Now to the more interesting point.


I disagree. What do you base your conclusion on?

From experience - I can plan every bit as deeply when having an exact mathematical definition of 'nakade' (for example) as when I only had my old, imprecise and vague definition. Same for 'ko' and same for all of the other taxonomy you come up with.

What is important is the understanding of the term, not the exact wording or the precision of written definition. And while I grant you - that wording and precision can help in understanding, the same understanding can also be reached in other ways, possibly even faster. It is highly personal, I think, but many people seem to be doing well without the precision you advocate for. And some become tremendously strong - and some of them in amazingly short time.

I can understand that your precise definitions might be used as a stepping stone for further research, and some day this might lead to something useful for most of us - and thus I think it has value and support you - but personally, right here and now, with what we have - there is very little difference for me in knowing your stuff and not knowing your stuff.

Same goes for 'honte' - maybe especially for 'honte'. Precise definition is fine, but I fail to see what it has to do with deeper planning. I either consider a move to be good or not, and if people decide to call it 'honte' later on according to some definition (yours or other, or whatever) - this has absolutely no impact on the move I have made. I would probably not have changed my mind and played differently if I knew ahead of time that according to some specific definition this move was called this or that.

So, on this point, I disagree with you strongly.
Although I admit that for you (we are back to the minority you are part of) this precision does make a difference. But this shows not necessarily that it is inherently better than the traditional vagueness, but that in this respect there is something special about you which makes it harder for you to deal with concepts which are not precise.

In this sense - we are talking about the same thing but from two different positions, each as valid as the other.
For you (and a few others) - it all makes sense and is very useful, and without it you struggle.
For me (and many others) - it has a much less meaning and even less impact on our game. We are perfectly happy to leave some things vague and work around it, possibly even see a value in this vagueness.

I can understand your point, even if I don't share it. I am not sure you can understand mine. But I try to explain the best I can... year after year after year...

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- Bantari
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Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B hane at the head of 0 stones
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . . . . .
$$ | . . . , 1 . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Not to toot my own horn, but this is my own seminal contribution to go theory---defining moves based on their effect on opponent's moves that are not yet played. It took several years to develop.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

The game of Go is no exact science, so the more exact terms are defined, the more they act as limitations -- but not as support -- for development.

In order to get the full benefit of an "exact" term, there is the precondition that you share 100 per cent the construct of ideas of the person that provided you with the "exact" definition. But then you are not longer you mentally, but someone else. How could this help your own development ?

If you leave no free room, there is no space for learning, neither for development.

"Exact" wording might be useful for communication purposes, if you wanted to tell someone else about your ideas. But do you assume that 100 per cent "exact" wording will cause the someone else to really grasp 100 per cent of what you really had in mind ? And please remember that the knowledge to be shared is not of the type "1 + 1 = 10".

I suppose that nearly everyone will have a mostly "correct" understanding of what "Play HANE at the head of two stones." (you may add "without thinking") will say to us. Even if in most of the saying's application cases "Play OSAE at the head of two stones" would be the correct wording.

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The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

I am indebted to you, snorri. Surely this terminology will allow me to overcome my greatest hurdle in becoming stronger.

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be immersed

Having other players available at all makes accepting rules possible at all. I had no players and no scoring rules at all, pretty much except for a thing showing a string without liberties.



It was the reason that suddenly turned me from 14.5k to 10k within 3 months.



Meta-discussion unrelated to possibly improving playing strength.

Wrong. Very related. I've just watched an episode in which even Sheldon Cooper (IQ 183 and Texan) admits to a mistake (and also a "Oh, I hadn't considered that").

Humility is a form of going back to basics.

Altogether now: Soft kitty, furry kitty...

From them, around 5k I got about this far: walls are strong. This is also called thickness, which is somehow related to influence and expects an extension n+1 afar. When I became 3d, my knowledge amounted to: an extension must be shorter if the wall has defects (my theory being that 1 defect reduces the gap 1 line); influence is something (unknown, not understood, similar to light radiated from a wall) in front of a wall or in a moyo; thickness and influence allow to attack; it is better not to run towards an opposing wall. IOW, I still had no clear idea what thickness and influence are.

Did you get more out of the then usual books?



