Oof. What an ending to the World Chess Championship. Ding made an elementary blunder in the endgame of the final classical game and lost it all. Gukesh D is the new world champion - the youngest ever at 18. He cried tears of joy as his victory sunk in:

Quibbles: ‘Needing canons’ seems to imply a bit much here. We need to make distinctions, and we need to choose what to focus on, but the emphasis needs to be on the plurality of ‘canons’.

I also think we need to understand computation better and make sure that’s the appropriate target here.

This is an excellent essay. LLMs have put some philosophical debates about meaning into relief and I just have not heard it talked about enough. I do worry our sense of what it means to mean has atrophied.

Book 1

Ding wins with the Black pieces!! Most commentators were predicting Gukesh domination, particularly with white, but this is surely anyone’s match — will Gukesh tilt? Will Ding be able to play solid, safe positions? We’ll find out more tomorrow.

Ding had maintained his advantage and both players are getting close to time trouble, adding to the potential for mistakes — perhaps this is where raw calculation could fail Gukesh! Ding still has not castled however, and his king is vulnerable in the middle of the board.

#Ding !

This is so impressive. Magnus Carlsen (world #1 since 2011), beating Fabiano Caruana (world #2) in "Freestyle Chess," a variant of chess where the position of the pieces is scrambled & unknown to the players before the start of the game. He's playing w/ 98 percent accuracy! That's.... wild.

Chess is brutal.