Hi schawipp,

Remember understanding is a continuum.

Examples:

• ~20k - 10k -- have their understanding of strong v. weak groups.
• SDK's -- have their understanding of strong v. weak groups.
• Low dans -- have their understanding of strong v. weak groups.
• Mid dans -- have their understanding of strong v. weak groups.
• High dans to pros -- have their understanding of strong v. weak groups.

Understanding of strong and weak groups is not digital; it is not an either-or situation;
it is not either "I understand weak groups" or "I don't understand weak groups".

It's a continuum. For example, a mid-dan person can fail to recognize a group is in danger,
but it's "obvious" to a high-dan or pro -- this is how a 3-stone game is possible between them.

Teaching level is also a continuum.

When you mention a "dan-level teacher," that is a huge spectrum.
I take it that you mean the teacher's Go playing skill is dan level, which is
in itself a very big continuum (from 1 dan to pro).

The teacher's Go teaching level is another matter all together.

A teacher who "understands" a student's understanding of weak groups is one level.
A second teacher who does not understand it is another level.I think you're right.

I don't think this is quite what Ed is implying. Because he is referring to taiji and because he put "understanding" in quotes, I suspect he means there is no goal of understanding. By following the correct path you just end up "doing" something (but because this is oriental, mystic, hippy, enlightened or however you want to describe it, you achieve that by wuwei - "not doing"). It seems to follow that if you define an explicit goal ("remembering") you are already on the wrong path.

An example I like is from my student days. A fellow student, doing a PhD and so obviously bright, had a great and, I thought, irrational grudge against society because he was born a year or two earlier than the rest of us. He therefore missed out on a welfare innovation introduced for toddlers just after the war. This was orange juice in a bottle. He blamed missing this for the fact he was very short.

Now I have no idea whether free orange juice makes you grow, but I am quite prepared to accept that it does you some good, and that it definitely can be very handy to have it in a bottle, especially in post-war conditions. There was an explicit goal (health) and this was a rational way of achieving it. I consider this an RJ approach.

Yet, despite the rationality, I and, I'm sure, nearly all of my generation gave up drinking orange juice from bottles and even as children went through the tedious, difficult, messy operation of learning to peel an orange. We didn't even get much practice, since an orange was usually only an annual treat in the bottom of the Christmas stocking. I can still remember the awe we children felt at the way some adults (the 9-dans) could peel an orange so that the peel came away as a single strip.

But we persevered, and the situation now is that we can unthinkingly (the real meaning of wuwei, I think) peel an orange and suck out the juice and - this is an important point - unthinkingly enjoy it and unthinkingly imbibe its health benefits.

Nowadays, of course, you can get your orange juice from a carton, and even get a choice of "with bits" and "without bits". But think of all the unintended benefits we got from learning to peel an orange that you miss with a carton: dexterity, biological insights, learning to peel other fruit, the sheer joy of making a mess we weren't punished for... And instead of orange DDKs we unthinkingly became orange pros.

I tend to rail against the contrasting RJ approach to go not because it fails but because it sets explicit sub-goals and makes achieving them the sole criterion. It's the go equivalent of putting orange juice in a bottle in grim post-war conditions - works (though only in the sense of achieving a sub-goal) but is no fun.

Peeling the orange of go is messy at first, but is fun. Managing eventually to do it is a more satisfying kind of fun. Being able to do it unthinkingly while focusing on something else is unthinkingly fun - the most sublime kind. Too much go teaching cuts out this fun element, except perhaps the kiddywinkle kind. In any case, the burden of expectations placed on western go teaching is far too high because too many people want go in cartons now.

In any case, learning to peel an orange is something you can properly only do by yourself.

I don't know if there is one for peeling an orange, but there is a TED talk for tieing your shoes .

http://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_ho ... anguage=en

Is this what you mean, John?

_________________
- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

I remember the first time someone invaded my hoshi on a 3-3 point... that was a revelation...
With that new knowledge, I cannot resist to do invasion myself "as soon as possible".

