>>12990117I don't know about this (for one Im not that smart)
You have cases like Magnus, Kasparov, etc. where you can't really deny these aren't intelligent people, dedicating their lives to this board game. If you think they are less intelligent than a 135 IQ STEM PhD lab monkey, just because the PhD student does something "useful", I don't know what to say
Maybe its not just chess, or like video game speedrunning, minmaxing. You also have the smartest man on earth, Chris Langan, who (as far as I know) basically spouts /pol/ memes, promotes this mystical "theory" from a farm somewhere in the midwest.
It seems like these people get deeply involved in worlds of their own, sometimes its useful sometimes its seemingly pointless shit (eg. Newton to physics, Newton to alchemy)