Thinking + Improvement

[RobertJasiek]

The recent controversial threads about thinking and improving have revealed the following:

1) Conscious and subconscious thinking are involved.

2) Different players let decision making depend on either only / mainly conscious, both conscious and subconscious or only / mainly subconscious thinking.

3) Different players use for learning either only / mainly conscious, both conscious and subconscious or only / mainly subconscious thinking.

4) Reading skill is essential. There is no consensus on how essential it is.

5) Some players consider knowledge very important - some consider it hardly important at all. Some consider increasing conscious knowledge an indicator for increasing strength - some consider it important to let the subconscious thinking take over by replacing / making automatic previously conscious knowledge.

6) An apparently high percentage of professional players belongs to the subconscious type and is, for their playing strength, relatively weak at expressing decision making as reasoning and knowledge. Theories why this is so differ from "from childhood on more go than school education, grown up in an environment of teaching by examples and learning by training subconscious thinking, players preferring conscious thinking were not given a suitable learning environment" to "subconscious thinking is necessarily the highest art and only those relying on it can reach high professional level".



It is obvious that human beings are different and we can probably believe (2) and (3). Since everybody agrees on (4), the question of the relevance of knowledge in relation to reading remains. From a POV of computational complexity of reading, there can be absolutely no doubt that reading is required to be guided by filtering (discarding / quickly identifying very bad / useless moves and sequences). For conscious thinking, knowledge provides that filtering. How about subconscious thinking? IMO, also knowledge provides that filtering, although in a subconscious manner. Would anybody instead claim that subconscious filtering did not use any knowledge and that subconscious filtering happens purely miraculously as a consequence of hard work? But how would that kind of input NOT be a form of knowledge? How would it not also consider all the knowledge a player already has (such as that there are the different statuses "alive" and "dead")? Training the subconscious thinking must rely on training FOR something! Just feeding the brain with games and other diagrams and looking hard at them, IMO, can't be enough.



My improvement was caused as follows:
- beginner - 15k: I need not acquire an ability to read deeply; I simply had that ability. (Presumably, not everybody is so lucky. Some might need hard work already as beginners.)
- 15k - 1k: much new knowledge, little effort of the hard work type
- 1k - 3d: hard work, little new knowledge
- 3d - 5d: little effort of the hard work type, little new knowledge found by reading very much for the sake of finding the hidden very few knowledge bits missing in English literature and necessary for the 3d to 5d improvement
- 5d (1998) to 5d (2012): much new knowledge to raise with the slight overall improvement of the 5d level

For further improvement, I need all of these: little new knowledge of whose existence I already know, much new knowledge of topics I have still to discover for myself at all, hard work. Those advising me to do only hard work and to forget about exploring more knowledge are wrong; I know of the great importance of a few central, little effort topics I have just recently discovered for myself.



How was your development of improvement WRT to hard work versus knowledge?

[John Fairbairn]

Before getting too deep into this thread, I think it may be useful to acknowledge that the distinction between conscious and unconscious seems to be very out of date. Kahneman talks of System 1 and System 2, but he says even this has now been upgraded to Type 1 and Type 2 - I kid you not.

Some hard work to understand the basics of the new thinking about thinking seems to be a prerequisite both to the hard work of studying go and to the usefulness of this discussion.

[Magicwand]

unlike Robert, professionals are very humble.
i dont understand how you can not be humble when the deapth of the game is so profound.
professionals can not read or understand everything on the game so they rely on their feeling.

relatively weak at expressing decision making as reasoning and knowledge.

since they are so humble they refrain from making comment that might be wrong not because they dont know how to express decision making

answer is very simple.. if you are so much better than professional then why are you so weak?

[Bill Spight]

My path:

Beginner - 4 kyu: Play against stronger opponents. My main opponent, against whom I played 2-3 games per week, was a 5 kyu, who never gave me more than 4 stones. He was also my weakest opponent. Some study. I owned Korschelt in translation.

4 kyu - 1 kyu: Intensive study.

1 kyu - 3 dan: Drifted upwards. Long periods living where nobody else played go. I attribute at least one stone to emotional maturity.

3 dan - 3 dan: Played with weaker players, put out a quarterly go newsletter.

3 dan - 4 dan: Decided to play better.

4 dan - 5 dan: Hard work. E. g., doing 4 problems per day, 15 min. per problem.

5 dan - shodan: Not yet!

Main study: pro games.

[RobertJasiek]

since they are so humble they refrain from making comment that might be wrong not because they dont know how to express decision making

It is not about being humble but about not being able to explain. I have talked with enough professionals to know.

if you are so much better than professional then why are you so weak?

I am "so much better" in certain respects (such as reading the reasoning of one's own brain) - they are "so much better" in other respects (such as fast life and death solving).

