Asian and Western thinking

[daal]

To me, this is the main problem with your argument. You seem to be ignoring all of the obvious and rather indisputable factors that cause China, Japan, and Korea to be better at Go, and are proposing an alternative hypothesis. But your hypothesis doesn't explain anything that is not already explained by existing factors and so far no evidence has been offered to support the hypothesis. It's not enough for something to be possible - it's possible Russell's Orbiting Teapot exists - the hypothesis must either explain something previously unexplained or have evidence backing it up in order for it to have value (and only the latter says anything about its truth value).

I'm not ignoring the obvious, I just don't find the obvious particularly interesting - do you? While I don't have any evidence that being Asian influences one's potential go prowess, there is evidence that being Asian reflects how one views relationships and conflicts, approaches and solves problems, and places one's priorities. All of these are elements of go skill. I understand that I haven't proven or even demonstrated any causality, but I personally don't really care. I'm not a scientist but rather casual observer. The most interesting observation I made today was the extent of the resistance to even considering the possibility that one's cultural, linguistic and racial background might play a role in one's skills.

[Kirby]

It's not enough for something to be possible - it's possible Russell's Orbiting Teapot exists - the hypothesis must either explain something previously unexplained or have evidence backing it up in order for it to have value (and only the latter says anything about its truth value).

It's off topic, but proof, evidence, and the like depend a lot on the audience, and what the audience is willing to believe.

"Evidence", by its very nature, includes some degree of uncertainty, and at some point, to believe anything at all, you simply have to accept it as (probably) true. If you insist on absolute proof, you will never be able to believe in anything - orbiting teapots, gravity, or the meal you had for lunch.

The scientific method is useful in that it appears to have a track record for improving understanding. But do we really know more about the world than people that draw their conclusions from superstitions like fortune tellers or voodoo dolls?

Maybe we do, and maybe we don't. Because of uncertainty, we don't really know anything - we just get confidence in what we believe in for some reason or another, and it makes it easier to sleep at night. Maybe for you, that thing that brings you confidence is the scientific method, but maybe for some guy down the street, his fortune cookies give him comfort.

[Dusk Eagle]

I understand that I haven't proven or even demonstrated any causality, but I personally don't really care. I'm not a scientist but rather casual observer. The most interesting observation I made today was the extent of the resistance to even considering the possibility that one's cultural, linguistic and racial background might play a role in one's skills.

Fair enough, there's nothing wrong with putting out the hypothesis. I just don't see why anyone should believe your hypothesis when there's an obvious explanation for the strength disparity between East Asians and others, whether or not it's as interesting.

For what it's worth, I'm not opposed to the concept that our different cultures affect our innate Go playing potential. I think it'd be very interesting if found to be true. I'm just extremely skeptical that it is true.

Kirby, you can of course go the Nihilistic route and claim that nothing can be known about the Universe. However, I think most people are okay with making some basic assumptions about the nature of the Universe as a grounds for their claims about knowledge, even if it's not an "absolute knowledge". If you're not, then there's nothing more that can really be said. If you are okay with that, then assuming we can agree on what these assumptions should be we have a starting ground for determining what is correct and what is incorrect. One of the assumptions I personally hold is that the world I observe around me is at least an approximation of the real world that exists.

I would especially like to object to your last paragraph. I don't base my beliefs off of what makes me feel best, I base them off of which ones offer accurate models of the world I seem to observe around me. Believing something just cause it makes you feel good is called being delusional. The reason I claim the scientific method is objectively a better basis for building knowledge (if you accept that it can be built at all) than fortune cookies is that the scientific method can accurately make verifiable predictions about the world we observe around us.

[Kirby]

I would especially like to object to your last paragraph. I don't base my beliefs off of what makes me feel best, I base them off of which ones offer accurate models of the world I seem to observe around me. Believing something just cause it makes you feel good is called being delusional. The reason I claim the scientific method is objectively a better basis for building knowledge (if you accept that it can be built at all) than fortune cookies is that the scientific method can accurately make verifiable predictions about the world we observe around us.

