Is Chess Destroying Our Strategic Thought?

The Closed System -- Chess operates in a closed system where all information is available to both players, and there is no randomness. This differs significantly from real-world situations where information may be incomplete or unreliable. Over-reliance on closed-system thinking can be a limitation in scenarios with unknown variables.

Preference for Optimization -- In chess, the goal is often to find the optimal move based on established principles. In real-world situations, there might not be a clear "optimal" solution, and decisions might require balancing multiple conflicting factors, including risk, uncertainty, and ethical considerations.

Pattern Recognition -- Chess teaches valuable skills like pattern recognition, but these patterns are specific to the chessboard. While pattern recognition is important in many contexts, over-relying on chess patterns might lead to cognitive biases or missed opportunities in more complex real-world scenarios.

Lack of Negotiation -- Chess doesn't involve negotiation or cooperation, unlike many real-world strategic situations. In reality, working with others, finding compromises, and building relationships are often critical elements of successful strategy.

Singular Focus -- In chess, players often focus single-mindedly on the goal of checkmate. This singular focus may not translate well to real-world situations where multifaceted and holistic approaches are often necessary. Real-world strategies often require considering a broader range of objectives & stakeholders.

Risk Tolerance -- Chess doesn't inherently involve risk-taking, as every move can be calculated. Real-world scenarios often require assessing and managing risk, making decisions in conditions of uncertainty, and occasionally taking calculated risks to achieve strategic goals.

It seems to me that chess is a vastly inferior way to teach strategic thinking based on the considerations listed above. I'm sure there's likely more than what I've listed, but I wanted to put these forward and ask, why are we saying chess is developing anything but bad strategic habits in our lives?

To say "there's no strategy in life" seems odd considering that we have goals in life, just like checkmate is the goal in chess. Given these life goals, it seems like we'll need some sort of plan to obtain these goals... you could even say a 'strategy'. The point you're making about the strategy of chess being incomparable to life is exactly my point: that chess' vast differences from life are exactly what makes it a reinforcer of bad thinking habits, particularly in regards to strategy. It's hard to think about a game that harms our real-world strategic thinking as improving our clarity.

@Hazie991:

With your talk about "destroying our abilities", I think you are severely underestimating our capacity to switch from one mode of thought and response to another.

I don't know any serious chess player who thinks life away from the board is the same as at the board. We know how to shift our thinking and our strategies to deal with the real world too. The brain is very flexible and adaptable, whereas in your model it is rigid.

To say that most strategies in life fail miserably might be taking it too far. Most of us can accomplish the goal of making breakfast in the morning, getting to work, and so on. I'd even say that we accomplish most of our goals, even if they're simple ones. Not only that, these goals will need strategy to see them accomplished well. As for needing to manipulate others to achieve goals, that's a bizarre way of thinking about strategy, and likely suited just for sociopaths. Most goals need just the opposite, the cooperation with others to achieve our goals (a positive sum game, unlike chess). This reinforces my point that chess is degrading our daily strategic thinking.

Like Llama and Name have already mentioned, I view chess as seperate from life. An individual hobby. My thinking (or lack of it) in it doesn't necessarily impact how I think in other areas of life (though I suppose it might, to some extent).

I'm also tempted to nitpick some of those examples ...

"Preference for optimization" for example. I don't agree that a chess player must always try to play the best move. Often, a player is aware that there are many paths one can take, and the move that a player chooses can vary, depending on their mood. On many occasions, I know full well that a move is not optimal, but I'll play it anyway, because I trust that I can navigate it better than my opponent - and/or because I want to introduce some chaos into the game.

Just as in life: humans don't always choose the best path, even if they're aware of it.

I also disagree with "Singular Focus". When playing, I find myself focusing on many different aspects of the position. I'm usually not thinking of "checkmate" but rather of "how can I improve my postion / induce opponent weaknesses / reduce my own weaknesses?". Often, these considerations come at odds with each other, as a move that addresses one concern might raise other concerns at the same time ... so if anything, I'd say that chess often involves juggling many different decisions and attempting to find an acceptable compromise.

"Risk tolerance" also seems suspect. To say that "every move can be calculated" is wishful thinking. Perhaps if we were chess engines, we could all calculate like machines. As a human, though, I have to accept my limitations and recognize that some positions are too complex, or are beyond my ability, so I have willingly take risks here and there and trust that my short-range thinking will hold up after a continuation goes farther than I'm able to see. Sometimes, a move that looked reasonable in the short term ends up being a blunder in the long term - but that's part of what makes chess so challenging.

