https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om_CVAevU8o&list=PL4y5WtsvtduqNW0AKlSsOdea3Hl1X_v-S

Objective of this video series

To find a way to “see through the mind's eye” of an expert Go player (Hajin Lee 3P aka Haylee on YouTube) by drawing “pictures” of the mental images that enter her mind when she looks at a board position to decide what to do.

Purposes

1. To help people learning Go see more clearly

2. To identify generic patterns that a human expert uses to generate candidate moves and evaluate them, to create a set of generic heuristic rules that a computer could use to play “intelligent” Go.

Background

Contemporary computer go programs utilise “brute-force” search, involving evaluation of move sequences that a human expert would simply not even consider. This is partly because candidate move generation is non-trivial; in the absence of an intelligent knowledge-based candidate move generator, brute-force search is all a machine can do.

Go teachers use a combination of language and particular moves to explain general concepts, from which students can form their own mental images, but they still cannot see clearly what the teacher sees, because a lot of the knowledge an expert has is either tacit (subconscious) or too elaborate to explain in language alone.

So they typically resort to the Occam's Razor of asking students to choose between 2 or 3 moves (“would you play A, B or C?”).

But where do these choices come from? They come from inside the teacher's head, not from inside the student's head. To the teacher, the choices are obvious, they spring to mind.

But to the student (or computer) they emanate from within a cloud of darkness. Then the teacher shows what is likely to happen in each case, but again, each step in the follow-up sequence is also a move that is obvious to the teacher, but anything but obvious to the bewildered student.

It takes a long apprenticeship to become expert at anything, and Go is no exception. But maybe some pictures of mental images can shorten the journey of learning?

So far, I've found this series of videos entertaining, but as far as go is concerned, it is rather slow at getting to the point. The author draws on a wide variety of sources to support his observations regarding the mind and the though process, and speaks with a voice that I enjoyed listening to, but the video itself has the tendency to ramble on and although there are many interesting bits and pieces, as I watched it, I found myself becoming more and more doubtful that anything enlightening regarding go would appear. I do like the interdisciplinary approach, but after a while, I found myself wanting to skip past the the scenes of smart people talking, the skits and the musical interludes and get to the parts about go.

The author's quest, "To find a way to “see through the mind's eye” of an expert Go player (Hajin Lee 3P aka Haylee on YouTube) by drawing “pictures” of the mental images that enter her mind when she looks at a board position to decide what to do," is an interesting one, but the results so far, go boards with arrows on them summing up Haylee's explanations, have less content than her own words. We are left with the simple fact that by drawing on her knowledge and experience, she is able to play better and more informed moves than the rest of us. What goes on in her head can be approached from many angles, but questions that I'd like to hear addressed such as whether anything in her mind operates in a fundamentally different way than in mine when it comes to go or if she is just more efficient, are so far just skirted around and not addressed directly.

The author is clearly knowledgeable and resourceful, and the video is for the most part well done, though it could use some determined editing. I hope that series continues, but I suggest that some of the fluff be sacrificed for more juicy parts for go players, who after all are the ones most interested in this sort of offering anyway.

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Patience, grasshopper.

This is what I also thought when I skipped through the videos, thanks.

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

getting to the point of telling you something new, i presume. that depends on how much you already know.



agreed, but her words in my movies are in-depth explanations of what she skims over in her own videos; Haylee has generously agreed to help me with my investigations, which are just starting



that is one of the long-term objectives of my research



you aren't going to like the next episode, then, because it won't mention Go at all! ....but it might tell you some things you probably don't know that you really do need to know, especially if you are less than 50 years old

coming soon: what Haylee saw that B and G missed; a look under the bonnet of Zen by one of its programmers, and other unworldly fluff about a game that is pure recreation.

I think this is an interesting topic and one well worth pursuing for amateurs.

First, a note on the quality of the videos. I found it totally impossible even at full blast to hear what Yi Ha-chin was saying, and I could only infer this from the pictures. Judging by what other viewers said above, my inferences may be on the right lines, but I may have missed something important. Since I'm almost completely deaf, not hearing Miss Yi is no surprise, but since I could hear the rest of the video, this may be a sound quality-control issue. I have to confess also that it seemed like the video editor was more interested in playing with the full palette of movie tricks available. It ended up like an American breakfast - grapefruit segments and jam heaped on the same plate as the bacon and eggs and grits. I never thought I'd hear myself say this (no pun on me intended) but there were times when I was longing for a simple Powerpoint presentation instead, and I ended up skipping irritating portions.

