I have been thinking about creativity, Go and differences between Eastern and Western cultures. Let me preface this by saying that I had always thought "creativity" was something westerners used as a cop out when they were unable to compete, however having seen first hand Chinese(generalized to east Asians) aversion to creativity, I am beginning to think that it isn't an ability/competence/strength issue, as much as Chinese just really **don't** like creative activities. I personally enjoy just about all aspects of being creative, from sourcing materials and researching methods, and making calculations to putting the finishing touches on a product. Furthermore, I don't think this aversion is culturally unique many westerners couldn't be goaded into being creative either, though the Eastern aversion creativity seems a little more hostile towards others being creative. Of course there are benefits to the Eastern approach with its well maintained tradition, but the aversion is a little mystifying.

Anyway, is there anyway to leverage creativity in Go, such that it isn't just a liability that gets me in trouble? Just a couple ideas I have had are playing flexible openings with many miai, while this is particularly satisfying, I am not sure that it is really very creative. Another approach seems to be finding novel openings that give small losses if played traditionally or simplified to a traditional opening, then working out many of the common variations. I think latter approach should work well, except there needs to be a certain difficulty to prevent it from being easily imitated or reverted to common openings. An example of what I am thinking about in the latter case may be the 4-4 6-3 enclosure on a kakari approach.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bm1
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

According to Kogo's if white treats this as the normal knights(black 3 at a) move for simplification, then there will be a small local loss.

Are there any other examples of non-traditional plays that when simplified lead to a local loss? Also this position looks somewhat thin, is it possible to make such plays without being thin, and is thickness a typical characteristic of traditional play?

Well, it's a local loss if white slides under because black's shape is more efficient than with the keima defense. When black plays the ogeima, it's really an invitation for white to enter the corner and give black the thickness, lest black get a big corner later on. The fact that it isn't optimal if white treats it like the keima isn't unique to this situation. If you look at most joseki and shift black's response one line or another you can get a pretty different situation. Look at the taisha vs. the one-space low pincer from mokuhazushi for example.

One thing that ought to be noted is how creativity has been slowly but surely bastardized (at least in the West), where people think it's about self-expression, to the point where some people think of doing inane things as being creative. Whatever has been done before once is worthless, and so on.
It leads to people placing rice bowls in a row with a sign reading "hunger" next to them.
It leads to a video game industry that desperately tries to make it's products anything but games while focusing development resources on things that strike the creator's fancy instead of trying to spark the audience's imagination. Restrictions are viewed as an anathema, their abolishment a good thing. Yet we get more and more self-indulgent crap.

It leads to a horde of Magic players who despise people playing proven things, a horde that thinks they're superior merely because no one else plays their pile of crap. They miss a key thing: Their pile of crap is still crap. Probably even one found by others, but dismissed as lacking.

An older view, I think, was simply that of an unusual solution to a problem. A clever play that won the game or just got you an extra point. The sprites in Super Mario Bros. being stored as halves and then mirrored at runtime to free precious memory on an early NES cart, or recolouring one to represent two different objects. A new mentality as to what a deck is supposed to do which leads to mass innovations and a renovation of a forgotten deck archetype in Magic.

Originality is overrated.

Absolutely this - though I would phrase it as "originality for its own sake is overrated".

I agree. There are definitely levels of creativity defending a patent in court on one end painting the device the perfect shade of white on the other. I wouldn't necessarily consider originality the purpose of being creative. For example, someone may want to sew a shirt that fits them out of nice material, instead of buying manufactured oversized ill fitting clothing out of poly synthetic junk, the seamstress might need to make several creative decisions to take the raw materials and fit it to that body. This I would consider being creative and functional, just as much as a "designer" designing for the conveyer belt, though not very original, they may even go the extra mile and embroider their initials in it. Back to my point, The Chinese I know wouldn't even sew a napkin to match their upholstery.

I know a lot of people who play Magic and they enjoy creative deck-building for its own sake. They like having a deck that is unique to them because it is more fun to play that way. Many of them have decks that would work in tournaments, but don't use them for casual play because its more fun. One of my friends has a deck that is about goblin tokens. He has a card that can double his tokens every turn and has many cards that either buff all goblins or allow him to sacrifice hordes of his goblin tokens. He doesn't play it because its a perfect deck, he plays the deck because he enjoys having dozens of tokens out and frustrating his opponents with it.

