I have edited the SGF file to include a variation for to try to illustrate what I mean. I am talking about outside influence, not influence in the second sense, so the stones I am referring to are the wall in the top left and center and the fifth line wall on the bottom side. There is some possibility of renewing the attack on the large Black dragon, which would involve the wall on the right side, as well.

White played for influence in the opening, and finally made it pay off.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

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Although I do not believe in intuition, I can pretend to decide or learn as if it were intuition-like. For lightning games, it can be useful to save time when reasoning would be significantly slower. For learning it is extraordinarily inefficient by a ratio of roughly 1:10,000 (1 principle with 1 example versus 10,000 random examples of which one conveys some new principle).

I am not sure if I understand what you are saying. Now I guess you might mean (the influence-generating aspect of, e.g.) thickness when you say "power or outside strength" as influence type I? Do you mean "influence" when you speak of (the influence absorbing) influence type II?

If so, then also type I can have negative connection or life values (it is not thickness then but thinness).

What is your research about, if I may ask?

I think Jasiek's approach to the game has merit, although I can understand Magicwand's frustration.

For certain tasks, by far the most effective way to become skilled is by simply practicing the task and learning by example, especially if one can get good feedback. Many physical skills and sports fall are like this, as are things such as learning a new language. Almost any amount of abstract rule-based learning cannot teach you how to react effectively and coordinate your muscles to hit the ball in the right way. Similarly, you can try to learn the complex grammatical rules of a language and their numerous exceptions and all the different rules behind sentence structure, adjective order, verb conjugation, etc. But if you want to become fluent, once you have the very basics, it is usually more effective to learn the rest by immersing yourself in the language and interacting with other speakers. Even simple tasks like object recognition are also of this type - you can very easily teach someone to recognize a new type of animal by showing them a few different pictures, whereas describing all the precise characteristics could be difficult (for example, different breeds of dogs can vary enormously in size, shape, and appearance). We take it for granted, but the difficulty of object recognition and classification is evidenced by the fact it's still a major research problem in computer vision!

The unconcious/pattern-matching/instinctive part of the brain has an astonshing ability to learn and generalize in approximately the right way through examples and repeated feedback. Through examples, we can learn incredibly complex rules and interactions, and depending on the task, sometimes even faster than it would be to even write down what all the rules even are (particularly if there are a large number of them and a large number of exceptions to them as well).

Much of this applies to Go. Many players have become experts at understanding "influence" and "aji" and "good shape" and "thickness" by being told very little other than that such concepts exist and being given feedback by stronger players - "yes, that's good shape", "no, that's bad shape", "yes, that group is thick", "no that group isn't thick". As usual, the unconscious part of the brain has worked its magic, enabling these players to learn and skillfully apply these concepts, and yet often leaving them unable to precisely describe what the concepts are! It is plausible that for many players, just like learning a new language, learning by immersion and example could be a much more effective way of becoming fluent than methodically learning all the precise rules and definitions.

But there are disadvantages to this type of unconscious, example-driven learning as well. For one, knowledge acquired this way is difficult to transmit to others, which makes it difficult to teach beginners. Moreover, if you yourself have picked up some misconceptions or converged on something not quite right, it can be extremely difficult to determine what you are doing wrong and how to fix it. In such cases a more scientific approach could indeed be extremely effective. And for some aspects of the game, like capturing races and the microendgame, it is actually possible to enumerate the different cases that can arise and come up with exact rules for evaluating them. And even where it is not possible, it probably helps if you at least start out with approximately the right general concept to begin with, rather than learning purely from trial and error.

As a result, there is no reason why an approach like Jasiek's could not be effective. To go back to the language example, the complexity of human language has not stopped people from developing a useful theory of linguistics and then using the results for useful applications that would otherwise be impossible, such as automated language translation (still poor, but very very gradually improving). Jasiek's research has not been necessary in the past for players to become strong, but it is nonetheless an interesting way to approach the game and could potentially be very useful for many players.

I do not see "formally proving the truth of a theorem" as an indicator of a better method. But perhaps this shows a difference in our goals behind the game.



Your alternative explanation is possible, but I don't think that it's actually the case when I consider other areas of learning.

