My personal experiences about learning Go is that there's two kinds of knowledge. One is the pruning of bad thinking that causes mistakes. For example heeding the advice that best move does not depend on where the opponent played his move has the effect of pruning a bad branch. Beginner is overwhelmed at the big board - every move for him is equally valid.

Result of first knowledge is the rigid adherence to familiar shapes and tactics. Second knowledge is the partial un-doing of pruning. Learning new tesuji and shapes increases the player's repertoire of expression.

There's also a third form of ability, exhaustive reading, which our brains really would rather not spend their energy on. It's also pretty much everything computers are capable of. Generalizations are evolutionarily important means to reduce brain energy consumption, and the methods of last two paragraphs are just ways to do so. When it is said that someone is "good at reading", does it mean that he knows accurately the goals of his reading, gets the relevant follow-ups fast and can get a conclusion without failing? Or does it mean that the brain has better short-term memory and is able to do more work at the same given time?