Invasions != invasions

[John Fairbairn]

I have always been bemused at how aggressively most western players react to invasions. I think I have found the explanation.

Reading Daniel Kahneman about brain processes, it seems that the brain is wired so as to give priority to responding threats (to help us survive longer), and as a result we pay far more attention to "bad words" such as war and crime than we do to "happy words" such as peace and love. We respond even to symbolic threats, so that even mere reminders of bad events are treated by our primary conscious system (System 1) as threatening. This is so strong that to get a stable relationship, good factors need to outnumber bad factors by up to 5 to 1.

Allied to this is the fact that we are weighted strongly towards loss aversion and risk aversion.

Now consider this in the case of an invasion. If we see this as taking our territory, loss aversion kicks in. If war is a "bad word" then so is invasion, so a strong threat response kicks in, too.

But in Japanese an invasion is not an invasion at all. There are several words for invasion, among them shinnyuu, shinkou, raikou, etc. but they do not include uchikomi. The true meanings of this word derive from "drive/smash into" (as in drive a nail home). I would not regard this as especially threatening, and some of the meanings (devote onself to, fally madly in love) certainy add softer nuances anyway.

So, as a hypothesis based on my own experience: Japanese people do not, on the whole, respond very aggressively to uchikomi (unless they are generally aggressive by nature) because it is not very much of a "bad word", but we see invasion as a "bad word" and a threat and so the fangs are bared.

This is not to claim that the Japanese response is better, though it may well be that their response fits in better with all the other aspects that they are taught. But it does seem that the words we use affect us profoundly and subconsciously, so that care is needed in the words we use to describe and teach go.

Of course, even if this hypothesis is supported, I don't expect any change. I have gone on for years about boundary play being a better way of translating yose than endgame, and many people accept the logic - but then go away and say endgame (or yose, but still meaning endgame).

[RobertJasiek]

So which basic types of invasions are there?

Answering my own question, I distinguish these basic types of invasions:

- splitting an extension along the side
- living and having to live inside an opposing sphere of influence with or near the first invasion stone
- living and having to live inside an opposing sphere of influence either a) with or near the first invasion stone or b) by sacrificing it and living elsewhere in that sphere
- living and having to live either a) inside an opposing sphere of influence or b) by running or connecting out
- creating an option by invading but temporarily playing elsewhere for either a) later living inside an opposing sphere of influence or b) allowing the opponent to kill
- hybrids of the cases above

Have I overlooked some cases? Would you prefer different classifications, which and why?

[Bonobo]

Very interesting, thank you.

So, perhaps, immigration is a better word for what I formerly thought of as invasion?

Invasion is aggressive, threatening to take over my land and in the worst case kill my people.

Immigration can be peaceful, like “Hello, I’m your new neighbor, I'm going to (try to) live here ”, with the effect of me perhaps/probably not being able to take as much land in the future as I thought I could, probably with a notion of me having been to greedy with my claim over the land that’s now being immigrated to by my opponent, I haven’t paid the price i.e. haven’t used my stones wisely as boundary stakes for my claim, for securing territory. And when the time comes to turn the stakes into a fence and draw the wire along it the poles must not be too far away from each other. (OMG I think I’m getting trivial now )

Anyway, I think this gives me a new way to view my as well as my opponents’ moves … thanks again!

[Kirby]

I agree completely with the OP (perhaps with the exception that it is "the" explanation for aggression, as there could be additional factors).

I think it's fascinating how rhetoric plays a role in human thought process - we even see it here on the forum by comparing communication styles of various posts.

At work, I'm sometimes disturbed by the fact that the idea of quality can come from superficial characteristics. For example, if I work for hours to achieve a result, but then throw together my findings into a sloppy email with poor formatting, it is often not received half as well as a properly presented document, even if the content sucks.

In a game like go, I would hope to think that strength lies in "real content," broken away from superficiality. But I have experienced the psychological emotion swing that takes place within me when I think of an "invasion." It seems so silly, but it appears that even go is subject to something as shallow as an emotion spurred by word terminology. It's a pity, really.

Why can't we all think like robots? At least we could act rationally...

[jts]

Why can't we all think like robots? At least we could act rationally...

Do androids dream of electric phonemes? I mean, invasion carries one import, immigration carries another. But what import does ________ carry? How do you respond to _________?

One of the first articles to make this sort of argument was by Benjamin Whorf. I believe he was a claim adjustor before he was a linguist or anthropologist or whatever, and he had managed to gather a large body of data about industrial fires. An impressively large number of them started with someone flicking a cigarette in a pool. A pool of flammable chemicals, that is. Or again, setting up a fan next to something flammable... A huge, hulking metal fan that spat out sparks. People think pools are wet and fans cool things down, so it only takes a moment of forgetfulness to make the fatal mistake...

