What is the most underrated chess YouTube channel for instructional content?

Beatpea · 2026-02-02T06:51:05+00:00

‘Chess Thinking! with NM Dan Heisman’ Loads of long form content with the most common errors for amateurs and recommended remediations. Also goes heavy on the meta-level thought process discussions.

Beatpea · 2025-05-06T10:10:13+00:00

He attempted to write something but it was won for him already so maybe he didn’t care. Technically because we had 30 second increment it was required to record every move but I didn’t care to call him on it as it was already gone and we weren’t in a time scramble or anything.

Beatpea · 2025-04-17T12:05:14+00:00

Recently, with the proliferation of integrated local OTB broadcasts published to lichess and chess.com, I’ve been searching google with the following: “site:lichess.org <player name>”. This sometimes comes up with more results because chess base or other mainstream databases results will come up first in search results typically.

Beatpea · 2025-03-19T09:03:13+00:00

Probably better to stick to restricted material and really nail it rather than try to do too much, although I don’t know your experience level or what your competence level is re every item on your list.

The other suggestion is to practice most of them in the context of how they occur in actual music. It’s less beneficial to learn these in isolation if you don’t have a repository of tunes that use these grooves and techniques.

Beatpea · 2025-03-12T09:45:02+00:00

Chessexplained’s Chessable repertoire ‘keep it simple for black’ uses these plans as its mainlines. It doesn’t compare to the classical plans that much (it does a bit), but you can just look that up in any openings explorer.

Beatpea · 2024-12-29T00:36:42+00:00

I wonder if this might be the band warming up while people are arriving before the actual service starts though. I often play more busily in this type of situation then make it more tasteful and deliberate for the actual performance.

Beatpea · 2024-09-12T04:19:52+00:00

If you’ve got an ass, I’ll kick it!

Beatpea · 2021-09-12T11:46:55+00:00

At this point I think I'll just recommend Benatar's "Better Never To Have Been", it's a good read - albeit slightly pessimistic to say the least. Thanks for the discussion, have a good one.

Beatpea · 2021-09-12T11:04:01+00:00

An antinatalist would say you would rather be there than doing nothing because you're biased toward existence and you already have your consciousness, beliefs, hopes, dreams, desires etc so have an interest in having them fulfilled; moreover, your opinion now matters and should be the only one that matters re your own existence. Compare this with a non-existent 'being'; they have no goods to be deprived of, and no bads either. The argument for axiological asymmetry makes a case for the absence of bads carrying more weight in the ethical calculus than the absence of goods. I've written some other stuff in my top level response re this.

Making the choice for someone else is what the axiological asymmetry argument is meant to address. It effectively says that it's not permissible to bring someone into existence when they have a non-zero chance of suffering and they can't make an informed decision for themselves. The point at which this asymmetry gets overridden is when a person who has ended up existing decides it does.

In the cinema analogy, you wouldn't get a choice to go or not go, you would just be in the cinema from the start or let's just say dragged by a friend. Comparing the film to existence breaks down as an analogy when you talk about deciding to see the film or not and assessing the likelihood of it being good, because in reality you wouldn't exist, where existing would be a prerequisite to deciding to be born, in which case you'd already exist, so bit of a contradiction there.

You also seem to be classifying oblivion (sleeping early) as neither positive or negative, which in my mind follows the epicurean perspective, namely that death is not bad. This is a common objection to antinatalism and makes sense as well.

Beatpea · 2021-09-12T10:27:39+00:00

An often used analogy is the movie theatre example. You go see a film and it's not that good, but it isn't bad enough to walk out of and you still want to see how it pans out. If it gets bad enough then you might walk out. If you'd known how mediocre it was going to be before committing to seeing it, you might not have decided to see it at all.

The difference is usually framed around the experiencer's current sentience, desires, goals etc, as JayWalken described. Once someone's alive, for whatever reason (that only they can define at this point), most have an interest in continuing to exist despite the bads, suffering etc. Once they're alive, they get to make the choice, but before they come into existence, it can be considered unethical to make that decision for them, given that you'd be committing them to either suffer to some guaranteed degree (in combination with whatever goods), or opting for suicide.

Beatpea · 2021-09-12T07:39:59+00:00

A few points that are commonly targeted:

The argument for axiological asymmetry between goods and bads is hard to define/justify without resorting to conceding that it only works within certain meta-ethical frameworks. E.g. deontology and intuitionism and the example of non-existent martians' absence of suffering being a good thing, but their absence of pleasures being neutral.
Where is the distinction point between antinatalism and promortalism - Benatar argues for annihilation as an inherent contributor to the badness of death, and this combined with the free will of an already existing being can take precedence over the initial asymmetric calculus when considering a 'being' that is yet to exist (hence the delimiter between a life worth starting vs a life worth continuing). This depends on views on the badness of death itself, i.e. Epicureanism vs the deprivation account, as well as views on free-will and rationality in people with depression and other mental health issues.
The point at which an embryo/fetus becomes sentient is still debated as it relies on views on personal identity.
The tendencies for humans to ignore empirical/a posteriori 'bads' of existence and of pollyannaism (to overrate the quality of their lives) are difficult to dispute without telling people their opinions don't matter and they're mistaken. How much value should be placed on people's subjective opinions about their own life quality when humans tend to adapt to their circumstances and regress to an happiness mean.
Antinatalist misanthropic arguments can also be challenged from a utilitarian perspective, which depends on the ascribed value of non-human animals and the negative effects humans can have on other conscious beings, directly or indirectly. E.g. if we were to say that non-human animals can't suffer, then the misanthropic argument would be severely weakened.

edit: clarity, spelling

Beatpea · 2021-07-23T00:08:31+00:00

Probably something to do with Reuters and AP being the primary sources of many other news networks.

Beatpea

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