I don't know if this analogy is applicable. My understanding from my time with the subject was that, in learning quantum, there's an incentive to run too far with some of its startling revelations, and turn it into a Heisenbergian black box that hides things people don't understand.

Quantum Mechanics is still, at its core, a system which can be applied. I'm not sure that learning go falls in the same category.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I have been following this and your understanding thread with considerable interest. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, many of the ideas you have started to articulate were addressed by Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In particular, he had much to say about Classical versus Romantic (or, as John Fairbairn says, analytic versus synthetic) understanding or aspects of Quality. And he speculated that his pre-electroshock self's undivided, undifferentiated concept of Quality might be the same as the Dao, though his post-electroshock self has reservations. Another, nearly forgotten, contributor to this subject was Henri Poincaré, who wrote quite a bit about "pre-intellectual" awareness; e.g., from The Monist, vol. 20 (1910) https://archive.org/details/jstor-27900262

Thank you for your stimulating discussions, I'll now go back to my observatory.

Here is an example (one that I have used before; my apologies to those who are seeing it again) that can be taken to support often’s idea that players should stick to what they understand instead of making correct plays that they do not understand.


But I take it to support my claim that we do not really understand plays that we think we understand. So to only make plays that we understand is too restrictive a rule. Do we really want to say that a 2 dan should not have played ? Leave that move to the pros?

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Another example. I know I'm tooting my own horn. But hey! why not?

As a 2 kyu I had learned some joseki. Here I chose to back my judgement and deviate, with disastrous results.



Seven years later I faced the same situation, this time against a pro. The pro is unknown because it was at a go school where a number of pros were each playing against two or three students at once. You just sat down where directed.



Well, I backed my judgement again, and this time the result looked OK to me. I anticipated that the pro would comment on my discovery and maybe pat me on the back. But not a word. I did ask him about , and he said that either my play or the variation was fine. A while later I saw the very sequence that we had played in a go magazine. It turned out that in those seven years it had become joseki.

The first time I backed my judgement and made a play that I did not understand, and got creamed. The second time I backed my judgement and made a play that I did understand, with success. Right? Well, not exactly. I understood the play better the second time around, but I had not read out the full joseki sequence. If I had stuck to plays I understood, I would not have made the play either time. If I had stuck to published joseki, I might have made the play the second time, if I had kept up sufficiently. But I still think that it was better to play joseki without playing joseki. And in fact, if I had not been backing my judgement all along, I doubt whether I would have made 3 dan by then.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I agree with the above, pretty much. And none of it runs against what I have said.

But in my defense, going back to what you said previously, it still seems to me that if you advocate against making moves we (think we) understand, you are basically saying that you advocate for making moves we don't (think we) understand, or at least for moves where our perceived understanding is not really a factor. This is what I disagreed with. If this is not what you said, as it seems from what you say now, then there must have been a misunderstanding on my part.

Of course, understanding is a spectrum not a binary, and I don't think anybody ever can say they "understand" something in its entirety. Not amateurs, and not the pros. And I don't think anybody here meant full understanding in this context, I certainly did not. There is always only understanding of a certain, higher or lower, level. Its more of a philosophical than practical question - can we really say we fully *understand* anything? Can anybody?

And yet we still have to use whatever limited understanding we have to make the decisions we make. This has nothing to do with humility, except maybe that humility should prompt you to realize that you need to continuously work on reaching deeper understanding.

Next you speak about "backing" your judgement - but this is exactly my point! When you make moves you (think you) understand, you can put forth arguments to back up your decisions - even if the arguments are weak or faulty. If you simply make "correct" moves you don't understand, you can put no arguments forth, all you can say is "I saw a pro play this move, no clue why" as your justification. And I think this is a very poor justification. Even if you *know* a move is more correct. What's more, this justification will not help you make any follow-up moves, correct or not.

But then - can you ever *know* a move is "correct"? Its same difference as with understanding... The humility you speak of usually prompts me to admit that I have no clue, and realistically, the pro who played it probably also was not quite sure, truth be told. So by making such moves, all you are really doing is not playing more "correctly" (although, strictly speaking, maybe you are), but implementing ideas of somebody else, ideas you don't know, don't understand, and cannot follow up logically. How is that good, I don't know.


I don't see it like that. The post Bill was responding to made a statement that, I paraphrase, it is better to play a move you (think you) understand than to play a move you think is correct but which you do not understand (and so cannot logically follow up with appropriate moves.) At least - this is how I understood PP's words, excluding the little word "comfortable", as I said in my previous post.

