Bobby Fischer in Socio-Cultural Perspective (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Bobby Fischer in Socio-Cultural Perspective (2013)

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28 pointslainon8 comments

In this long-winded 'psychobiography,' I was unable to find mention of one of the more peculiar aspects of Fischer's life: Some events of his life appear to indicate he either had extraordinarily bad luck, or had somehow pissed off some powerful people in America. These events started at least a decade before his participation in a $5 million match in Yugoslavia, which is what led to an official warrant being issued for his arrest.

> On May 26, 1981, while walking in Pasadena, Fischer was arrested by a police patrolman, allegedly because he matched the description of a man who had just committed a bank robbery in the area.[436] Fischer, who alleged that he was slightly injured during the arrest,[437] said that he was held for two days, subjected to assault and various types of mistreatment,[438] and released on $1,000 bail.[439] Fischer published a 14-page pamphlet detailing his alleged experiences and saying that his arrest had been "a frame up and set up".[1]

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer

I've never believed Fischer was as crazy as he is often portrayed. Many aspects of his life are actually very easy to explain and understand:

(1) His departure from professional chess after winning the world championship seems mysterious to many. Clearly he was just burnt out. He had achieved his goal: beat the Russians and get the highest title in the game. There was nothing left for him to do except repeat what he'd already done. He didn't want to do that, so he just wanted out. I'm sure there are at least some developers here who've dealt with burnout and can understand the psychology here. It's not insanity.

(2) Fischer dealt with a lot of dishonesty on his way to the world championship. He wrote a Sports Illustrated article accusing Soviet players of collusion against him in the Candidates matches, and it's now accepted that he was, in fact, correct. FIDE completely restructured the matches as a result. Fischer was not being paranoid. I'm sure experiences like this contributed to his burnout in chess, especially considering that he more or less tackled the Soviet chess machine alone.

(3) Fischer was abandoned by mostly any family he ever had. It's natural he would develop some mistrust of power figures, including the US government.

(4) He had religious and political views that liberals would consider extreme. However, go over to /r/the_donald and tell me honestly if Fischer seems so one-of-a-kind anymore politically. He wasn't at all. There were (and are) millions of Americans who think like he did politically.

(5) He actually was arrested and held in jail for no good reason, as mentioned above.

(6) After playing the Spassky rematch, he really was declared an outlaw and was sought after by the US government. It wasn't paranoia. To Fischer, this was just yet another act of betrayal by a power figure in his life.

Regarding the first point, an illustrative example is that of Nico Rosberg who retired recently, right after winning F1 championship: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/dec/02/nico-rosberg-s...

Skimmed the first couple pages. First thing that stood out was the term "Psychobiography" which, along with it's brief description from the posted pdf seemed very familiar. It reminds me of psychohistory from Asimovs Foundation series[0]

[0]http://asimov.wikia.com/wiki/Foundation

Upvoting in case someone can explicate wtf this is..

The punchline is at the end of the article, after the references and other end-matter: A chart normally used in other fields that attempts to contextualize in time significant events and periods of Fischer's life.

I found the chart intriguing, but not really explicative, but I didn't spend a lot of time on it....

The historical review of Fischer's life is interesting, but I always found these post-hoc analyses kind of dubious. It's almost like astrology; coming up with a theory that explains human behavior, and then figuring out how to fit an individual case (like Fischer's) with the theory you came up with. In this case, it's instead the apparently scientific-sounding "MLCC methodology to psychobiographical research"

"(...) when should a theory be regarded as scientific?" - Science as Falsification https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztmvtKLuR7I

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