It's tricky to say that the scientific method makes verifiable predictions, because the future is unknown. Further, the capability of the scientific method is limited to the model you choose to adopt. You might have a hypothesis, after repeated trials, the hypothesis does not hold, so you adjust your hypothesis. That hypothesis seems to correspond to your observations over and over again, so you believe it's true. But then new observations make you change your mind again.

This is one approach, and to be honest, I share your viewpoint in adopting this approach.

But not everyone uses this approach to make decisions, and I don't think that it's fair to call them delusional.

For example, you might have a person that grew up all of his life being told that, if he threw salt over his back before eating dinner, he'd have good luck. Maybe he's done that all of his life, and he can recount good this that have happened to him, so he starts to believe in this superstition.

Now later, it may be the case that he throws salt over his back before eating dinner, and something really bad happens. He could take two approaches:

1.) He could think, "Hey, this is just a stupid custom that has no scientific basis. I don't believe it." I think this is a valid approach.

2.) He could think, "Well, my mom told me this was the way things worked. And all of my life, it's worked this way. It doesn't seem to be working. There must be another reason. Maybe if you throw salt over your back it works usually, but on the second Tuesday every month, it doesn't".

So sure, you can be quick to call the second approach delusional, or superstitious. But the guy has reasons and life experiences for believing the way he does.

The "scientific" approach may not seem to have personal or cultural rationale tied to it, but the fact is, everyone has their own personal and cultural backgrounds. I don't think it's right to claim that those that have a reason for believing something in a way that's not scientific are delusional.

It's entirely possible that some of these cultural and ancient superstitions have some sort of truth to them that can't be found using the scientific method.

I think it's too simplistic to simply say that these viewpoints are delusional or biased - it's just that the bias present in the scientific method is commonly accepted in modern society.

[tekesta]

I'm not ignoring the obvious, I just don't find the obvious particularly interesting - do you? While I don't have any evidence that being Asian influences one's potential go prowess, there is evidence that being Asian reflects how one views relationships and conflicts, approaches and solves problems, and places one's priorities. All of these are elements of go skill. I understand that I haven't proven or even demonstrated any causality, but I personally don't really care. I'm not a scientist but rather casual observer. The most interesting observation I made today was the extent of the resistance to even considering the possibility that one's cultural, linguistic and racial background might play a role in one's skills.

Nice of you to start this topic! I've wondered on and off whether culture has something to do with East Asians being very good at weiqi.

Well, we can begin by saying that weiqi is one expression of Chinese culture that has existed up to the present. Anyone who has grown up in China or any country in which Chinese culture has been highly influential (e.g., Japan and Korea) will have seen weiqi being played at one time or another. So, the average Chinese or other East Asian person will likely already know something associated with the game, namely the culture that produced it.

When a Westerner learns Go for the first time, he/she approaches it from a Western viewpoint, of course. Since Go is a strategic board game, the Westerner will think that it is much like Chess. However, in Chess play depicts two armies in battle, fighting to the death. As well, one begins with a fixed number of pieces and that number drops as the game progresses, with pieces being moved here and there in specific sequences to avoid capture. Think soldiers moving around to position themselves for an attack on their enemy. Eventually the king on one side is captured and the game is over. In Go, it is the reverse. Therein, play depicts an empty piece of land that is slowly populated and ownership is disputed through a series of battles. Hence, a war. The number of pieces increases as the game progresses, with pieces being added to in specific patterns to preclude capture and subsequent removal. Think divisions being reinforced by more divisions. Eventually all the points on the Go board are occupied and both players agree to end the game; playing past a certain point means the board will become overpopulated, with one side eventually becoming vulnerable to capture by the other due to being reduced to one liberty. In Chess, one either plays until checkmate or a draw due to only a white king and black king remaining on the board.

In a nutshell, the objective in Chess is to move around and capture the king. In Go, the objective is to claim land and build up.

