Pulled from another thread What is "the direction of play?"

Bantari,

Thank you!


It might be better to assume a misunderstanding than a misrepresentation. An oversimplification is not necessarily tool for a straw man argument - it can also be seen as an expression of what one understood. Note that Bantari does use question marks.

You described the following two scenarios:



To me it looks like you are contrasting an obstinate adult interesting primarily in arguing with a reasonable child interested primarily in improving. While you don't imply that the child is not interested in understanding, you do imply that for someone interested in improving, it is better to listen than to argue.

On second thought, it does seem quite a stretch to interpret this as Bantari apparently did.




Why assume that the student wouldn't be satisfied with one's explanation?



Exactly what method do you mean?

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

No. X equally and genuinely wants to improve as much as Y.
X is not interested in arguing for arguments' sake (though it may appear that way).
One (big) difference is X thinks (believes) some kind of explanation (verbal, written, visual, audio, or otherwise "intellectual")
is a must for him/her to better "understand" a reply such as "this direction is better."

My experience has shown that this is not always true.
Having an explanation, in particular an intellectual one, is neither always possible, nor always better.
My experience has shown this is true in Go and in other human endeavors.
This is one of my main points.

I dunno -- ask Bantari ?

Teaching by example. By doing. By showing good examples, and by following good examples.
Corollary: by pointing out and correcting mistakes (again, not necessarily through intellectual explanation.)
Not always through 100% intellectual explanations.
In some cases, even with zero intellectual explanation.

Guess where this has worked and continues to work today: in many non-human lifeforms.
Guess where this has worked even for homo sapiens and earlier ancestors:
for tens of millions of years before language technology was developed.

Note: I'm not saying intellectual explanation is bad (although, in some cases,
yes, it actually can be bad and confusing, worse than without) --
please don't put words in my mouth again.

I suspect it may be a cultural thing. Certainly Yilun Yang found a big enough difference between Chinese and American students to feel the need to put a preface together for Fundamental Principles of Go that addressed exactly this point.

However, if I understand something consciously, I can apply that understanding at any point I think it applies to a given context. If I am to do it by intuition, I need to have already established some form of reasoning in my subconscious - if my subconscious understanding is correct, then great! Otherwise, I will misapply what it was my teacher wished to impart.

In essense, in case 2, we are to presume the teacher already has a good intuitive knowledge of shape, direction, fundamentals etc, and therefore as long as Y is a willing student, he'll start playing better moves. If we can add intelligence, spacial awareness, a good memory and good pattern recognition to the student's qualities, he may even develop a strong subconscious understanding of why he's playing these moves. However, what if the teacher recommends this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Captures: B=0 W=0
$$ -----------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . 2 1 . . . X . .
$$ | . . . X . . . . . , .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . .[/go]

Teacher: This is the correct approach in this corner position.
Student: Why?
Teacher: Because in my intuition tells me so, and in my experience it is.
Student: Ok

Here we have a rather awkward predicament, no?

Effectively, you are advocating a teaching style which really does make the stronger player the better teacher on principle (which helps me understand the strength of your feeling on the importance of professional tuition). I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, and with bright capable students I'm pretty confident it would be a much faster way of imparting knowledge, and the subconscious understanding of those students would quickly keep up with the knowledge as their brains made sense of what is better to play and what isn't.

However, I also feel for those that don't intuitively "get" the game in this way, all they have is intellectual reasoning to guide their moves as their intuition simply struggles with it. If a teacher tells them "this is better because it is", will they recognise a similar situation and context next time? Maybe, maybe not. If they don't, the teacher can repeat this particular piece of knowledge as much as they like and the student will not be improving.

Having taught quite a few things, including having past and (one) present Go student, I think every single person I have taught would have found case 2 type tuition very unsatistfying, and would have stopped quite quickly. That's not because of my lack of playing strength compared to a professional player, it's because some part of them feels that the intellectual reasoning aspect of learning Go is important to them. Of course they want to improve, but the "why?" question is very important for most adult students I have encountered (maybe because intuitively learning something new is harder as an adult, that progress requires intellectual reasoning after a certain point).