But those examples seem to imply that if we simply replaced our words with technically appropriate jargon like "chemical reservoir" and "industrial ventilation unit", we wouldn't make these silly mistakes. But the next subject Whorf tackles in the article is the tense system in Navajo as compared to IE languages. They're different, and they prime you to make different assumptions about the flow of time (or so Whorf argues) but its not clear that one or the other tense system is better than the other, or indeed that any tense system would be the true, accurate tense system.

[EdLee]

Interesting. There's a recent thread elsewhere about the terms used in other Asian languages for "jumping into 3-3".

Out of curiosity, do we have enough people knowledgeable about the Go term(s) used for "jumping into 3-3"
for the following (random sampling of) languages (and their equivalent if re-translated into English)?

Japanese, Korean, Chinese, German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, French, Russian, Vietnamese, ...
( And others avaiable at http://http://translate.google.com/
and http://www.apple.com/choose-your-country/ ? )

[hyperpape]

It should be noted that while the research Kahneman cites may be quite good, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is viewed as a historical curiousity that's fun to teach freshmen and then forget about.

[skydyr]

Speaking as a linguistics major, my understanding of the current thinking behind the sapir-whorf hypothesis is that in a weak form it may be correct, but that in a sense of absolutely shaping your thinking, it is false. Any thought can be expressed in any language, though on occasion some may require new words to be created. Common ways to say something may colour your thinking by association in a particular language, but that's not really different from saying that a language often uses X as a metaphor for Y. That said, I don't know that it's really looked at in any serious fashion anymore.

[ez4u]

Wikipedia has an extensive and interesting article on sapir-whorf, the non-hypothesis (at least by them!).

I think that many of JF's comments, including the current post, are on the difficulty we 'western' students have in coming to grips with CJK writings/perceptions on Go. I am thinking especially of his oft-voiced complaint that we just don't 'get' the dynamic view that underlies much of the original writings that we end up reading in translation. Don't you think that these represent essentially claims that linguistic relativity is observable in learning Go?

Also I guess I am confused how people would accept for example Kahneman's work on cognitive biases like 'framing' but reject the idea of linguistic relativity.

[Loons]

Without knowing anything about linguistics or go, I think I disagree.

Invading is a decision, and may be a good one or a bad one. When you do invade, you settle or run in essentially joseki.

There doesn't seem much scope for emotive language description's input to me.

[p2501]

The most reasonable explanation to me, why people usually react agressive to an 'invasion', is that they believe the area to be their territory.

[John Fairbairn]

ez4u said:

Also I guess I am confused how people would accept for example Kahneman's work on cognitive biases like 'framing' but reject the idea of linguistic relativity.

I haven't got to the framing section of Kahneman's book yet, but I'm close so I'll skip the Wikipaedia link and get all that from the horse's mouth. But even as a professional linguist I haven't a clue what you mean by "linguistic relativity". Care to enlighten us?

[ez4u]

ez4u said:

Also I guess I am confused how people would accept for example Kahneman's work on cognitive biases like 'framing' but reject the idea of linguistic relativity.

I haven't got to the framing section of Kahneman's book yet, but I'm close so I'll skip the Wikipaedia link and get all that from the horse's mouth. But even as a professional linguist I haven't a clue what you mean by "linguistic relativity". Care to enlighten us?

The wikipedia article linked above goes into the history of sapir-whorf but is actually titled "Linguistic Relativity", aka the weak form of the hypothesis.

From that article:
"The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view, or otherwise influences their cognitive processes. Popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle is often defined as having two versions: (i) the strong version that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories and (ii) the weak version that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behaviour. The term "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" is a misnomer, as Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf never co-authored anything, and never stated their ideas in terms of a hypothesis. The distinction between a weak and a strong version of the hypothesis is also a later invention, as Sapir and Whorf never set up such a dichotomy although in their writings at times their view of this relativity principle are phrased in stronger or weaker terms..."

[jts]

ez4u said:

Also I guess I am confused how people would accept for example Kahneman's work on cognitive biases like 'framing' but reject the idea of linguistic relativity.

I haven't got to the framing section of Kahneman's book yet, but I'm close so I'll skip the Wikipaedia link and get all that from the horse's mouth. But even as a professional linguist I haven't a clue what you mean by "linguistic relativity". Care to enlighten us?

Wikipedia redirects Sapir-Whorf to linguistic relativity. Who knows why... The sausage-making on WP can be rather hairy. Presumably ez4u just means the sort of claim you're making in the initial post. In other words, "it's silly to affirm that we are biased by how we enframe concepts but deny that we are biased by the words we use to denote concepts, since the enframing is presumably tied to the vocabulary we rely on when we think about the topic."

Ninja'ed!

[Uberdude]

Whilst I think there is possibly some truth in the language used for go terms leading to different attitudes, it's overdoing it to go paint such broad-brush pictures (and I think how Go is taught probably has a greater impact). I've played plenty of Japanese players who aggressively try to kill invasions, and Westerners who don't.


P.S.

I have gone on for years about boundary play being a better way of translating yose than endgame, and many people accept the logic - but then go away and say endgame (or yose, but still meaning endgame).

I got banned from KGS for furthering this cause