One example that comes to mind is language learning. You can devote hours of study to learning grammar for a foreign language precisely. You might even know more grammar detail than a native speaker of that language, if you study for long enough. But in my experience, studying grammar pedantically is no match for practicing speech with a native speaker.

If I compare this to go, the best way to learn the "language" is probably to learn from "native speakers" (i.e. pros). I would much rather study from a native speaker that lacks some methodical knowledge (eg. grammar rules in the language example) than a non-native speaker that has studied grammar more precisely.



I agree that studying the fundamentals first is essential for expertise. But if you claim that there are pros that lack methodological knowledge that you have, it is simply evidence that such knowledge is not necessary for expertise.



Well, it's entirely hypothetical, so in another 30 to 50 years, perhaps you'll change your mind, too.

---

I've been thinking about this a bit more, and I think that my opinion has changed slightly. I still believe that experience and learning from those that are stronger than you (eg. pros) is essential. There is also value in learning the fundamentals.

If I have to choose between learning by technical methodology and by intuition and experience, I feel that intuition and experience will get you further PROVIDED you have some grasp on some fundamentals - we can see that pros have that, already.

But where my opinion has adapted is in that I believe it is necessary to achieve a balance between the two approaches. They are not mutually exclusive. You can learn methodology, and can even study proofs of certain aspects of go. I do not find this as useful as playing others by experience, and gaining intuition. But having both your right brain and your left brain work together is bound to achieve good results.

My conclusion: You need to have balance.

_________________
be immersed

Up to 1 kyu, what I needed I found as generalised knowledge in books, except that I had to bite my way through a joseki dictionary because at that time generalised joseki knowledge did not exist; about 50% of the effort was reading that dictionary and trying to understand and learn the variations. From 1 kyu to 3 dan, I needed mostly what I had neglected earlier: opening, life and death and tsumego; no useful generalised knowledge existed at that time in English (not even for opening), so it was hard work but possible.

Things dramatically changed from 3 dan to 5 dan because I had neither: generalised knowledge and specialised dictionary style books were not available for what I needed the most then: fundamentals and thickness / influence. What was not available I had to invent myself to become stronger. So I read what I had: piles of unsorted, totally unstructered example books. All in the hope to occasionally find some interesting diagram (mostly such fake ordinary examples the book author did not highlight) that possibly could tell me something knew if only I would think hard enough what kind of thing that was to grasp as a new general idea.

Therefore I think such research or explanation of its results is necessary for players with a similar experience of needing something not found explicitly in literature before.

A method proven (by means of expressing it as a theorem, which is then proven etc.) to convey the truth is the most correct. No other method can be more correct than the truth. E.g., if your other method is intuition, then it can at best be as good as the proven method. This lets the proven method be the in general better method; always correct instead of only sometimes correct.



No. It shows your lack of understanding of what proven truth implies.



(Currently) I do not claim it for other areas. It might well be a speciality of go "learning culture".



No. My experience is: Professionals mostly teach as weakly as example only books and almost completely failed to assess my major weaknesses (except that they noticed one weakess they were all strong at: local life and death reading), something I wish I would never have to say of any teacher but in go it is the unfortunate norm rather than the exception.



Expertise at winning games does not require expertise at all fields because players may make mistakes and can afford to be weaker at some fields for which methodical knowledge would help them easily. They also may be very weak teachers because that is immaterial for have expertise at winning one's (the teacher's) own games.



A great value:)



It is not a matter of exclusion but of efficiency. The inefficient method becomes superfluous when the always correct method provides the answer.



My conclusion: The still methodically unexplored parts of go theory also need to be explained methodically.

Kirby and LightVector:

Um, no. I like "proven truth" as much as the next guy - I was a math major, and that's what we do.

But I don't feel like I can treat go like a closed system the way I do with math.

I think it's easier to use the scientific method: get a hypothesis and test it.

This is the essence of experience. Play games against someone stronger. Play a new move. Improve your hypothesis power.

You can't prove everything in the game. But you can use the scientific method.

_________________
be immersed

But what is or can obviously be proven can be applied. For example, semeai formulae.

