a very high risk of having been prenatally exposed to alcohol. American families, to avoid adopting a “crack baby” from the United States, many times have adopted undetected brain damaged FASD children from Romania, Bulgaria, and other middle European countries. The unsuspecting adoptive parents are then overwhelmed with the litany of problems as a result of the biological mother’s drinking that led to brain damage. Simply put, who are the mothers who abandon their babies or put their babies up for adoption? The vast majority are young mothers who don’t want or can’t take care of their babies. These unborn children are at great risk of being the victims of binge drinking by the young mothers.
Jody Allen Crowe (2008) – The Fatal Link

The main point here is that Beth has quite a challenging background which makes the wonder story of the series in the real world quite unlikely. We’ll see why in a moment.

Talent or hard work?

One strand in any “skill-based” wonder stories like in the Queen’s Gambit, will always be the explanation of the new found success. What led to high level of chess play – was it Beth Harmon’s innate talent? Was it hard work? Or was it luck? Or maybe the drugs?

In reality, we have to mind the fact that most chess Grandmasters or even somewhat weaker players start playing chess from an (sometimes extremely) early age and they probably come from at least somewhat affluent families/background where the children have adequate resources, access to chess clubs and connections. Also, excelling at chess (as in any sport) takes an extremely long time and time in childhood is generally easier found – no trivialities such as making food, providing for the family, planning for tournaments, booking/flights or hotels bother the upcoming prodigy. They are taken care by the parents while the child can focus solely on the chess.

Now, in Queen’s Gambit we have an unrealistic story in this respect – coming from somewhat non-optimal familial context chances of sport success are slim. The loss of parents makes the chances even slimmer. With Beth’s ban of playing chess in the orphanage for a few childhood years, grandmaster success becomes practically impossible. Without proper financial support, a person in Beth’s situation would have to work and even with a chess hobby grandmaster heights would be out of reach.

So this “underdog”, “from rags to riches”, “pull yourself by the bootstraps” story, even though glorified in the capitalist, individualized society, has only a miniscule probability of happening. Perhaps, we can name some genuine success stories coming from disadvantage (certainly not Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos). Even so, mind the survivorship bias – if we focus on the percentage of people from similar contexts that have become successful (rich, famous etc.) and compare this to the overwhelming majority of non-success, we’ll come to a grim conclusion.

Feminism

One more, perhaps an inspiring to some, strand of the series is the gender of the protagonist. We have to mind that in the most part, chess is a very male-dominated activity. A woman chess champion never happened in real life while the series comes to this conclusion.

Beth Harmon casually the quite quiet girl, with a (traditionally speaking) deep and scarred inner life, seemingly not interested in mundane things (remember the girl tea party) and focused on one thing – chess. In the meantime, absolutely unrelenting over the chessboard with an aggressive attacking style and assertive in her relations, including sexual, with men in her life.

Even though breaking gender stereotypes, Beth is the best in regards of chess, still the typical gender roles are reflected neatly in the series. Speaking of chess, only the first opponent that Beth faces is a girl, all people related to the 64 squares from there on out are men – her opponents and seconds. Women participate in Beth’s life from traditional emotional contexts – most saliently her adoption mother with whom she develops a deep connection and also her “guardian angel” and childhood friend Jolene.

All in all, Beth may serve as a role model for girls/women who undertake activities mostly occupied by men – an inspiration to resist trivial temptations and work hard. Either way I would like to proceed with caution – “improving oneself” or “focusing on yourself”, i.e. individualized fighting with institutionalized inequalities for women might be as effective as banging a wall with one’s head. There is an argument to be made that economic inequality is based on gender inequality – arguably most labor in our societies is unpaid – domestic labor such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of relatives/nursing is mostly done by women and is not compensated. A fitting joke:

Economists sometimes joke that if a man marries his housekeeper, the GDP of the country declines.
Katrine Marçal (2015) – Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner (p. 52)

Let’s not wander from our leftist leanings – not addressing systemic problems as is not done in the series, will probably lead us nowhere.

Drugs

Perhaps the most visible and shocking aspect of the series are the substance abuse problems of Beth. These issues find parallels in the chess world. In the 20th century, alcohol problems were common among chess players, e.g. Tal or Alekhine. An interesting and rare recent-ish example is of Vladislav Tkachiev and his passing out in one 2009 chess tournament.

Due to rising competition, now most grandmasters probably have a stricter lifestyle regarding substance abuse. Articles such as “What chess grandmasters eat for peak concentration and performance” and “The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving” illustrate this neatly. Of course, we have to note that we are mostly speaking about a small number of top GMs, which have enough income for a more lavish lifestyle. Most people and even GMs can’t make enough money from simply playing chess and either have to teach chess or resort to other sources of income. We should also be aware that wealthier people have better nutrition, do sports and have an optimal body weight more often and generally live longer. As another joke goes (with credit and additional comment below):

The more random people people you see jogging for no reason, the higher the rent is going up.

The more random people you see
jogging for no reason the higher
the rent is going up

Returning to 1. d4 d5 2. c4, what about Beth Harmon and her tranquilizer and alcohol issues (or should we say blessings)? By the way, the tranquilizer is a non-existing drug Xanzolam which resembles real-life Librium. In the show, Beth is actually helped by the drug as it contributes to her incredible focus and play. Furthermore, given the 60s context, alcohol abuse for a top-level player is a very realistic attribute. Maybe the drug was the critical puzzle piece of the series and the component needed for Beth Harmon’s success in an otherwise disadvantaged complex of conditions as discussed earlier. Nevertheless, in no way can this be recommended to try at home. Or perhaps, the substance abuse serves as an obstacle for the prodigy to overcome as otherwise it would be too easy a story – maybe even too unrealistic?

West vs. East

This aspect in the series has perhaps only a secondary significance. The players from Soviet Russia are portrayed as the juggernaut of chess that are generally much stronger than counterparts in the US. This is obviously inspired by 20th century reality of chess. The eastern lands are not necessarily presented negatively – Russia is shown to be a favourable place for chess players. The main lesson to be learned from the Russians is that their GMs help one another in the series while Americans tend to be more hostile to each other. This moral of collective strength may appear as ironic or paradoxical – on the one hand self-sufficiency of Beth is promoted while on the other the importance of camaraderie is demonstrated.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the short series The Queen’s Gambit is a quality watch, with eye-pleasing 60s aesthetics, drama, relationships and well thought-through chess with the help of Garry Kasparov. Just don’t expect much of critical behavioural or leftist analysis in the series and do go watch the series if you have not already.