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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28012 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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The highest ranking female chess player ever, Judit Polgar, is ranked 61st overall. There aren't any other females in the top 100. It beggars belief that mere implicit discrimination would be enough to turn the game so strongly against females at the highest levels., but I don't expect feminists to understand what something not even passing the smell test means. If there was actual explicit discrimination and rules barring women from joining they might have a point.

If people want to use the prevalence of top level female chess players as evidence for something, it probably is worth being somewhat familiar with the literature around it though.

Very roughly, the most common arguments around the the gap follow this 2008 paper, looking at the German federation. There they argue that participation fully explains the gap at the top level, though they don't really argue if the participation rate itself caused by self selection on ability, preference, social pressure, etc. There is a 2010 rebuttal arguing (probably correctly) that modeling Elo with a normal is flawed.

There was a brief resurgence of this genre when The Queen's Gambit miniseries was released, of which the chessbase article is frequently refereed to. Curiously India appears to be the exception, as subsequent analysis on multiple federations reveals.

From these I conclude that:

  • The Polgars are truely exceptional
  • Part of the top level performance gap is caused by participation rate, which itself is not really explained. My speculative view is that women are more attracted and/or a funneled towards pursuits that are higher EV (In dollars, utilitons, social good, etc.). As the old Morphy quote goes "The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life."
  • Probably there remains some residual gap, though smaller in magnitude than the apparent gap, between the top female and male players. I will equivocate, and not even speculate on the reason for this.

It is probably worth being prepared for the participation rate argument though, since it is the natural rebuttal to references to the composition of top level players as evidence of inherent weakness.

Less booing, please.

You can make your (probably correct) point about preferences or abilities without taking shots at a general category.

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