(Caveat: I have not taught children at Go or any subject I "teach", however, I do have children. I would have said that to begin with case 2 tuition works up until the ages of 9-11 somewhere, when if you can't support case 2 with case 1 tuition they start just assuming old fogey parents don't know as much as they think they do).

I'm not saying that your suggested method is incorrect, although some of your justifications about what species do for learning is a straw man for so many reasons (that I won't go into as they deserve a couple of full posts by themselves). However, I do think a) context is important (in some situations, such as a pro-led children's youth academy in CJK, I absolutely advocate case 2 teaching), and b) listening to what the student wants is important (saying it is the student at fault when he is unhappy with "this move is better" and feels the need for explanation is, IMO, just poor teaching skills).

topazg, welcome back and thanks for your input. There are points that I agree with
and there are some I disagree with. I really have to crash now,
so a longer reply will have to wait. But...No. You misunderstood, or maybe I didn't make it clear, or both.
I try again. If I had said, "I (highly) recommend such and such a method" then I would've been
advocating it. But I did not say that. At all.

What I said was in my experience, and in many people I've met, in certain fields,
I have seen success in this method. This in no way means I advocate it.
I am merely sharing my experience, and I want to see if Bantari also has had
this experience, or not. Because a shared experience is important.
If he has, that's one thing. If he has not, that's another direction.
Then the discussion would go one way or another.

Yes, this is a very interesting point.

So the first "shared experience" questions (probe) I ask you is: in the current shimari extension in question,
someone like Bantari is not satisfied with the "bigger triangle is better"
intuitive answer, even as we've seen, you even use some numbers to help with the explanation --
so what do you do in this case?

(Thanks for answering my original questions; but I changed it.)

I wonder if we have a different definition of "advocate"?

(from dictionary.com): to speak or write in favor of; recommend publicly:

It seemed like you were recommending case 2 tuition as valuable, I wasn't stating that you considered it the be all and end all of teaching



Ah, ok, so can I try to get to grips with the point you are making by rephrasing it a bit? It's quite possible it's just me being slow:

1) You are recognising from experience that teaching types case 1 and 2 both exist, and have demonstrated value.
2) You have provided context and explanation for what case 2 tuition is, on the offchance it will spark recognition from others (particularly bantari)
3) The goal is to demonstrate there is more than one effective teaching style, without any form of merit comparison between them.

Is that close?



1) No.
2) No.

I'm not sure this is quite true. I think the observed difference between adults and children is important at a completely different level. in general, adult learners have already seen enough of the world and have worried enough their bank balances to realise they are not going to become a pro or even a very strong player. They may want to improve, but not to that degree. They accept the limitations imposed on them and so seek instead to become fans of the game. This means learning to appreciate it, and for this a rational (not necessarily logical) explanation of what to look for is what they crave. They will still want a measure of improvement just to confirm and expand their ability to appreciate the game, but the target is not to be super-strong.

It may be a lot easier to see this if we look at sports such as baseball or cricket, where most adults wouldn't even dare stand in front of a fast ball or bouncer yet love the vicarious thrill of reading about others do it, or at something like music - taking up the piano late in life will probably drive the neighbours up the wall but may help you enjoy listening to symphonies and concertos more.

What seems to follow from all this is that, if you are in fact one of the exceptional adults who really do just want to become super-strong and you don't want to talk about Genjo being stronger than Chitoku or vice versa, forget the intellectual understanding side of things, become a drudge, and let your unconscious brain make sense of it all.

I was using the first thing google replied "publicly recommend or support."
I missed the part about "to speak or write in favor of;"
So to me, "I have seen success in X" does not mean the same thing as "I recommend you try X."
To me, only "I recommend you try X" means that.
Maybe I still misunderstand the word "advocate"... anyway,
I said "I have seen success in this method"; I did not mean "I recommend people try this method."
I would've said the latter if that was my intention. I hope this is more clear now.Yes.I did it by examples. I gave some context, and some examples.It was not "particularly", but "all" for Bantari. Maybe the Hide tags were not clear.
The original post, in Daal's thread, was all for Bantari. It got too long,
so I divided it into sections and put each section under a Hide tag --
but the entire thing was for Bantari.

