Stigma wrote on 09/15/20 at 02:30:47:
I'll take your word for it that you're all rational and objective. But you can't know the same goes for everyone else. I for one have studied too much psychology to claim I'm never affected by information that "should" be irrelevant to a decision.
I'm not always rational, because it's not a quality but an act. It takes energy and work, and when I'm tired I simply can't do it. But as an analyst, being rational is what I'm paid to do. Given enough time and caffeine, I can marshal the criteria, the weights and measures, the rows and columns and formulas, and turn the crank. Having done all that work, at that precise moment, when it's time to cast my vote, which really amounts to ratifying my analysis,
right then is when I am incapable of being irrational.
For me playing chess is literally the same process. Just like in real life, sometimes I'm too tired to do it. And unlike in my day job where I have decent skills, my chess skills are mostly substandard. But given enough time and caffeine, I can turn the chess analysis crank, and whatever move comes out on top,
that's what I play. That one act, not the shoddy analysis preceding but the finality of yielding to it, is precisely why I became a master. Other players may have more pure chess skill, but they have moments of irrationality. They have a style, they have a predeliction, they want to make a certain move work, they want to win with an attack instead of an endgame, or vice versa -- one way or another they try to impose their own will on the chess move, instead of the other way around. Not all the time, but enough of the time to give me a chance.