It's naive to think forcing our mind to think in a specific way won't carry over to other areas of our life. We may like to assume that we're not training our mind to think in inferior ways, but this seems hopeful at best. Thinking in rigid terms of 1. e4...e5 2. Nf3...d4 day in and day out and not actually introducing ourselves to new variables in strategy seems like a terrible way to mold the mind. 
For the critique of chess & optimization: If you're not playing the most optimal move in chess, you're playing the game the wrong way. There's the move that gives you a better advantage, and the one that gives you an inferior position. For every good chess player, you take the former over the latter, and I'd say this is how almost all chess players play the game. As for introducing chaos into the game, this is even worse, as you should be controlling the board. 
For the critique of chess & singular focus: Why would you improve your position (which induces opponent weakness / reduces yours)? Would it possibly be to checkmate or not get checkmated? This seems like a weak argument, as these sub-goals are for the singular goal of checkmate / defending checkmate.
For chess & risk tolerance: I can accept that we're not all machines. But you still know everything that's going on in the game. You see every piece, every square. This is very unlike real-world scenarios, where we must operate with incomplete information. So I'd say it's a different form of risk tolerance that doesn't reflect real-world scenarios at all.

Lol that isn't my intention. I was playing, and even winning, yet realized the game isn't going to actually help my strategic thinking at all. And I wanted to start a serious conversation about chess, especially when I hear people raving about how good it is for your mind. It's worth asking the question if it really is healthy or not.

That's easy enough to say. Go on?

You just gave me an idea for a chess variant where on each move there would be a finite, say 5%, probability that the players would be required to play a randomly selected move from among the legal moves available to them in the position. This would remove the determinism and full knowledge and require bringing in risk management strategies.

Explain?

Well now you see, ideas like that would improve our strategic thought while playing the game. I like where your head is at. Once we stop thinking about chess as some holy, untouchable game, we can start improving it as a tool to help us think in better strategic ways.

Why are we going to be that naive in thinking our methods in playing chess won't be carried over to other areas of life? Even if it's subconciously.

And this doesn't work vice-versa because?

Well, I did say "chess variant". No need to change chess as a whole. We can always leave traditional chess as-is as an archetype and create variants to satisfy different conceptions.

But thanks for the compliment.

Chinese emperor trained his child to master a kind of chess!! Shah of Persia loved chess and spread it abroad!! French society cultivate this game and have secret clubs and congresses!! God hates chess logic cause it goes contrary to his logic. His dutch school of gambits almost destroyed chess. He sometime hits with his wave power chess masters

Yeah, I forgot about this.

With computers now though you could make it just a two player game where the computer monitors and intervenes to make the random moves automatically.

This viewpoint is a function of playing level and expertise. At certain levels, many players are still concerned with finding the singular "best" path. This is why it's so common to see players asking questions such as: "What's the best opening?", "What's the best defense?", and "Which piece is better, knight or bishop?"

Once you become stronger and more experienced, though, you begin to realize that there are many paths up the mountain, and that your improved skill level has granted you the freedom to choose different paths at your discretion.

If you allow yourself to become a slave to a singular, narrow mindset (such as believing that only "the most optimal" moves can ever be played), chess might become rather boring quite fast.

Some days a player may want to play Classically. Other days, they may want to play in a Hypermodern fashion. Maybe Player A wants to dubiously gambit a pawn to see if he can come back from it. Perhaps Player B decides to throw away a tempo just to introduce more imbalance to the game - even though he knows for certain that the move is technically a mistake ...

You don't have to play chess the same way every time - and your goals, while playing, can change as well.

Chess is an inferior way to teach strategic thinking compared to what? Compared to checkers or compared to a university education? Or compared to military training? What's your point here? Nobody says you should choose military generals based on their chess prowess. Chess is a fun and challenging hobby and it has the potential for positive mental effects and it is certainly practicing strategic thinking, and the differences between chess and real life that you listed doesn't diminish any of the real positive effects. Of course the extent of any positive effects on a child or adult chess improver may not be as great, or may be greater than what you might think, we can look at the scientific studies on it to have a better idea than simply poo-pooing any benefits towards strategic thinking because chess is much simpler than real life.

I appreciate it's a good point of discussion though.

As for my own personal experience, chess is a good way for me to gauge how well my mind is performing on a given day, and on my energy levels and how well-rested I am or not. On my average day I think my thought processes are at least slightly improved since taking up chess than beforehand, but as I took up serious exercise as a hobby also it's impossible for me to know for sure, but I do think that chess has had some measure of benefit on my mental processes.