Others, of course, are welcome to chime in. As you are doing now. No, it was still (2) -- to see if Bantari has had any success with the teaching-by-example method.

They are not "justifications," not a straw man, or maybe you misunderstood, or all of the above.
Daal was asking for more clarification on what I meant by "this method".
I was giving more context by providing more examples. They are not justifications.
They are facts, and examples. And I'm still happy to discuss this in other "full posts
by themselves," too.

I really must crash after this. But this is a very interesting part of the discussion.
And thanks, John, for his input.
Back to the shimari extension question. Bantari already stated even he
intuitively agrees one direction is better. But he does not seem to be
satisfied with the explanation "the triangle is bigger".
He asked, yea, so what? Why does the bigger triangle make it better?
And you replied with some numbers about the areas.
To which he replied, yea, so what ? He claims "quasi-logical case can always be made for both."
Specifically, "another argument can be made that in the flatter shape,
the stones are closer together, and thus give each other more support and make it harder to attack."
I know this is a special case because Bantari is not a raw beginner adult student,
but his "why?" is very good and very on point.
- do you think you can give an explanation right here that would satisfy Bantari ?
- if yes, would you like to share the explanation (process) here ?

Ok, let me first deal with the unpleasant stuff. I'll try to address the rest of what you say separately.



I am sorry if I did, but the example you gave really looks to me like the 'teacher' stresses the position that 'it is not important for you to understand, just do it - pros do it, so it is probably right.' The simplified example you then gave went like 'This is better, OK, lets move on'.

I assumed you presented the simplified shorter conversation example as being better than wasting a lot of words on asking questions the 'Teacher' is not prepared/able to answer anyways, so why bother asking questions.

This is how I read your example. If this is incorrect, please explain what you meant. But don't get offended that I understood it like that. And I certainly did not try to put words in your mouth.



Well.... you certainly made a good case to me that a pro (in general) is a better teacher than an amateur (in general) - and this takes into account only their playing strength, no other teaching-related skills. So I am sorry if I drew this conclusion, but I hope you can see how easily I could have made this mistake.



Ok... so what is it you are saying? Since I cannot repeat what I understand you say in my own words, and the understanding I have of what you say is unclear or contrary to my beliefs, how are we to have a conversation?

I have to be able to say: this is how I understood what you say, now tell me where I am wrong. It might be that I over-simplify or misunderstand, this is what a discussion is there to clear up, no? Otherwise, you demote me to the position of just having to listen to, but not question, what you say. I cannot do that. And I don't care if you think this is the proper way to teach, or to talk to kids... you are neither my teacher nor am I a kid, so lets drop that and lets have an adult conversation, please.

So - if you have a problem with the way I understand what you say, explain it better, don't get offended.



There might be, but it was *me* who asked these questions, and it was *me* you were answering. If your answer to "Why is your triangle obvious?" is something along the lines of "Children learn things like this or that" - it is side-stepping my question and posting something else entirely. My question was not "Why do you teach children like that?" but "Why do *you* think it is obvious?" And I ask because it is not all that obvious to me, other than purely instinctually, and I was curious if you actually have some good reasons to support what you say.

And I assure you - I am *not* a child. And in the context of this particular question - the issue of how to teach kids is waaaay of topic.


This too is off topic here, so I will not comment on that.
Can we stick to the subject, please?

_________________
- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

How come?
What is dogmatic in saying: if you claim something is good, you should have at least *some* reasons for that claim!

I mean, what is the alternative? Claim things to be good or bad without any reason at all?
Is that what you propose? This is less 'dogmatic' to you?

As a matter of fact - none of that has anything to do with dogma, just with common sense (or the lack thereof.)