Why so much fun with fractions? Because I wrote 14.5k? There is a reason for that.

Since you mention this term creator every other day, soap operas can be fun at times, but ad financed TV channels are not worth it, so I think I have not watched any episode.

Sometimes it's less effective to define terms precisely than to simply learn what concepts mean by experience. To give an example, how would you precisely define the color "red" to somebody that doesn't know? You could try to come up with some sort of characteristics or rules that make something "red" vs. "not being red". But an easy and fast way to learn what "red" is is to learn by seeing examples.

This is red:


This is not red:


The difference is obvious when you see these examples.

Ideas like "influence" and "thickness" are more complex, but in the same way, are difficult to define precisely and accurately in a way that is always true. Even if you attempt to come up with a precise definition, there could be exceptions you hadn't thought about. And if there aren't, then perhaps you considered examples in the first place to even construct the definition. These examples are more efficient for understanding, IMO.

See examples of thickness, and see examples of influence. Eventually you start to get a feeling for what they mean. You might not be able to verbally express this in a way independent from these examples, but you gain understanding.

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be immersed

My own strategic and tactical planning as a player.



Great. Please explain in general 'ko threat'; it can save me maybe 5000 hours of research. (Don't forget to consider negative threats, virtual ko fights, pass fights, threats for approach kos and the game aim.)



It is not necessary that everybody shares the same precision. Top precision is needed for the researcher. Everybody else can afford the luxury to offer a rough explanation that is 1 point off;)



But what do you actually know of it? At other times, you repeat saying that you will read most of it later. So no surprise if you use too little now.



Either you already avoid topazg's oversights or my draft of a definition reminds you to consider, e.g., multiple connection options and the other aspects of influence, and to appreciate the power of 1-connections and 1-alive or better, i.e. to play such moves.



Namen sind Schall und Rauch. What matters is contents.



Identification of a good move candidate (such as a honte) does not void the vagueness of also considering other candidates (e.g., alternatives of a local move selection).



Bad excuse.



The problem is rather: you cannot teach me relevant go theory, because you cannot grasp it for yourself, while it is lost in the fog of vagueness.

At the momennt, parts of go are exact science.



Development of what? When go will have been solved weakly, development of a strong solution becomes possible. Until then, term definitions and other go theory develop the level of playing for those who apply the theory. Their limitations are their lost freedom to continue making mistakes that would be overlooked as such.



Ugh. A stone is a lense shaped playing device. Now you have lost your freedom;)

Your own freedom exists above the known go theory (with its terms). Like your freedom to think exists above the known language (with its words). You would not claim to lose the more development potential the more words of a language you know, wouldn't you?



This is so, when the game will be strongly solved. Until then, go theory is for go planning like a natural language is for thinking and communicating.

This is a great analogy, and is a good point. Knowing more words, in itself, does not necessarily limit potential.

The danger arises when you encounter a complicated thought for which you have no suitable word, and try to encapsulate its complexity into that which is insufficient to express the idea.

Coming back to go, it may be nice to try to define influence or to say that you can extend n+1 intersections for some wall size n.

But my fear is that the definition, if relied upon, is insufficient to encapsulate the complexity of that which is reality.

And, in some cases, intuition may be more powerful than definitions that are too simplistic, since intuition makes no attempt to squeeze the complexity into an oversimplified definition.

So these terms, like words, can aid in describing aspects of the game. But I feel they are too simplistic to encapsulate the more complex ideas of go at this time. Perhaps one can compare this to trying to describe complex emotions with the vocabulary of a 4-year-old - sometimes there are more effective means of understanding than words or terms when the subject matter is sufficiently complex.

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be immersed

During my 15 hours per day go activity, I used about half of it for experience, but there was no "simple learning" of thickness and influence.



It was difficult, but the result is easier than earlier descriptions were.



Done.



I considered everything, because any information could possibly provide the missing links.



The most efficient aspects leading me towards the definitions were a) an understanding of the 'can force' concept and b) the idea of achieving some particular action after n successive plays. (a) was 8 years before, (b) was 14 years before the definitions. For 19 years, I considered every related example, whether it would improve my understanding towards finding the definitions. IOW, for finding them, examples were by far the least useful. I don't recall now why, after 19 years, I suddenly had the insight to reduce to connection, life and territory.