But the content does raise lots of interesting issues. From the title I was expecting something along the lines of people being taught to relax by visualising the sea lapping on the shore. These techniques are also widely used in martial arts and perhaps could have a useful place in go.

Instead the focus appeared to be mainly on the same research done by Bruce Wilcox, which led to Instant Go. As I recall, Bruce got Michael Redmond to do the same work as Yi Ha-chin, and the end result was, to a large degree, capable of being represented visually, mostly (again) with arrows and shading, and 'sector lines'. Although sector lines were not new in go theory, they were new to the western audience and created great excitement. Bruce had maybe the biggest audience I've ever seen for a go lecture at the European Congress in Canterbury, but he developed his work more towards making a playing computer rather than creating mental tools for humans. Perhaps it's time to try the other fork?

Imagery is also mentioned in various ways by pros. I have recently mentioned Yoda talking about reading being a series of image visualisations. He even uses the English word 'image', both as a noun and a verb, but I think 'chunk' would be a better English term. The reason is that he talks about the way to create these images being to play over lots of old games, and since this is essentially a form of inculcating pattern recognition, it seems best to follow the established chess term.

Takemiya once demonstrated to me how he visualised sizes of territories (e.g. hand shapes) so that he didn't have to count them. There were also some interesting tricks involved in mentally removing stones to create more identifiable patterns. This seems to me a more accurate use of imagery than Yoda's, and is supported by other pros who write on evaluating positions using comparative methods.

Imagery is also used extensively in proverbs (carpenter's square, octopus in a pot, giraffe's neck, plum-flower five etc). I suspect we all find these useful. If so, should the range be expanded?

There is another use of this latter kind of imagery that seems not be applied in go, but is used in memorisation techniques, and that is a startling (violent, sexy, etc) image to make sure something sticks in the mind. What I have in mind in go, though, is something short term rather than true memorisation. It takes a cue from bits of advice such as one by Kataoka, to the effect that the very first thing to look for when evaluating a position (definitely not counting, which can usually be dispensed with altogether*) is to identify which groups are strong and weak. If my experience is shared, that is easy to do, but I have a strong tendency to forget the results immediately. Imagining a red pulsing light beside a cutting point might help me remember that weakness for the duration of the game. Imagining a piece of territory as a bright green, trimmed lawn might enable me to avoid going back every few moves to check its status.

Since there are different kinds of imagery and different possible uses, it seems useful to decide here first what the range of types and uses might be.

* More on Kataoka: The second thing to look at the shape of stones and efficiency (but this does not mean empty triangles and the like as much as the balance of high and low, width of moyos, etc), and the third item is not counting but comparison of territories at a glance. This does not mean precise counting is to be eschewed for ever. It's just that counting with open boundaries is very hard and often impossible even for pros, and most amateurs (and pros, increasingly) play fast games where there is just no time to count. In any event, Takemiya insists that go is not a game of counting territory. That happens, he says, only at the end of the game (if then!), and for the rest of the time you have to rely on other factors, like Kataoka's, for evaluation. Furthermore, Kataoka adds that evaluation must not take place only at quiescent points - although they are useful as a breathing space - but even during fighting, and that again can't be done by counting. (And several pros give additional nifty at-a-glance techniques, mostly used by very strong players.) We thus have a situation where pros are apparently promoting the use of images, or something at least partly visual, and encouraging amateurs not to rely on numbers. But a very large number of amateurs, at least in the west, seem enticed by numbers. The research at the head of this thread might usefully look also at the balance that needs to be struck there.

please make comments such as these in the YouTube comments, citing specific conjunctions that seem unconnected to you, so i can explain the parallels, metaphors and similes you have missed for the benefit of other viewers who may also have missed them.

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i shrink, therefore i swarm

No, sorry. I only use one forum - this one. And in any case it wasn't a matter of missing connections. It was the stylistic hotpotch I found bothersome. The medium got in the way of the message, for me.

sorry about that; not having the financial resources of a commercial production company, i am unable to interview the various experts featured in my movies to produce a smooth flow and instead have to extract fragments of their statements about other things that bear upon the theme of an episode of my series.