[RobertJasiek]

3 dan - 4 dan: Decided to play better.

Good idea:) How to do that?

[Magicwand]

I am "so much better" in certain respects (such as reading the reasoning of one's own brain) - they are "so much better" in other respects (such as fast life and death solving).

i am sorry for trying..
i will giveup since you are hopeless.

[Bill Spight]

3 dan - 4 dan: Decided to play better.

Good idea:) How to do that?

When I was shodan, a 5 dan (former insei) took a liking to me and took me under his wing for a few months, before he moved to South America. One of the first things he told me was to play as a 2 dan. He said that the difference was small, and that I could do so just by deciding to. I did not believe him, but later, after spending a year and a half as a 3 dan, I decided to give it a try. I did not start giving people greater handicaps, but I started winning games, and was up to 4 dan in weeks.

[Phoenix]

Before getting too deep into this thread, I think it may be useful to acknowledge that the distinction between conscious and unconscious seems to be very out of date. Kahneman talks of System 1 and System 2, but he says even this has now been upgraded to Type 1 and Type 2 - I kid you not.

It's true that there is little to distinguish conscious from unconscious processing with the equipment and methodology cognitive scientists currently have. For practical discussions, though, 'unconscious thought' is any information your brain processes outside the scope of your current conscious experience.

This happens all the time in Go. Every empty point on the board (save suicide restrictions) is an option to play. However, in most situations (and even new ones) there are many points which don't even 'cross our minds' to play. It's like the unconscious has ruled these out as ridiculous. This seems to be the limits of that process, however, as conscious reading is necessary to rule out bad outcomes.

I believe the difficulty in deciding what's conscious and what's unconscious is three-fold.

1) We assume there is a polarized system of thoughts and processes going on, like two sides of a coin. This has long been theorized, but has not been proven conclusively.

2) We're looking for two distinct ways for the brain to process information. If we look carefully we learn that there are way too many and they cannot be grouped (yet!).

3) We haven't satisfactorily defined the conscious process, either in words or as a construct to be tested against its 'opposite'. We literally don't know what we're dealing with (yet!).

And these processes are in constant flux. If you look around you, you'll notice people go in and out of weird, trance-like states all the time. In fact, we spend most of our life there. At those times, even obvious sights and sounds are sometimes 'outside our conscious awareness'.

Breathing and blinking are normally classified as unconscious activities. But I'll bet as soon as you read that last sentence, they became conscious processes.

For those adventurous ones, using your consciousness to keep tabs on these and other unconscious processes is a great way to learn more about what's going on in the background, as well as altering your own mental state. Slow them down and you'll be amazed at how much goes on without your 'conscious awareness'.

[Kirby]

I can't say I've really "worked hard" at go. I probably improved the most when I had a rival. It didn't seem like hard work to try to beat him.

Now I don't even have a rival, so it's unlikely that I'll improve in the near future.

[shapenaji]

Beginner-5k: Games, lots and lots of games. Also I would walk around with "Get Strong at Tesuji" and do problems on the bus or while waiting.

5k-1d: Started playing with a 6-7d friend at his food kiosk downtown. We played at least one game just about every day for an entire summer. I played fast and resigned fast when the result was clear.

1d-5d: A lot of what Bill described, played games that were far harder than my level. (My friend and I started playing even, he'd thrash me quick and we'd play again). Also would just do lots of problems on the internet when I had free time

5d-present: Started playing go in tournaments, studying pro games. Previous practices got harder since there wasn't anyone much stronger than me to play even games with. (playing 3-4d's at 4-5 stones didn't really help because I just ended up overplaying more. To use the same practice, I would need a pro to just beat me up over and over again)

[Magicwand]

I can't say I've really "worked hard" at go. I probably improved the most when I had a rival. It didn't seem like hard work to try to beat him.

Now I don't even have a rival, so it's unlikely that I'll improve in the near future.

you have magicwand as your rival. (2 stone rival?)

[Kirby]

I can't say I've really "worked hard" at go. I probably improved the most when I had a rival. It didn't seem like hard work to try to beat him.

Now I don't even have a rival, so it's unlikely that I'll improve in the near future.

you have magicwand as your rival. (2 stone rival?)

Hmm. I can't help but want to play, now. If you'd like, let's play when you are done with your game against topazg. Maybe I can make it a challenge for my rival.

[emeraldemon]

Clearly, this calls for a Robert Jasiek vs. Magicwand Malkovich!

[RobertJasiek]

Clearly, this calls for a Robert Jasiek vs. Magicwand Malkovich!

Malkovich games are out of the question for me because I do not have the time to write books-filling amounts of descriptions of thinking per move. Malkovich games with annotating only the most interesting thoughts would not do justice to my thinking. Read my books if you want to know (so far part of) my thinking in detail.