Magic: the Gathering and go are both games. When it comes right down to it if you aren't having fun then you are missing the point of the what you are doing. You can argue that competitive play is about winning, but for casual play? The point is always to have fun.


Are you talking strictly in a competitive sense? If so most people tend to agree with you.

The world of business does this. Movie companies make tons of sequels because they know they sell. Book stores stock everything with James Patterson's name on it because they know it sells. And when businesses are "original" in their thinking they are always small businesses that need to try something new and creative in order to compete. Then, if it is proven successful, larger companies will follow suit.

There is the world of competitive sports. Pro teams use the same proven training techniques and strategies game after game. The occasional trick play is run once and then never run again because it is known to be a sub-optimal play that only works if your opponent doesn't expect it. New overall strategies are only implemented when there is a new coach and usually overhauling a team's strategy results in failure (look at the University of Michigan football team under Rich Rodriguez.)

And in competitive go this is the same. If you look at the most recent 100 professional go games almost every one will have a 4-4 or 3-4 opening. The Low-Chinese or Mini-Chinese will be the fuseki in the majority of them. Rarely will you see an unusual opening because the common ones are tried and tested. Pros don't value originality for its own sake.

But what about in creative ventures? Is originality in the world of fine arts really overrated? Alexander Calder invented the mobile sculpture. Is that originality overrated? An artist who creates fantastic works in a new medium or using a new method or with a new meaning is trying to be original and I find value in that kind of originality.

So if you see go as a creative venture and not as a competitive one then shouldn't originality be valued there?

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

Yes, I meant originality/creativity for it's own sake seen as somehow intrinsically valuable.

"I have fun playing this way" = fine. Everyone derives their fun differently.
"At least I built my deck myself unlike someone" = not fine. This is basically saying people who just enjoy playing good decks are having BadWrongFun. It is this attitude I have issues with. I enjoy playing good cards, yet I ought to play bad ones because of some strange sense of superiority? Seems like ego protection, little else.

I'm not talking strictly in a competitive sense, but largely so, yes. I mean, that originality, creativity is the thing that's needed to find the new stuff that might eventually become standard. Trying out strange things can be damn fun. You can be good at whipping up stuff on the fly to the point it can be your personal optimal playstyle, even.

Same applies in business, though probably even more so. Being original is great. Being good is way, way more important. Being original is ridiculously easy. Being good is very, very hard. Being good AND original is even harder.

I think same about most creative ventures. Originality for it's own sake usually means that something is just plain shitty. Something good with a hint of originality, though? Damn near the best thing ever.

Also, if you're, say, just painting or composing for yourself, it can be perfectly fine to just do stuff. At that point, the goal is amusing/satisfying yourself. Which means good = what amuses you. In a market environment this can be radically different, and too damn many "creative" types fail to grasp it.

One of Cho Chikun's nick names was supposedly "explosives Artist", which I find is quite a weird title.

I agree about businesses and competitive sports not valuing creativeness, for all the reasons you mentioned. However when ever they do value creativeness, there is usually a strategic reason for doing such. For example, if you are LeBron James, you can do things that other players can't for example play forward on defense and point guard on offense, it takes a special coach to be able to leverage that style of play, and buck the traditional roles a forward is a forward is a forward... You can see some teams that really can't handle creativeness, take for example the Tebow debacle. I don't know if you have followed his moves recently, but he was able to rework the Denver offense into a hybrid wildcat option offense, that turned the team around wins a play off game gets traded to NY and subsequently cut, and well he just doesn't fit, maybe he can play Tight End. Standing by tradition is a great excuse for losing.

Amusingly enough, I believe the case is the opposite for the move posted in the original comment (large knight's extension) from a low approach to the 4-4). It used to be the most common response to the low approach, however then it was played so much that it was felt there was little room to innovate. A quick GoGoD search shows that prior to 1940 the large knight's extension was 3 times as likely to be played as the small knight's extension.

For consistency, they probably changed for some other reason, besides innovation for innovations sake, maybe Komi made the common invasion more successful for white, who then could afford to take small but solid profit?