Nevertheless, the capture objective associated with Chess colors most Westerners' initial experiences with Go. Capture is an important part of Go, but it is not the most important thing. Even in Chess, capture is important, but capturing alone does not win the game. When a Westerner encounters the mindset needed to win in Go, it's a new experience, as there are very few rules in the game, as opposed to Chess, with its prescribed starting setup and piece movements. One could be forgiven for thinking that Go must be a form of draughts!

I like to think that Chess is a "hunting" game and that Go is a "farming" game. When hunting, you need only be on the lookout for your prey until the opportunity presents itself to take it - and make sure you do not become prey yourself! Chess is similar in that you need to be aware of how many of your pieces are available and their relative positions, so that when the opportunity presents itself, checkmate! When farming, you need to be aware of what plants you have, what soil you have, what climate you have, etc. Environmental factors are more important when farming than when hunting; it is always possible to find animals to hunt, depending on the time of year. However, farming has to be carried out in accordance with seasonal changes, so the farmer must be always attentive to changes in the environment. Finally, successful farming requires constant care and attention to the crop until harvest time, whereas hunting often requires just a good hunting weapon and waiting for the opportunity to take prey with one stroke of the spear. Thus, an episode of successful hunting, while still requiring prior preparation, does not take long to execute. In Go, one does not expect to win in one fell swoop, but rather plants groups and nurses them according to environmental changes on the board as the occur throughout the course of a game, so that they grow.

[John Fairbairn]

A few stray thoughts to add the mix:

1. I suspect language (in the limited sense the paper uses) cannot deeply influence thought, but thought can certainly influence language, and the end result may be the same. Japanese culture values vagueness of language in many contexts. The language has acquired mechanisms (e.g. omission of subject) to reflect that. The resulting vague language can be the deuce to render into another language (e.g. Japanese rules into English).

2. Likewise, a nation can have a view of itself which can permeate everything it does. This too can affect language, and so while thought is ultimately affected by culture, words become the medium of that effect. A military nation may use military words for its favourite game and lead to a certain way of thinking about that game. Compare views of chess and go. In the case of Japan, they see themselves as a nation of paddy farmers in a harsh environment who have had to earn to cooperate socially to a degree other nations (they believe) do not. They find it easy to view go as a game of territory with cooperating groups resisting outsiders. True or not, they believe it.

3. If language is defined to include the written form, there is a case to believe that the use of characters helps predispose oriental brains to develop facility with small shape recognition, which can conceivably help with pattern recognition in go.

4. I think there is one distinct difference between the western and oriental approaches to learning go which does not get enough mention. We tend to believe that in any process it is the result that matters - any means can be used to achieve it and not achieving perfection means failure. The oriental tendency is to attach importance instead to how you proceed. Perfection is unobtainable but you can always strive towards it. Only the best means for that should be used. Success is defined as having the right approach (and this adds a moral nuance - the Way).

5. The difference in 4 is a matter of degree, of course and it is possible to find examples of both tendencies on both sides of the cultural divide. But as an example of stressing the importance of the right way of studying go (i.e. language being used to control thought?), I've just been reading a piece by Kada Katsuji in which he berates those (Japanese) amateurs who study fuseki and joseki because they apparently have results that can be used immediately in games, but who avoid life & death problems because the results seem often never to show up in games (e.g. "under the stones"). My impression is that this joseki tendency is especially strong among western amateurs. Whatever, Kada argues that so many josekis involves life & death problems that you can't learn them properly unless you study L&D first. But there are even deeper reasons why L&D should be emphasises - including the fact that he had L&D books to sell, of course Is not language affecting thought a major tenet of advertising? If so, can we explain all differences in what works for advertisers in each country purely on cultural grounds?

[daal]

The most interesting observation I made today was the extent of the resistance to even considering the possibility that one's cultural, linguistic and racial background might play a role in one's skills.

Sorry about that. Perhaps uncalled for and just the result of not winning an argument on the internet. I do appreciate Kirby coming to my defense though. I'm actually not a big fan of fortune cookies.