In the case of Feynman, the things he says bear upon a raft of episodes yet to come.

"Mental Imagery in Go" is about 2 things:
1. Mental Imagery
2. Go

+ one more thing! Go AI
+ another!! Go computation

To me, these 4 things - which usually are separated in others' writings - are intimately related. To properly explain these relations and their influences upon each other will require a lot more footage time; i'm only just getting started.

Of them all, i perceive the first to be the most significant to other people, because anyone's mental image of what's going on in the world is painted by the information they are fed as well as their own personal experiences. And that information is so often misinformation. And, disturbingly, disinformation.

A Go board does not suffer from these complications because what you see is genuinely what you get.

However, even though a Go board is an unequivocal black and white picture containing just 361 pixels, the human mind is unable to see exactly what is there, and instead constructs its own idea of what it's looking at.

The same is true for my videos; what i see as a deep and meaningful highly connected expose, you see as a pig's breakfast.

And that is a problem, because although i am making the videos partly for my own entertainment - they are one of my hobbies - they are mainly intended to be educational to others, especially the young. So if they come across as a meaningless Smorgasbord mashup, i have failed in my attempt to communicate.

John, you mention a number of things in your long post that i plan to address in future episodes. Do you know of any freely available published sources for what Yoda and Kataoka have said?

Just one observation: the concept of "chunking" originates, as best i can remember, with the work of Bartlett back in the 1930s.
http://www.bartlett.psychol.cam.ac.uk/TheoryOfRemembering.htm

As regards Bruce, i had the pleasure of meeting his mentor, Walter Reitman, in Hawaii in 1977 and again in 1979 when i was in Columbus and he in Michigan. And of hearing Bruce talk about his ideas in Tokyo in 1980-something (can't remember the date exactly). Walter and Bruce have both since turned their attention away from Go to other things, as did i until just a few weeks ago. And yes, their approach to Go programming shares much with mine.

However, more influential upon my own thinking is the work of Earl Sacerdoti and Terry Winograd and others. I may get around to discussing this in my video series, but that's way down the track as there's a lot more groundwork to cover first.

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i shrink, therefore i swarm

If by that you mean 'in English', no. They have both published in Japanese, of course. Yoda's work on go thinking is probably tastier for an academic. But there is quite a lot of imagery used in Japanese go books (e.g. stones as human figures, samurai swords representing thickness) which we rarely get in English books, no doubt because of the cost. If these count as mental imagery, it may be fruitful to browse through some oriental books or ask forum members to make suggestions.

Since you mention young people as a main audience, it occurs to me that Hikaru no Go could be a fruitful source of ideas. We know that several current pros, as well as many western amateurs, were inspired by these books, and I can't believe that much of the inspiration they provided was not through mental imagery. Indeed, there has been discussion as to whether the Japanese love of manga has shaped the way they think and behave (I assume it's safe to consider a manga a series of mental images....).

John, it would be good to include something of the Japanese pros' ideas that you mentioned; but i don't have their books, and could only read them with the aid of Google Translate! If you are able to provide some input on that side, maybe with some of their pictures too, i could incorporate it into a future episode.

You have also demonstrated to me that i need to explain a bit more clearly what i mean (and do not mean) by the word "imagery" - i had forgotten it has many meanings. Specifically, i wasn't using it in the sense you inferred, but in the drier cognitive psychology sense.

Now i understand why you hadn't seen what you were expecting to in my videos; but to explain what i'm on about more clearly i need to think a bit first.

i've heard of Hikaru, but haven't read any of it.

PS New episode now up. i've provided a transcript by way of a YouTube comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkJnFTDkDaw&list=PL4y5WtsvtduqNW0AKlSsOdea3Hl1X_v-S&index=17

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i shrink, therefore i swarm

I've taken up John's suggestion of including Hikaru in my latest discussion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPraaAsWYVY&list=PL4y5WtsvtduqNW0AKlSsOdea3Hl1X_v-S&index=18

i hope some Lifers will see fit to offer their opinions on the position under discussion as YouTube comments

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i shrink, therefore i swarm