42 minute read
Maybe if you're a scrub. 19 minutes baby!!! And that included the minute or so that I thought about copypasting it into a text editor so I could highlight portions to sneer at. Best part of this story is that it is chess themed and takes place in "Skewers", Washington, vs. "Forks", Washington, as made famous by Twilight.
Anyway, what a pile of shit. I choose not to read Yud's stuff most of the time, but I felt that I might do this one. What do you get if you mix smashboards, goofus and gallant strips, that copypasta about needing a high IQ to like rick and morty, and the worst aspects of woody allen? This!
My summary:
Part 1. A chess player, "Mr. Humman", plays a match against "Mr. Assi" and loses. He has a conversation with a romantic interest, "Socratessa", or Tessa for short, about whether or not you can say if someone is better than another in chess. Often cited examples of other players are "Mr. Chimzee" and "Mr. Neumann".
Both "Humman" and "Socratessa" are strawmen. "Socratessa" is described as thus:
One of the less polite young ladies of the town, whom some might have called a troll,
Humman, of course, talks down to her, like so:
"Oh, my dear young lady," Mr. Humman said, quite kindly as was his habit when talking to pretty women potentially inside his self-assessed strike zone
I hate to give credit to Yud here for anything, so here's what I'll say: This characterisation of Humman is so douchey that it's completely transparent that Yud doesn't want you to like this guy. Yud's methodology was to have Humman make strawman-level arguments and portray him as kind of a creep. However, I think what actually happened is that Yud has accidentally replicated arguments/johns you might hear from a smash scrub about why they are not a scrub, but are actually a good player, just with a veneer of chess. So I don't like this character, but not because of Yud's intent.
Socratessa (Tessa for short) is, as gerikson points out, is a Socratic strawman. That's it. It's unclear why Yud describes her as either a troll or pretty. He should have just said she was gallant.* She argues that Elo ratings exist and are good enough at predicting whether one player will beat another. Of course, Humman disagrees, and as the goofus, must be wrong.*
The story should end here, as it has fulfilled its mission as an obvious analog to Yud's whole thing about whether or not you can measure intelligence or say someone is smarter than another.
Part 2. Humman and Socratessa argue about whether or not you can measure intelligence or say someone is smarter than another.
E: if you were wondering, yes, there is eugenics in the story.
E2: forgot to tie up some allusions, specifically the g&g of it all. Marked added sentences with a *.
ITT: new synonym for promptfondler: “brain cuck”