Architectural Relics in Life & Chess — and How to Harness Them

Hints to the past are often hidden in structural choices we take for granted. Have you ever noticed the oddly similar cellular structure shared by hospitals, schools, and prisons? Foucault's Discipline and Punish is one of the most descriptive sources describing the high-security, high-control choices made by early prison architects — choices that informed not just the design of jails and prisons across the Western penal system, but the blueprints for schools and hospitals everywhere.

Long corridors lined with limited-access doors; moderators designated to supervise discrete sets of individuals with strict protocols. Prisoners are escorted from work assignments to prescribed activities, while students shuffle from fourth to fifth period with strict time limits and non-trivial lateness penalties. Prisoners get rewarded with "good time" to lessen their sentence if they're well-behaved; children get good participation grades for chiming in. Assignments and outputs are tracked and measured. Both even get "mandatory recess". Detention looms over any deviation.

Hospitals function closer to "medium" or "maximum" security facilities, with "isolation protocols" and "visiting hours" for family. Some of these choices no doubt make sense, but the broader structural similarities should make us all wonder whether we're thoughtfully applying past-facing frameworks to new contexts, or just doing a lazy copy-paste without much forethought.

In chess, we operate using a combination of calculation and heuristics. Opening structures like the Sicilian-Najdorf or Ruy Lopez Exchange look the same as the starting position to an experienced player

These "de facto starting positions" have a conceptual name — tabiya — in the chess world: architectural "givens" that communicate the character of the game to follow. Here's a dual tabiya (a familiar structure for both sides):

The King's Indian and Jobava London systems are extremely well-studied, but their unique combination calls for concrete plans on both sides, and if either player is unprepared (particularly the black side), the game can fall apart pretty quickly. Here's a position I reached in a classical game this past week that shares structural similarities, but offers a handful of twists that I hoped would make my opponent uncomfortable:

I noticed my opponent was extremely aggressive, so I decided to send a series of aggressive strikes of my own in the opening, reaching a decisive advantage after only 18 moves. In the below position, it's clear the black king is going to be under fire, and black's pieces on the kingside are nowhere to be found. Every white piece is active and contributing, and it was clear to my opponent at this point that I was more comfortable playing these structures. And more capable of executing a winning plan.

Masters develop courses around entire sub-structures, helping players of all levels navigate the complexities each architecture presents:

If you're wondering what these "weird" names like Sicilian-Najdorf are, think about the weird names physicians and researchers give to diseases. Lupus? Lou Gehrig's disease? They have nothing to do with biology, but their value lies in expediting communication of a shared underlying structure that immediately makes sense to physicians. It helps us pixelate what we're talking about so we don't have to start from ground zero with every diagnosis. The same way the principles of geometry help us understand multi-variable calculus, or how "Broadway and 5th" tells us something about our longitude and latitude without needing to memorize every geographical coordinate. Chess players need this too, or we'll have no chance to talk about (let alone choose correctly within) the billions of possible positions after just a couple moves per side.

Structural non-similarity also helps us explain why something like COVID-19 initially proved so confusing to physicians. The disease had structural similarities to many other illnesses, but didn't respond to treatment the same way — shared symptoms allowed it to disguise itself alongside the common cold while remaining highly contagious and inflicting respiratory damage. Cancer is so challenging to treat because of how to difficult it is to generalize a treatment plan across cases. It's why chemotherapy is so often resorted to — doctors have no resource left other than "kill everything — hopefully you survive and not the disease." For chess players, this is the moment you realize you're "out of book" — your preparation no longer applies.

It's also why breakthroughs often involve identifying commonalities. Not any commonality, but a useful one. This often takes the form of a seemingly unknown structural similarity that can help explain a pattern across a wide range of cases. The architectural relic behind the COVID vaccine was a protein found on the SARS-CoV-2 virus (i.e. the "spike protein"). Chess players learn endgame techniques the same way — small, seemingly imperceptible tradeoffs in king placement, rook activity and pawn structure make more and more of a difference the higher you go. Chess players learn "endgame patterns" the same way physicians learn biological substrates. They learn what these structures are, how they interact with other structures, and eventually, when certain "rules of the game" can be broken. The grandmaster-doctor is the one who double-checks the abnormality and who double-checks the normality isn't an abnormality in disguise. The chess physician diagnoses each position with long-term knowledge of "how chess normally works", and a a specific focus on what rules might need to be broken in the position at hand.

Real mastery of anything is a rote-like memorization of all the most common patterns — an internalization of knowledge so you rarely miss anything you "should" know — combined with a capacity to not assume your knowledge is universal. You can see when something fits your paradigm, and have an almost sixth-sense-like intuition when something's even a touch off. This is why schools even exist — they don't want just anyone running around a hospital in a cape. They'll only entrust that position to someone who's consistently demonstrated knowledge and ability across their life (or at least that's the goal).

So why does this matter beyond academic purposes? Why does it matter that schools resemble prisons, or that the Jobava London has favorable results against lazy King's Indian players? How do you take the knowledge that structural choices and architecture relics matter, and apply it to your life?

First, what are the structural "givens" you take for granted? Identify them:

• Where do you live? What's your rent? What does your space look like? How do you feel when you're home?
• Who do you spend time with? Who helps you get better? Who reinforces an old self? Who brings out great qualities in you? Who do you have great conversations with? Who listens to you? Who are you drawn to listen to?
• What's your job? Do you like it? Why? Is it about money? Prestige? Something to make ends meet?
• What do you do with your free time? Are you hobbies passions, or just time-passers? Are you deliberate with your time? Or do you not think much about it?
• What are your habits — the ones you're proud of and not so proud of? What makes you more likely to succumb to an impulse? What makes you feel like a better version of yourself when you're done?

What can you do to make these structures better?

• Can you find a cheaper place? Can you find a place where you live more happily?
• Do you need to keep everyone in your life? Who should you add back in? Who do you just naturally enjoy being around with no strings attached?
• Do you want a work-life with more autonomy? More money? More room for creativity?
• What's something you love doing but don't put the time into? Who do you admire and how'd they get to their goals? How much time do you actually spend reading vs. the idea of reading?
• Can you change one of your habits — not every day, but maybe every couple weeks? Can you double-down on an area where you have momentum?

How do the choices you make now affect your endgame?

• What happens if you can save more money, and invest in new assets?
• What happens if you marry the right person? Or the wrong one?
• What will you be able to do with more creative freedom? More flexibility? More resources for less time?
• How much more fulfilled will you be if you turn a side hustle into a business, or a hobby into a craft?
• How much more time will you have if you cut out a bad habit or two this year? How will you feel if you work out more? What can you do with the free time you used to burn on something useless?
• How can you implement a process for yourself to regularly check in on these things? How do you keep your values from shifting when you're not looking?

Chess is the same. Play games with real thought, but analyze even more thoughtfully. Where could you have improved? What was your thought process? Why did you make the decisions you made, and what decision-making criteria could have been even better?

Find those interventions and search within yourself down to the molecular level. You won't have to go half that far to uncover something meaningful.