By playing games you can artificially speed up your learning curve to develop the right kind of thought processes.

The remark frames games as “training environments” that compress experience: they provide rapid feedback, repeated trials, and clear incentives, letting a player iterate far more quickly than in many real-world settings. In that sense, games can accelerate the acquisition of probabilistic thinking, pattern recognition, and strategic planning—habits of mind associated with good forecasting and decision-making under uncertainty. The word “artificially” is not dismissive but descriptive: games simplify and formalize reality, making cause-and-effect more legible. Silver’s emphasis on developing the “right kind of thought processes” suggests that what transfers is less specific knowledge than a disciplined approach to updating beliefs, managing risk, and learning from error.