In my university days I played a lot of chess. I was pretty good. More I can't claim. Chess takes an enormous amount of brain power.

What makes me sad (and I've commented on this before specifically regarding Magnus) is that these people are using their fantastic mental abilities...to play chess. If a lady is great at tennis, I fully support her being a tennis star. If a guy is great at basketball, I expect him to be a basketball star. Physical ability doesn't transfer to mental ability.

Guys like Magnus, who can play 27 chess games simultaneously, are the kind of people we need working on extremely complex engineering problems like fusion power, where the number of variables and challenges is similar to 27 simultaneous chess games.