I like to think that Chess is a "hunting" game and that Go is a "farming" game. When hunting, you need only be on the lookout for your prey until the opportunity presents itself to take it - and make sure you do not become prey yourself! Chess is similar in that you need to be aware of how many of your pieces are available and their relative positions, so that when the opportunity presents itself, checkmate! When farming, you need to be aware of what plants you have, what soil you have, what climate you have, etc. Environmental factors are more important when farming than when hunting; it is always possible to find animals to hunt, depending on the time of year. However, farming has to be carried out in accordance with seasonal changes, so the farmer must be always attentive to changes in the environment. Finally, successful farming requires constant care and attention to the crop until harvest time, whereas hunting often requires just a good hunting weapon and waiting for the opportunity to take prey with one stroke of the spear. Thus, an episode of successful hunting, while still requiring prior preparation, does not take long to execute. In Go, one does not expect to win in one fell swoop, but rather plants groups and nurses them according to environmental changes on the board as the occur throughout the course of a game, so that they grow.

This also jibes with Nesbitt's chapter on the social origins of mind, which argues that the mentality of the Chinese stems from an environment conducive to the development of an agricultural society as opposed a Western mentality shaped by having hunters as predecessors. (Note also John Fairbairn's mentioning of the Japanese seeing themselves as a nation of rice farmers). The idea that our strengths and weaknesses are shaped by evolution isn't entirely new, and besides, we all know how good farmers are at go. Joking aside, I would like to come back to a related point:

One reason it's implausible is that if individuals often think differently within the same culture, then this is incompatible with an entire culture thinking differently from another culture but with all constituents thinking the same way. It's certainly in tension with the claim that most of them think in the same way.

Is it? Women think differently from each other, but they do have some ways of thinking in common with each other that are different than the way men think, no?

I wouldn't accept this claim. It's not my experience. I would accept the claim that women often have similar sorts of experiences due to being grouped under a highly essentialized label and are pushed, culturally, towards thinking about certain things more frequently then others, but I take neither of these to constitute ways of thinking in any deep sense.

Taking my side of this argument has lost a Harvard president his job, but since I'm already in a little deep, I might as well keep swimming. As with Asians and go, there is an obvious argument explaining why men and women may tend to set different priorities, have different skill sets and different interests. It's just a given fact that societies push men and women in different directions. It's also not just a matter of what they may think about frequently, but whether there is a preference for example for thinking about relationships between people as opposed to relationships between objects. Would this be a difference in a deep sense? How deep is deep? Do we know at what depth good thinking about go kicks in, and does it make any difference whether the factors involved are social or evolutionary? I suppose you are implying that there are no aspects of gender based thought that wouldn't change if the societal pressures were to shift, but that's also a hard hypothesis to back up. Would there be more female pilots and go players? Who knows? It would be similarly difficult to remove Asians from their social context and teach them go.

[EdLee]

“Are people just people, or might there be something like an Asian way of thinking that is different for playing go?”

Maybe off-topic, in this off-topic thread. If the question is changed -- from "advantageous" to "different",
in other words, "different, however so slightly, that is, 'more Asian'" -- then I think this is a very interesting question,
and there is probably anecdotal evidence to support either way.

daal, what do you think?

[Boidhre]

I'm not ignoring the obvious, I just don't find the obvious particularly interesting - do you?

Yeah, like I said, it's trite. Then again, so is saying "my cup fell to the ground from my hand because of the force of gravity." I think if you want to argue "Asians and Westerners think differently" you might have a more interesting conversation than "Asians and Westerners think differently and that's why Asians are better at go" because of all the alternative hypotheses that don't need to invoke anything particularly controversial in the latter. The other issue is working backwards from "the Japanese are better at Go" to "the Japanese and the British don't think alike" is problematic because you're assuming the controversial part and trying to prove the accepted bit. Working the other direction would be more interesting.

Also, even if someone proved that Asians are better at go than Europeans simply because more Asians play go, this doesn't say anything about whether Asians think differently to Westerners.

