So how to compare Japanese vs. Western literature in general? These have been my observations:

- There are many more Japanese books.
- The percentage of trivial, weak books is much greater among the Japanese.
- Due to the still limited number of Western books, more topics are not taught at all yet than in Japanese books.
- On average, Western books are more general advice orientated than Japanese books. (E.g., on average more explicitly stated principles.)
- There are topics covered in Western books not covered in Japanese books and, for other topics, vice versa. (Example Western only: modern liberty counting theory. Example Japanese only: problem books of top pro level difficulty.)
- There are topics covered in neither Western nor Japanese books. (Example: General treatment of move decisions in human reading. So far, only a few special methods (Example: Local Move Selection) have been mentioned. For informatics, there are various books on algorithms not specifically designed for but with modifications applicable for go.)

So the overall conclusion for books of all degrees of quality can be: both Western and Japanese literature have a couple of useful books.

Although I wouldn't disagree entirely with your conclusions, Robert, I think these points are worth mentioning:

1. You do not know Japanese and so your impression of what is inside Japanese books is therefore largely unreliable. Even your English is unreliable.
2. As well as books, Japanese go has enjoyed a vast array of magazine articles going back over a century. Much of the best material is to be found there. For some aspects there are also many good items in shogi books/articles.
3. Your habit of mentioning western research (usually yours) in the same breath as Japanese material, as if they were equal, is part of what people mean when they say they object not to your ideas but to your presentation. Put simply, you are no Jack Kennedy.



I would like to assume this is your attempt at a joke. It's either that or, to use one of your favourite words, stupid - in this case in terms of both content and presentation.



Counter-example 1: "Thinking techniques of professional go players" (Seeing the overall position and the ability to evaluate) by Yoda Norimoto. Over 200 pages of solid text (three diagrams). Yes, he's only a "stupid Japanese 9-dan" but he's been a Meijin and has had international success. And he can write well.

PS My aim here is not to attack anyone but rather to defend Japanese literature - it just so happens that that is mainly attacked by just one person. To answer the thread's question: I believe Japanese go literature is many, many more times "brilliant" (poor choice of word, but also useful/valuable/proven) than western go literature, as is likewise Chinese or Korean literature, and the proof is partly in the numbers and strength of Oriental players, their books not just teaching them but motivating, inspiring and entertaining them. The most brilliant and important book of all, of course, is the Xuanxuan Qijing (Gateway to All Marvels), which is much more than a problem book. Any book that keeps its cachet for 700 years and is repeatedly copied without ever being improved must have something.

Do you have doubts about the relevance of Western research (*)? Do you have doubts that, in Western go books (books, not research papers), most research (*) results appear in my books?



I dislike meta-discussions, where discussions are possible.



I have specifically not spoken of thinking techniques; I know that there are (a few?) books on thinking techniques. I have spoken of decision making in reading. The two things can be related but need not be related. Does Yoda's book explain also decision making in reading? I do not mean strategic planning including basic strategic choice making, nor do I mean positional analysis methods such as seeing and evaluating the whole board position or the ability to evaluate its aspects. When I speak of decision making in reading, I presume that the available analysis results, options and strategic choices are already known. The next step of decision making then is closely related to reading: how to filter the superfluous, how to decide among not yet filtered choices, when to apply which kind of reading. Does Yoda's book discuss also this in detail?



Irrelevant. Either the quality of the book is good or it is not - that is what matters.



Good aspects, if also theory is taught.



So what is its further go theory contents?

EDIT:

(*) I mean go theory research useful for players' knowledge and current or future improvement potential. Other kind of research (history, rules, society etc.) I do not mean here.

Excluding research papers is good, but you'd get even better numbers if you restricted the sample to books written in English by native German speakers.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

It depends.

For the context of John criticising me, excluding the research papers is a necessity because otherwise his statement "Your habit of mentioning western research (usually yours)" does not make sense: When I praise Western research in a broad sense (IIRC, I have done this also in this thread in a message or two), then I do not do ("usually yours") for that he criticises me.

For the context of considering literature in a broad sense, excluding some forms of publications makes no good sense. There are the research papers, the seminar brochures and the books.

some comment on your paper:

on your paper, way you define terms are more confusing than actual term.
if you are the only one understanding the terms you use what is the point of your paper? (dont ask me for example because every terms you defined are confusing)
i for one understand perfectly many many mathmatical terms and proofs so dont blame me for not understanding your paper.
i am sure there are few who tried to read your paper. i am curious if i am the only one who feels that way.