This thread had degraded, as often seems to happen when Robert posts, into the usual to-and-fro about the merits or otherwise of Robert's methodoligical approach to Go and his books. We can talk about theory until the cows come home, but at the end of the day Go is about deciding where to play your stones. To that end, I would be interested in seeing how Robert, or indeed someone else who has read his books, would use his approach to decide where to play in the following late-opening/early-middlegame position from a game of mine (the topic of viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5277).

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$cm43 Black to play
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O O O . O O . . . . . . . X . X . . |
$$ | . X O X X . . . . , . . . . . . X O . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . X O X . |
$$ | . . . X . . X . X . . . . . . . O X . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O X . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . . O . . O . O . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X , . . . . . , . . . . . , O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O . . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . O X . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . O . O . . . . . . . . X . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

There was a suggestion the last 4 moves weren't great, so an alternative problem would be this slightly earlier position.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$cm39 Black to play
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O O O . O O . . . . . . . X . X . . |
$$ | . X O X X . . . . , . . . . . . X O . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . X O X . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . O X . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O X . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X , . . . . . , . . . . . , O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O . . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . O X . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . O . O . . . . . . . . X . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

These positions strike me as ones where influence and direction of play considerations are paramount. I find generating moves and evaluating my choices in such situations difficult. If Robert can come up with something to help this, it would be valuable indeed. I would also be interested how an intuitive player such as Magicwand would approach this position.

What if black just tries B12 in the second diagram? If black connects white is sort of floating.

Floating but light. See 3rd diagram of viewtopic.php?p=87750#p87750 why I rejected b12.

I don't understand your move 41 in that diagram - after black connects there's no rush to try to capture the two stones.

Indeed, where else do you propose to play? My feeling was that n5/6 was the key influence point of this board and thus whoever got sente to play there would have the advantage. Maybe Robert can confirm or deny this using his method? B12 is gote, whereas the game line strengthened the black group in sente.

F4 looks really tempting to me for some reason - black getting shut inside corner is not as painful if the bottom is low and the left side grows.

The major topic is the two center groups and which of them provides the better influence. You ask for application of my book's concepts but, if I describe that in details here, it would need to long. So let me concentrate on the most interesting aspects. If Black allows White to make the forcing exchange h13-h14 etc., then the white center group creates significant influence because of being 0-connected and adjacent to a wide open area. So Black wants to prevent that. j10-h13 does not solve the problem. h12 helps White to become stronger. This brings us to the question if Black can cut h11/h11 or whether they are already 0-connected or else indirectly connected. Black f11 or g11 look promising for the sake of cutting and motivating White to conquer dame or c10 while Black becomes strong around h11. But I would want to check more variations than is fun on webpage diagrams and then consider more carefully whether White's connection was indirect, i.e. he can achieve still at least a fair result despite a black center cut. If yes, then b12 could be better.

P4 - P3 - M5 is good for moyo onfluence. So if Black b12, then H13 - H14, then that sequence. But b12 is too easy going for White. Black n6 misses the more urgent center groups topic. So see my other message.

You could also say that the dozens of followers of this thread don't take out their hundreds of other books to offer citations for other explanations of influence. Among my hundreds of books, I do not know any useful other citation though. But what about All About Thickness or hopefully existing Asian books about the topic? Don't they have any description of what "influence" actually is? If so, which and are they even worth considering in comparison?

It sounds like you are talking about influence as the effect of stones on points or other stones. The other sense is the traditional one of outside strength, or as in the phrase, sphere of influence.

My research is about the effect of stones on points or other stones. I am focusing on situations where it may be calculated precisely.

For instance, consider this corridor, with all stones alive.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ X X X X O
$$ X . . . O
$$ X X X X O[/go]

There are 1.25 points of territory, on average, in the corridor. We may allocate the points based on the possibility of a point becoming territory, as (0.75, 0.5, 0) for the three points. The values are the combined values of the influence of the surrounding stones. We may also allocate points based on the possibility of a point becoming area. In this case the values are the same.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ X X X O
$$ X . . O
$$ X . . O
$$ X X X O[/go]

In this case the territory values are ((0.25, 0), (0.25, 0)) for territory and ((0.5, -0.25), (0.5, -0.25)) for area. The total influence is the same.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.