Well, I happen to agree with often and disagree with Bill, provided my interpretation of what was said and meant was correct. If my interpretation was not correct, then my apologies, although I do not really think apologies are necessary, did not try to offend nobody, just voicing an opinion which happens to disagree with what I read Bill's opinion was. How is this a "travesty"?

To reiterate - my opinion is that it is better to make moves which you (think you) understand - i.e. ones with some kind of ideas behind them - then moves which you just seen pros play and so suspect might be "correct" (or more correct than your moves, which might or might not be true), but which you have no understanding of and so cannot follow them up in a coherent way. Provided you combine this with the "humility" Bill mentioned and the attitude that you need to constantly work on improving your understanding.

If we all agree on that, sweet. If not, that's ok too.

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

Well, I think that "travesty" is putting it too strongly. But I do think that Bantari answered something I did not say, and you may be able to say the same for me in my reply to often. However, I think that my example of the game with the 2 dan does show how often and I differ.

Believe me, guys, it used to be worse. When I first started participating in online discussions, and debates arose, it seemed like every other note said, "You didn't read what I wrote!"

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hey, we're all human.

TTo the rest of your post - disaster can happen either way, this is why we are amas and not pros. And even pros sometimes face disasters. I know I am intimately familiar with this concept myself. As a matter of fact, most disasters I faced over the last many years was after playing textbook joseki sequences, so where does this leave your argument?

I recall one instance, when I was about 1k and was going through my "Takemiya period". I saw Takemiya play a move I have never seen before, and which I absolutely did not understand. Since I was such a big Takemiya fan, I, of course, played this move as well, every chance I got. And each time I got crushed right out of the opening. I looked at my games and i came to the conclusion that I got such poor results because I had no idea what this move meant, and so I had no idea what was appropriate to follow it up with later on. And invariably, I followed it up poorly, and even when by chance I follow-up move was not so bad, the move after than was idiotic. And again - this was because I played without any idea to justify my moves, no solid plan.

This happened to me a few times, and pretty much each time the results were bad. Pretty quickly it downed on me that to make moves like that was not very good. I did not learned much, got crushed, and was still in the dark. For then on I decided that unless I specifically set out to experiment, I will only play moves I think I understand or at least have an idea behind. This meant whenever I saw a pro move I liked, I would not play it until I studied it enough and thought about it enough to have some level of understanding.

The episode with Takemiya move when I was 1k was the turning point for me, and what eventually shaped my strong feeling on this subject.
In case you wonder, I don't recall the exact board position, but the move itself was a one-more-than-common-joseki extension, it went like that:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . X O O . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . 1 , . . . X X , O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |[/go]

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

Speaking of Takemiya, in 1976 in Kyoto I took 5 stones from a pro. The game began like this.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W Kosumi response
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . X . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Later on, I wondered which of us had priority.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Astronomy ?

Is working a joseki that much different than doing a life and death problem... or replaying a pro game trying to spot where the next move is ?
To me...well... yes they are different exercises, but all these serve the same purpose that is to develop a better reading.

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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

This is not what I have been saying. I have said that they should study my method for the relation between territory and influence in josekis to assess that relation well. Playing strength comes from many factors; here I have implied only the specific knowledge-strength, which has a great impact for the evaluation task itself and can contribute to playing strengths. Other approaches to playing strength exist, but AFAIK they have not provided any explanation for the relation as clear as my method. The pros are not required to learn my method, but they would profit from it (maybe not significantly for their playing strengths, but surely for improving their understanding).



Measurement and understanding are means for becoming stronger, provided one wants to become stronger (also) by measurement and understanding.



When watching or studying stronger amateur or professional play, consistently I notice that they already have a firm knowledge of almost all of what I rediscover. Their knowledge can exist in different forms (explicit, subconscious or other), but regardless of their preferred ways of thinking, they have that knowledge. They cannot teach all their knowledge that they can apply during their games, or cannot teach all as well as they apply it.

Therefore, I very much disagree to your statement. Not only do pros seek very much knowledge, but they are so strong, because they already apply very much knowledge.

There are exceptions: knowledge invented by me, which the pros cannot know and apply yet because it has not been available in their study sources and they have not invented it by themselves. Much of such knowledge invented by me is functionally similar to the knowledge already applied by the pros. Therefore, they could learn and apply also my invented knowledge if only they chose me as another source for knowledge input.