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Which method you mean?
We seem to have two methods here:
1. teacher shows one-move and walk away, students accepts adjectives like 'good' or 'better' on faith
2. teacher shows a move but then tries to give at least some reasoning for his evaluation

I have seen both methods being successfully applied, both to kids and adults. What's more, I have myself applied them both. But the methods #1 showed to often produce more bad habits as well as more 'stoppages' or 'barriers' in further development. Therefore, once I realized that, I much prefer method #2. I also think that method #2 is faster in the short term, and certainly causes less trouble in the long term. This goes for teaching by amateurs and professionals, both.

I am not sure if this answers your question, but this is what my experience shows.



I have no problem with the fact that the method you describe works.
But is that an argument? I mean - I can teach a dog to sit by beating him each time he does not. He will learn successfully. Does that mean this is the best, or even good, method?

So sure - the method you propose works, I never said it does not.
All I am saying is that, from my experience, the method I advocate for works better.

So let me ask you a counter-question:
Have you seen the method I speak of applied and *not* producing results?
Have you tried to ask for (or give) some more reasoning behind moves, and did that knowledge ever hurt you in your learning? Or hurt anybody else?

In my experience:

Good moves usually imply good reasons, so in this case both methods might be equivalent, although I would still prefer to know some reasoning about *why* i play the way I do. Bad moves imply bad reasoning, and in this case - taking them on faith is bad, while learning the reasoning gives you a much better chance to avoid forming bad habits. So teaching including reasoning is superior in such cases.

Since when we, weak amateurs, try to teach, many of our moves are not good, even when we try to sell them as holy gospel. And when we go into reasoning two things happen: 1) the student has a much better chance to not form a bad habit, and 2) we ourselves have a chance to realize our error and thus become better players and better teachers. So its a win-win scenario for me.

This is why I am strongly against the 'show move and walk away, take it on faith' method.

On a personal level:

I bet that if the bad teacher you used to have tried to actually explain what he was teaching you, you would have had a much better chance of seeing that it was garbage and not form that many bad habits. But when, instead, you just follow moves you teacher tells you are 'good' without giving any reason - you have very little chance, and you get in trouble. This is what I think. I have met your old teacher, and even played him, and he indeed had some whacked-out ideas about Go. I am sure that if he tried to explain himself more, you would have seen past his lack of logic and a lot of the subsequent trouble would have been avoided.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Now its time to get to the meat of the issue, and I hope I can make myself clear in what I say.

Disclaimer:
In any of what I say - no offense intended, no 'putting words in mouth' intended, and if I misunderstand you, please explain rather than getting all huffy and puffy. I am not a kid, I have an open mind, and I look forward to good, mature arguments for a change.



My reply:
Personally - if these were the only choices I was given, I would play (a) because of what I know about direction of play and because experience taught me that this formation works better than (b).

I am not completely sure on why, in terms of pure logic, some of my reasoning is based on intuition, experience, and feeling for shape. This is why it is interesting to me to see what others think the logical reasons for that should be. An answer of the type: draw a triangle and if it is too squished its no good - its not really saying much other than giving a rule-of-thumb for making (better) decisions without understanding anything, and I already know how to do that.

My thoughts about about teaching:

You misrepresented/misunderstand me here a little, I think. But that's ok, I probably did not make myself clear.

What I am not a fan of is "This is a better move, period!" method.
Which means - you show better move and give no explanation and no follow-ups, no sequences, just point out a move and walk away. I think that in 90% of the cases we can do *much* better than that, even if we are not completely clear about why this move is better, we certainly have *some* validation - in form of a few-move sequence, if nothing else, or a few extra words, like "this leaves bad aji" or whatever.

And here is the basis of my conviction, why I think going this one step further is so very important:

We are all here amateurs, most of us probably not really qualified to teach anybody above beginner level. So, it stands to reason that some, or even many/all, of our 'suggestions' are wrong. You told me about the time you had to unlearn bad habits you acquired due to bad teacher. And even pros can make mistakes. So - if you just tell a student "this is good" et cathedra - he can either accept it as gospel or look for a new teacher. This is how you got into the bad habits, I bet.