[tekesta]

This also jibes with Nesbitt's chapter on the social origins of mind, which argues that the mentality of the Chinese stems from an environment conducive to the development of an agricultural society as opposed a Western mentality shaped by having hunters as predecessors. (Note also John Fairbairn's mentioning of the Japanese seeing themselves as a nation of rice farmers). The idea that our strengths and weaknesses are shaped by evolution isn't entirely new, and besides, we all know how good farmers are at go. Joking aside, I would like to come back to a related point:

Chinese civilization arose in a region of East Asia with a subtropical climate and an abundance of waterways - better for farming than for hunting. The earliest European civilizations, at least the Continental European ones, arose in regions with thick forests, high mountains and hilly terrain, and short summers. In such an environment agriculture has a limited role, so it was not as influential as hunting & gathering. Agriculture was more important in the Mediterranean Basin than in Northern Europe, but even in the Mediterranean hunting and gathering still served to fill market niches which could not be filled by agriculture alone.

I once read in the introduction of the book Go Nation: Chinese Masculinities and the Game of Weiqi in China, written by Marc L. Moskovitz and published by the University of California Press, that the reason Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Go players are stronger than those in Western countries is because in the former, pros have a stronger presence and so amateurs know exactly how limited their own skills are when compared with those of pros.

I believe that those who approach weiqi with a "child's mind" and spend time learning as much as possible about it without preconceptions as to how it ought to be, will in time become strong. Even strong enough to play against strong East Asian amateurs.

[skydyr]

A further reason some of us are skeptical is probably because some of us aren't using the so-called "Western" style of thinking: isolating from context, oversimplifying explanations etc... Some of us are thinking of culture as highly complex, contextual and so not easily pinned down according to those generalizations. What exactly is "the East" as a cultural entity? China, Japan and Korea? Let's set aside all the problems with bundling those three nations together as if they had some sort of common fundamental culture (which is nonsense).

I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are the same culture, but they have a shared cultural basis in the early dissemination of Chinese writing and religious texts, and in centuries of trading, in much the same way that you could argue that England and Hungary share a common western culture, based on common ideas from Greece and Rome, as well as the influence of Christianity, despite completely unrelated languages, national circumstances and boundaries, etc. Is speaking of Western or European culture to remark on the common features so weird that you can't speak of, say, the common cultural influence of Buddhism in east Asia?

[Monadology]

A further reason some of us are skeptical is probably because some of us aren't using the so-called "Western" style of thinking: isolating from context, oversimplifying explanations etc... Some of us are thinking of culture as highly complex, contextual and so not easily pinned down according to those generalizations. What exactly is "the East" as a cultural entity? China, Japan and Korea? Let's set aside all the problems with bundling those three nations together as if they had some sort of common fundamental culture (which is nonsense).

I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are the same culture, but they have a shared cultural basis in the early dissemination of Chinese writing and religious texts, and in centuries of trading, in much the same way that you could argue that England and Hungary share a common western culture, based on common ideas from Greece and Rome, as well as the influence of Christianity, despite completely unrelated languages, national circumstances and boundaries, etc. Is speaking of Western or European culture to remark on the common features so weird that you can't speak of, say, the common cultural influence of Buddhism in east Asia?

I never denied that there was cultural influence from common sources. but I do deny that there's any interesting level of common culture. The commonality of influence doesn't map onto the commonality of culture. There's also the question of whether any common influence actually has any unity (which Buddhism? which part of China or which time period of its history?). How do other influences mix (how did Confucianism and Daoism in China affect its reception of Buddhism in a distinct way from the mutual presence of Shinto and Buddhism in Japan?). Speaking of the common cultural influence of Buddhism in east Asia is not, I don't think, likely going to lead to a univocal narrative.

There are cultural similarities between the three nations, but I really doubt there is a common culture. Especially to the point of thinking in a way that boils down to some sort of alternative metaphysical focus (i.e. on relationships rather than things, or on substance rather than form).

[tchan001]

Historically, at one point of time in the 20th century, Japan was THE powerhouse in go. China and Korea were much weaker comparatively. It would seem that Japan helped plant the seeds of professional go into these countries and help them become stronger. Japan also tried to help out the Western world to become stronger at go. So the question becomes, how did China and Korea became so much stronger compared with the West when they all received help from Japan? Is it due to differences in culture or thinking or perhaps other factors?