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

Magicwand, I guess you are referring to my ko definition paper. I needed months to write it, so I'd expect an educated reader to understand it within about 2 weeks of reading. Alternative estimate: the definition part of the paper should be read like a maths journal text, i.e., spending 30 minutes per text line (this was my somewhat advanced maths study experience at university, e.g. for algorithm and complexity theory 3rd semester). If you spend less, then I am not surprised that you have difficulties with understanding. OTOH, the name of the terms help. E.g., would you recognise "strategy" if it were called "nut"?:) Readers familiar with similar definitions such as in my rules research texts have a chance of faster understanding. The examples can help, but I understand if you take the hard way and want to understand the definitions before entering the examples section or reading something related:

http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/j2003com.html

BTW, when visiting a go player who is a professor for functions theory, he showed be an "introductory" book for it. My comment: I would need two months to understand it. I.e., if he had shown me some of his "easier" research, I would have had to educate myself first, because I had not had any functions theory as a student.

Your maths study enables you to educate yourself if necessary to understand with much time and effort, but I think you should not expect contents to fly to you with only little effort.

John, two questions.

1. You say that the virtues of the East Asian-language Go literature is abundantly proved by the virtues of East Asian players. I'm not sure this follows. Would we say this about chess, or other games - that the countries with the strongest players have the best books? Would we say that within any game, when one country eclipses another in international competition, we should infer that the former's literature had previously eclipsed the latter's?

(I'm not denying the conclusion, by the way. The relative quality of translated Japanese books and new English creations settles that for me.)

2. Some of the best go research in Japan is in shogi journals? Intriguing; please say more.

Self-contained minor interlude that needs no replies: The complexity Jasiek's ko paper does not exceed that of Euclid's Elements, which used to be taught in many high schools (it may still be). I get the feeling that reading comprehension (and perhaps an aversion to definitions in general) may be a greater barrier to reading it than anything else. If a person has completed high-level math courses and still feels that Jasiek's ko paper is too complex, than perhaps that person has only applied math skills and little pure math ability.

How many definitions are there in Elements, and how many of them contain technical terms that are left undefined?

and what percent of High schools teach using the elements, and what percent of high school students graduate understanding geometry?

That sounds awesome, I hope it gets translated!

This is a basic conceptual error. Theory must be useful in order to be good in this context.

_________________
North Lecale

When we discuss the paper, do we mean this one: http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/ko.pdf? I confess, I sometimes find it hard to find the most important things on your site, Robert.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

It's this book for those interested.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%97%E3%83 ... 534&sr=8-8

I have it at home, but I haven't opened it up yet. I've just been a fan of his for a while, so I want to have it around when I have some time.

There are probably no more than 200 definitions (it's been a while), but more than 100. I can't really answer the second question, but there are certain important things that are not defined explicitly but implicitly by their assumed properties such as the notion of length.
The "it may still be" in my post strongly suggests that I don't know what they teach in high schools today. However, I begrudgingly teach some university classes from time to time, where it becomes apparent that many college students didn't graduate high school with an understanding of geometry. Perhaps they don't teach Elements in high school anymore? I can't imagine that college students would have such poor understanding if they had studied Elements.

For a couple of centuries, one could not be called an educated person without having studied Elements, and the students of the first universities would definitely have been familiar with it.

Now, I am in no way suggesting that the quality of Jasiek's paper is comparable to that of Elements, which is truly a masterpiece of masterpieces. However, from an analysis of the syntax, the arguments in Elements are fairly low in complexity. Of course, part of the beauty of Elements is that it uses elegantly simple arguments to prove some very nice things.

The domain of the logic being applied in Jasiek's paper is finite. This is pretty much as simple an environment as you can get in mathematics. It might have a great number of simple things written in succession, which makes it look intimidating. Jasiek's word choices probably make things a bit worse, but he's not trying to sell the paper for money, so he might have put zero effort into making it more fluidly readable.

I actually think that Jasiek's writing style would benefit a lot from additional mathematical training. Introducing just a sprinkle of symbolic notation in the right places might make his definitions and arguments more concise and clear.

Also...

When I say that the complexity of Jasiek's ko paper is no more than that of Elements, I am saying the arguments in both would look similarly complex if we removed the parts relevant to giving the arguments meaning and left only the parts necessary for making logical inferences. What is meant by this?