On the other hand, when you also give your reasoning, at least some of it, the student can start thinking for him/herself, and judge the *reasons* for the value of the move, not just blindly taking it on faith and parrot the move itself. Then, down the road, its not moves which will become habits but reasons, and those are usually much easier to adjust, and certainly much easier to filter out to begin with. Rejecting bad ideas, or not making suspicious ideas into habits - this is much easier than moves you don't understand but have been told by authority they are 'good' to become habits.

As a matter of fact - I would bet that 90%+ of all the bad habits were acquired because of taking things on blind faith rather than by accepting possibly faulty reasoning.

So, in principle, I am great proponent of learning by example - but this example simply *has* to be supported by some kind of reasoning, even if incomplete, and even if false. Especially if false - because this then gives the student a tool to discern bad ideas from good ones, and so he/she has a fighting chance to avoid at least some of the bad habits. When you only show a one-mover and all you say is 'that's better" - the student has very little to go on.

To support my position here- you just need to follow some of my discussion with RJ - where it is *me* who argues for the traditional, 'by example' methods of teaching/learning and against his new-age 'everything reasoned on conscious level' stuff.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Yes, I have had this experience as well. The method you describe works.

My position (to make it absolutely clear):
Examples alone = works well, student learns.
Examples + some reasoning = works better, student learns faster, less chance of bad habits.

As for advocating:

I think you do, somewhat. Most times I see you give advice or comments on moves, this is pretty much what you do: "this move is better, period" or "learn this move" or something like that, hardly ever any kind of reasoning or explanation, just a move. It stresses (single and local) moves, not ideas, while I think ideas are at least as important, possibly more so. As a matter of fact - I think ideas are much more important than moves.

From the descriptions you give - this is also my understanding of the method you talk about - just give an example and that's it, then maybe give another example. Since you seem to object to my idea of asking for more reasoning behind the moves and examples, I would very much say that you 'advocate' for the no-reasoning method, at least - you hold it above the also-reasoning method I describe.

The examples of conversation you gave seem to point in that direction as well. Whats more, to me they also seem to indicate that not asking questions is more efficient or better, which I really disagree with. If I understood you incorrectly, please correct me and explain what it is you meant.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Hmm.... so all this talk about nothing? We are actually in agreement? What a day...

Anyways - we are still stuck at your 'just because' type of answer to my question 'why?' and on the many comments I have seen you give of the same type. If you do not advocate this method, and not recommend it, it certainly seems to me that you are practicing it. But while I do not think this is a good use of your knowledge and skill, if you are determined to do it, I won't stop you.

For the record:
I still found your answers highly unsatisfactory in this case, but I will get over it.
Peace out, dude.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

So Ed, is it your considered opinion that the best way to maximize the efficiency of any three stones on the go board is to maximize the area of the triangle they describe?

Because the diagrams you were showing seem like a reasonable answer to one very specific question - "I understand why I should make a boxy framework rather than a squashed framework, but how do I recognize whether my framework is boxy or squashed?"

If you found someone had this problem, then it seems reasonable to say, "Well, of two moves that seem equally good to you on other grounds, the one that makes a bigger triangle is boxy and the one that makes a smaller triangle is squashed." That's a good heuristic. You could recognize that it works as a heuristic for recognizing boxy frameworks without having, or wanting, any real understanding of of why it's a good heuristic. Or, if your student knew more geometry, you could say, "The move that makes a scalene triangle is squashed and the one that makes a more orthogonal triangle is boxy." That is also a good heuristic. Or, you could say "If you're making an extension from A towards B, you're making a boxier position if there is a jump from A which is more perpendicular to A>B". Now, it's not to hard to see that these three heuristics are all describing the same thing - triangles whose legs are further from perpendicular are also more scalene and have a smaller area. For some people one heuristic will be easier to remember and apply, for others another.

But whereas all three heuristics are fine answers to the somewhat unusual question about recognizing that a framework is a boxy one, only the third is close to an answer to more common questions like "Why should I make a boxy framework, anyway?" or "What do I need to know to use a boxy framework effectively?"