Tyler Cowen writes,

Now if someone can pass the chess test, the art test, and the success test with flying colors…there are such people!

When I played tournament Othello, I might have been considered the top analyst, even though I was never the top player. But the best players in the world were Japanese, and they might not have passed Tyler’s chess test. Their “analysis” was often of the form “Ishii plays this square, but Tanida plays that square.” The idea was that you got to be good by copying great players and learning to intuitively mimic their styles. They did not employ the elaborate explanations of “why” that non-Japanese players used (“this takes away a quiet move to c3 and forces Black to be the first to break the double-wall pattern.”) The Japanese approach turns out to be good preparation for learning from computers, because the computer Othello program will not explain why it makes the move it does. The best you can hope is to learn to imitate its style.

For the art test, could I use folk dancing? I can appreciate good posture in good dancers. They carry their backs straight, their heads high and their shoulders wide. My own posture is graceless and hunched over, and when I try to copy dancers with good posture my wife cringes and tells me to stop looking like a [not nice word signifying homosexual].

As for the success test, I think that an intense desire for success can indeed be motivating, especially to continue to take big risks when another person would say “I’ll quit while I’m ahead.” I am definitely in the “quit while I’m ahead” camp.