After a few ( ) loses, I finally ... understood ... that it was not that great to invade hoshi immediatly,
so I went for another rule which was "if hoshi has two larges extensions, invade" and then I saw that a two spaces extension form hoshi can still be invaded successfuly, and then, saw that there is even possibilities with a small castle formation, with probs and so on...

It seems to me that we should do things "just before it's too late" but here again... every level has its own understanding on when it's still possible to do something on given board/position and when it's not possible anymore.

That's why I like this game so much... we never stop to (re)discover the game....

_________________
Converting the book Shape UP! by Charles Matthews/Seong-June Kim
to the gobook format. last updated april 2015 - Index of shapes, p.211 / 216

Regarding "that guy trying to make pro in golf", it's not going so well is the general consensus.

His site is http://thedanplan.com/ and he's a bit more than halfway through, with 4500 or so hours left. He has conceded mistakes, like spending his first few months just doing short putts, but I'm not convinced he will make it. There is some discrepancy between what he claims as his handicap (sort of like a rank) and his tournament performance, and on the golfing forum I look at, most people seem to think he wont make it (http://thesandtrap.com/t/45853/the-dan-plan-10-000-hours-to-become-a-pro-golfer).

On a related note, there was this article on Slate recently about the fallacy of the 10,000 hours thing, stating that while it was helpful, it was far from the most important thing or the greatest predictor of success in a field: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practice_is_wrong_genes.html

On the 10,000 hours idea:

That idea has a long vintage, with some variations. When I first heard it, it was about becoming an expert. Now, there are many professions where experts can earn a good living, but sports is not one of them. To be a pro golfer you need to be a very good expert.

Edit: I see that the Slate article references a 1993 study. I first heard that it takes around 9,000 hours to become an expert in the late 1960s.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I'm following expertinayear.com where a British table tennis coach tries to get a beginner friend into the top 250. While being less dependent than "making a living", becoming an expert in a competitive motoric skill in just one year still remains very tough. We're into october now and I remain skeptical (but sympathetic). In such a short time frame I believe one should concentrate on the things that make a difference in daily competition, rather than the big picture. Both coach and guinea pig are investing a year of their life into it, which is admirable.

The goals discussion is interesting, it's meta-,
and I was not (consciously) thinking about it at the start of this thread.
Of course, it's a very big and deep topic.

The river story has some connections to Putting oneself in someone's shoes .

Hi oca, very nice.

Hi skydyr, Bill, thanks for the updates.Inflation is infectious...?

This is good stuff; this is good understanding.

Hi EdLee,


Yep, I agree. However when sitting on the lower orders of magnitude on a logarithmic scale, the higher orders become somehow indistinguishable (and maybe also vice versa). When I speak of "Dan-level players" it means that I will always get a decent crushing when playing them without handicap. Maybe the crushing from a 7d would be even more subtle than from a 1d but the overall result would be pretty much the same - at least for me from my current point of view .

Your understanding is not bad here. Indeed. But taking 6H from a 1d (you have a chance) versus a pro (no chance),
you can feel the difference, I suspect.

It has been 40 years since Robert Pirsig discussed the Greek concept of areté in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974). What he understood then may still resonate with some of you youngsters.

See http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig

IMHO, this book is a classic, but de gustibus non est disputandum.

Hi Aidoneus,

Thanks for the reminder. I've wanted to read that book for years now... some day I'll get to it.

Ed, I really think that you would enjoy taking the ride with Pirsig. (Perhaps not so much his follow-up book, Lila. The difference between pointing at the moon and giving a chemical analysis, if you follow my meaning.) As I came from a mathematical background, Pirsig's discussion of the philosophical ideas of Henri Poincaré (a hero of mine) in relation to the concept of quality inspired in me a much deeper appreciation of Eastern ideas and led me to take a long random walk through translations of Chinese literature. Of course, like most everything, I am a mere dilettante.

Hi Aidoneus, I'm sure you can appreciate Poincaré, Perelman,
and Wiles' math infinitely more than I can.
That's very nice. One of mine is Feynman.


YouTube has a lot of nice stuff: Poincaré Conjecture -- Numberphile

Culture and Etiquette, 2

Disclaimer: yes, over-generalization is bad,
and we have to be careful of anecdotal evidence.

(a)(b)