Efficient understanding needs good explanations (strictly or roughly) according to the found definitions, whether with or without examples.

Traditional examples suffice only for showing a) "this shape is thickness", but do not provide general understanding about which shapes are thicker than similar shapes, b) "there is a player's influence", but not for how great the influence is or much greater it is at different intersections, c) "how to use thickness or influence", ALA degrees are ignored. The missing aspects can now be explained also by examples applying the definitions.

A definition of one thing does not prevent other definitions or thinking beyond definitions to cope with complexity above them.



Of course. There is more than terms. E.g., there is planning.

Yup. I have a reason too.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

14.5 seems choosed a bit randomly. Bantari's values look more accurate.

I heard this term today: invincible ignorance. It relies on a person denying one thing after another over and over.

Well, I will not deal with your post word by word and sentence by sentence. Might as well take your top two statements and deal with that. You can probably imagine what I would say to the rest of your 'arguments' - it would be highly repetitive, since most of what you say has the same flaw.


As I hinted at before - as have some/many others in the past - you just might be very special in this respect. The simple truth is that many many others can plan deeper and faster and easier than you without precise definitions - so obviously such precision in defining Go terms is not necessary. It might be helpful, for some more than for the others, but it is not necessary. For some (maybe for many or even for most) - its not even helpful. For now... but, as you say, the research is still in its infancy, so I wait and see and keep an open mind. There might well be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But for now - it hasn't even started to rain.


The underlying implication being that it was not possible for you to play Ko before you completed the 5000 hours of research, and certainly not possible to make any Ko threats. What's more, it is impossible for anybody else to play Ko without either duplicating this research or at least delving into your papers and assimilating the wholeness of the knowledge.

Guess what? I bet I can play Ko every bit as well as you do, or almost so, with no research at all. And Guess what else? There are plenty of people out there who can play Ko much better than either of us, also without the 5000 hours of research. So this takes care of this point you are trying to make - and pretty much all other points of yours. Dealing with all that is highly repetitive, so I will stop here.

The bottom line is:
I can play Ko, and I can talk about it. I can even talk about Ko threats to others, and even without the 5000 hours and precise definitions, we seem to understand each other very well in most cases. And in the cases we do not, the issues are other than vagueness of our terminology. Precision might be helpful, to some, sometimes... or not. I personally like a certain amount of vagueness, and I feel I would be completely put off of Go if I was required to have a handy precise definition for each word I use. It is very comfortable for me to have vagueness, and I can learn very well this way, it does not disturb me or slow me down at all.

PS>
And before you get your panties up in a bunch, let me assure you that I understand the value of precision and the research you are conducting in terms of furthering the research itself. As I said in my last post - what you do is necessary to push the research you do yet another step. I don't dispute the value of your work in this context. You picked a path you want to thread - which is that of a formal research - and to make the next step you need to precisely define where you are. And from the perspective of what you do and what you try to accomplish - this makes good sense.

But... for an average player, what you have right now is not very useful, I think. The fact that you spend 5000 hours researching it does not mean that I can benefit from it - by either playing better or communicating better. And you don't seem to understand this. This is one reason why you get so much opposition - its not all just to your tone, but also to your wild claims that things (like playing Ko or understanding what a Ko threat is) is impossible without 5000 hours of prior research. And yes - this is how what you claim sounds to people.

Having said the above - you have a different personal perception of this because you think a little differently than most. Its not a judgement, we are all different, you just happen to be in the minority on this, for now. You need to do much more to convince people and move to the mainstream with your ideas. Maybe the world is not ready, or maybe I am not ready. From what I see people saying - its not just me who thinks like that, though.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

It's difficult to discuss things with you, Robert, because when I write a paragraph intended to convey a meaning, you dissect it into sentences, or even parts of sentences for response.

It gives me the impression that you don't try to see the big picture behind what I'm saying. Oh well. It's still interesting to discuss.

Probably you will say that a big picture composed of "wrong" smaller parts has no merit, or something along those lines. But I guess that's OK for you to think that way, too (because I don't really think the smaller parts are wrong, anyway)!

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be immersed