Consider the following paragraph: All swans are white. Any animal that can produce viable offspring by mating with a swan is also a swan. Ann the Swan at the local zoo is a swan. Bob the Bird at the local zoo mated with Ann the Swan and produced viable offspring. Therefore Bob the Bird is a swan and is white.

Now try to ignore the meaning of those sentences and look at isolate the parts that are relevant to the argumentation by replacing some terms (here's one crude approximation): Any object x that has property S also has property W. For any objects x and y, if object y has property S and the pair (x,y) taken together has property PVO, then x has property S. Specific object A has property S. The pair (A,B) taken together has property PVO, where B is a specific object. Therefore B has properties S and W.

These statements have no discernible meaning, but their logical structure and correctness are the same as those in the plain English version from which they were constructed.

A small but not insignificant part of the reason that Elements is easier to read than Jasiek's ko paper is that most people already have some familiarity with and intuition about the many objects and properties (line, point, angle, circle, parallel, etc.) that are defined in the former (in the same way we are familiar with swans, mating, offspring and white) whereas we have very little familiarity with the objects and properties being described in the latter. This is nothing that cannot be overcome with some patience and time.

Lastly...

I'm not saying that Jasiek's paper is correct. I'd have read it carefully to say that (and like most people, ko rule theory isn't something that interests me). However, if we're just talking about it's complexity, then I only need to scan its syntactical structure, which can be done fairly quickly.

Now...

I believe y'all were discussing something far more interesting than this ko paper.

PS: The bit-width thing was ridiculous... Some people started posting moves by their coordinates in their Malkovitch games (instead of entire diagrams), presumably to save bits. This shows that people trust the admins quite a bit. That trust might have been slightly compromised.

I am the guilty one. my work computer was taken away and my android is only source of internet. and it is not easy posting entire diagrams with android.

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

Actually, people post coordinates in Malkovich games because they are posting from mobile phones, or from work.

So I believe Euclid prove nearly 500 propositions with 140 definitions, none of which contain any previously undefined term more complicated than "greater than". The first and best known book is 23 definitions and 48 propositions, including the Pythagorean theorem.

RJ's ko paper contains 36 defined terms, of which 5 are actually "defined elsewhere". Of these some are not felicitous (e.g., "prevent" is defined as "force to fulfil not"), some depend in unfortunate ways on undefined terms ("basic-ko-intersection" is defined as "the intersection of a basic-ko": perfectly intuitive and perfectly useless, given that basic-ko is defined elsewhere and intersection is undefined... presumably he means set-theoretic intersection, but how would one know?)

Now, how many propositions about ko are proved using these 36 definitions?

I see. I guess you didn't fall for it then.

I don't know if you saw the bit-width thing, but you should go check it out. Jasiek's user name (and only his) was shortened by the admins (an admin?). That was a particularly passive-aggressive action on the part of the admins to infringe upon a forum member's dignity. Of course, it might be said that Jasiek was damaging his own dignity without the admins' help, but doing so should be his right (and not the admins').
You are missing my point, which was about the level of cognitive ability necessary to make sense of the arguments with time and patience, and not about their efficiency.

Also, do you realize that you are complaining that Jasiek's work isn't half as elegant and efficient as Euclid's? Why are you holding Jasiek to what is probably the ultimate (and impossible) standard?

Finally, we frequently talk about placing stones on intersections of lines on the go board. That seems to be the obvious interpretation here, and not the set-theoretic one. Also, when you complain of basic-ko being defined elsewhere, I think you should consider the hypothesis that the target audience for this document already knows what is meant by a basic-ko as Jasiek uses it. You might rightfully complain that not providing a link to where the definition may be found is a bit sloppy, but that's about it (EDIT: He does provide his e-mail in the document, so there is implied possibility of asking the author directly). You would be surprised how often this happens even in published mathematics articles if the definitions are familiar enough to the target audience. Sometimes a paper might contain a term which is defined in two slightly different ways in the literature and the author assumes that you know the one he's talking about, much to the reader's chagrin. This is obviously bad practice, so I am not defending the practice itself. However, I do think that it is harsh to lash out at Jasiek for the kind of incompleteness of presentation that even professional mathematicians are guilty of...especially when he likely wasn't aiming to achieve the standard of peer-reviewed mathematics when sharing that document online. EDIT: I also would give him credit for acknowledging that those definitions are not in the document proper at the beginning. That's more than I would have expected of a layman.

I missed this earlier, but it's not nice to ask questions that you already know the answers to... It makes people paranoid. If you were trying to make a point rhetorically, why not just make it directly, like you did later?