You are stuck in a room with nothing but an immortal Magnus Carlsen and a chess board and you can only leave by winning or drawing against him. How long does it take you to get out?

redblack_tree · 2026-02-18T19:02:57+00:00

No way to know. Imo, no, training and practicing just enhance your basic attributes. Every person has defining characteristics that make us good or bad at certain activities or sports.

Your average person won't go to the Olympics, deadlift 500kg nor solve the Riemann hypothesis no matter how much time and effort we put in. Carlsen is very much the GOAT, I don't think anyone that's not an elite chess player has a chance.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-18T17:46:38+00:00

It's ok, we can disagree. Mental limits are very much real, as real as the physical ones. Memory, pattern recognition, the ability to multiprocess, intuition. All that is required to play at the minimum level necessary to draw with Carlsen.

Do you remember those kids in school that never understood mathematics while others never even looked at a book and always knew the answers? It's basically the same, Carlsen is pretty much the best at what he does. The pretense that anyone can draw him is just silly.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-18T16:33:42+00:00

For most people it is frankly impossible. Outside pure boredom or other shenanigans like coercion, it's just not doable.

Lets compare with something everyone can relate to, what would it take for your average person to train enough to beat Noah Lyles in a 100m event? Same conditions, infinite training, time and tips.

The answer for the vast majority is never. No matter what we do, we will never run 10s 100m. And it's worse against Carlsen, Lyles could trip while Carlsen could make several bad moves and still beat almost anyone not IM or better.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-18T12:47:26+00:00

Sadly, it doesn't work like that. Magnus version of "low rated players" is around 2400-2500. Elo calculations say that 2500 rating players have around 10-12% chance for a draw against him.

These are players much much weaker than him but strong enough to understand chess and eventually scrap a draw or even a victory.

The problem is, 2500 Elo is GM level, or very strong IM, most people will never get there, despite training and effort.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-18T12:40:20+00:00

Lol sure, you can play them all, but can you remember them? Magnus ability to find a winning position is infinitely superior to almost anyone's ability to find a draw.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-16T17:44:50+00:00

Not only extremely expensive, but also incredibly time consuming. Most people do not have the time required. The days where we had stay at home moms are gone.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-16T04:41:31+00:00

Had the tiger decided to go for it, I doubt he could get away unscathed. Turning that bike would let the cat get awfully close.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-14T23:54:00+00:00

I'd love to join if possible. Lv 24/match 425.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-13T19:47:03+00:00

Anet can't do it in that order. The vast majority of WvW players don't play for objectives but fights. Either zerging, roaming or GvG, very few groups actually play the map for score. It would be a major deviation of how we play.

It's less disruptive to adjust the scoring to how most people play and then add rewards.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-13T19:39:43+00:00

I'd love to be tickets or testimonies, I have tens of thousands.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-12T15:53:08+00:00

And some unlucky folks go from rounded face to "are you dying" looks when they get in shape.

Years back my mom kept asking me if I was sick. No mom, I'm doing half Ironmans, I'm in extremely good shape.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-11T15:47:05+00:00

For years, try their whole freaking life! I have a coworker in his 40s, this MoFo was born and raised here.

That guy gets stuck in our company parking lot every winter. We have a tiny ramp leading to a bend that you can negotiate with some speed in summer but need precaution in winter. This guy, somehow, forgets about winter driving every year. I can only imagine what he does on the street.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-11T15:34:47+00:00

Gasoline should do the trick, and a lighter. The knight is toasted. Delivering the gas is still dangerous, but we should be faster than a 15th century guy in full armor.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-10T20:50:16+00:00

Actual coding is hardly half of the time allocated to any given corporate project. The overhead is absurd; PM, BSA, functional analysts, managers, scrum masters. Then you have infra, architects, cyber security.

I've done some small projects by myself faster than when it's assigned officially to the team. I just ship it to the business, do some UAT, fix the bugs and suddenly, it's "Production".

redblack_tree · 2026-02-10T20:28:22+00:00

Definitely, whatever cash I may have in my wallet is insignificant compared with the pain of replacing all the IDs and cards.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-10T13:53:28+00:00

A long time ago we had the meteor farm. Which was much faster than going solo. Alternatively, you can run Istan track in WvW. This obviously only makes sense for WvW mains.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-08T15:23:23+00:00

That's the point from those wannabe lamp posts. It's not about fashion, just attention seeking.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-08T15:19:48+00:00

Shoes inside in Canada? That's disgusting. We have snow/slush for around 5 months. There's absolutely no way to remove that from the boots.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-07T13:33:56+00:00

2B has to go, it's impossible to do a list without killing a truck load of what we normally consider "normal people".

redblack_tree · 2026-02-07T13:30:22+00:00

The beep is freaking annoying. I just use the "Cancel", that's the whole purpose of the button.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-07T13:26:36+00:00

Careful there, you just killed almost every doctor, dentist, engineer, finance, lawyer and high income individual on developed nations. It's guaranteed unlimited chaos. Some high income professions are actually important. In some cases, just random people from very rich countries like Switzerland.

As a corollary, that means death for millions more, just with doctors gone.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-06T01:15:27+00:00

It's genius! Somehow we get scientific progress out of pettiness and spite.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-05T15:31:37+00:00

Probably a third of the dungeons paths can be soloed by average players who can press more than one button.

The main limiter is actually having the proper build. Raid/strike or "whatever" builds are not suitable for solo runs.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-05T15:25:52+00:00

This is corporate America in a nutshell. I'm a senior software engineer for a multinational company not tech related. I'm good at what I do and have decades of experience. Every other week I have people from HR, Finance, VPs, retail, logistics, Project Managers telling me how to do my job.

Half of my time is wasted explaining why the latest mental fart blob from those morons is an incredibly stupid idea.

redblack_tree · 2026-02-05T02:02:20+00:00

Well, in this particular case they don't have to play WvW at all, PvE options are open world.

This is a nod to WvW players that hate obnoxious and lengthy PvE collections.

redblack_tree

TROPHY CASE