[Joaz Banbeck]

Historically, at one point of time in the 20th century, Japan was THE powerhouse in go. China and Korea were much weaker comparatively. It would seem that Japan helped plant the seeds of professional go into these countries and help them become stronger. Japan also tried to help out the Western world to become stronger at go. So the question becomes, how did China and Korea became so much stronger compared with the West when they all received help from Japan? Is it due to differences in culture or thinking or perhaps other factors?

I would guess that because of WWII, and the second Sino-Japanese war which morphed into WW II, Americans and Chinese had different opinions of the importance of competing with the Japanese in anything during the several decades after the war. Americans might have been likely to regard the Japanese as inadequate competitors in anything, whereas the Chinese may have had some residual resentment to motivate them to outdo the Japanese at anything possible. I suspect that the Koreans may have had similar motivations.

Just a guess...

I see the same general pattern in motor vehicles: Kia and Hundai are gaining on Toyota and others, and the largest Auto Show in the world is now in Bejing. More than half of the motorcycles made in the world are made in China.
In electronics: Samsung in 2009, according to Wikipedia, had a "... operating profit was more than two times larger than the combined operating profit of nine of Japan’s largest consumer electronic companies."

On the other hand, postwar Americans found Russians to be their bogeyman, and interest in chess boomed. Americans who did not even know how to play the game became Fischer fans.

[Dusk Eagle]

I would especially like to object to your last paragraph. I don't base my beliefs off of what makes me feel best, I base them off of which ones offer accurate models of the world I seem to observe around me. Believing something just cause it makes you feel good is called being delusional. The reason I claim the scientific method is objectively a better basis for building knowledge (if you accept that it can be built at all) than fortune cookies is that the scientific method can accurately make verifiable predictions about the world we observe around us.

It's tricky to say that the scientific method makes verifiable predictions, because the future is unknown. Further, the capability of the scientific method is limited to the model you choose to adopt. You might have a hypothesis, after repeated trials, the hypothesis does not hold, so you adjust your hypothesis. That hypothesis seems to correspond to your observations over and over again, so you believe it's true. But then new observations make you change your mind again.

This is one approach, and to be honest, I share your viewpoint in adopting this approach.

But not everyone uses this approach to make decisions, and I don't think that it's fair to call them delusional.

For example, you might have a person that grew up all of his life being told that, if he threw salt over his back before eating dinner, he'd have good luck. Maybe he's done that all of his life, and he can recount good this that have happened to him, so he starts to believe in this superstition.

Now later, it may be the case that he throws salt over his back before eating dinner, and something really bad happens. He could take two approaches:

1.) He could think, "Hey, this is just a stupid custom that has no scientific basis. I don't believe it." I think this is a valid approach.

2.) He could think, "Well, my mom told me this was the way things worked. And all of my life, it's worked this way. It doesn't seem to be working. There must be another reason. Maybe if you throw salt over your back it works usually, but on the second Tuesday every month, it doesn't".

So sure, you can be quick to call the second approach delusional, or superstitious. But the guy has reasons and life experiences for believing the way he does.

The "scientific" approach may not seem to have personal or cultural rationale tied to it, but the fact is, everyone has their own personal and cultural backgrounds. I don't think it's right to claim that those that have a reason for believing something in a way that's not scientific are delusional.

It's entirely possible that some of these cultural and ancient superstitions have some sort of truth to them that can't be found using the scientific method.

I think it's too simplistic to simply say that these viewpoints are delusional or biased - it's just that the bias present in the scientific method is commonly accepted in modern society.

I was sick in bed all of yesterday and catching up on missed studying today and so wasn't able to respond to this for a while, but I just want to clarify that what I was calling delusional wasn't the belief in this-or-that superstition. What I was calling delusional was holding a belief for the sole reason that it makes you feel good, without any regard for its truth value.