FWIW Entropi, I thought your analogy was very clear and informative (and feels intuitively sensible to me too)

Monadology - I'm confused, do you or do you not understand the example of two ways to remember a face - one analytic and one synthetic? I think it's a great example, but if you're struggling with the concept I can give you many more.

If your objection is only to crude dichotomies - I sympathize, and I think that it's sad that most fMRI researchers understand neither statistical significance nor theoretical coherence, but do you really deny that chopping up phenomena into smaller parts (analysis) and spontaneously recognizing patterns (synthesis) are fundamental and distinct mental powers? Do you deny that some people are better than others at each of them?

I am not a neuroscientist either, I am just trying to have a discussion describing my view about what I can understand of your view about different ways of thinking.

Your conceptions are simply too vague from where I'm standing. They don't make any sense as some kind of dichotomy. I've gone into pretty good detail (e.g. what about recalling the details visually? Is this both analytic and visual? Another kind of thinking?). Visualizing is just the act of producing a representation, how does that involve any kind of thinking? If it's a kind of thinking, it should be applicable to all sorts of problems that are not resolved simply be recalling something you have seen. If it is simply recalling something you've seen, then why not recalling something you heard or smelled? What does this have to do with the 'whole picture' of the problem? I've enumerated many questions such as these. If you do not feel like answering them, that is fine.

Visual thinking as you've described it doesn't seem to be in anything like the same ballpark as what is described as analytical thinking (not even apples and oranges, more like apples and street-lamps). It doesn't even seem to have any well-defined attributes beyond visualization. And yet it is being assigned a (hypothetical) significant role in distinguishing between cultures and explaining low IQ scores in a certain group. Either the example is the problem or visual thinking as a counterpart to analytical thinking is simply not coherent. I've been focusing on the example because it's more charitable not to assume the latter. It's not just the visual thinking, though. In my last post I also tried to indicate that analytic thinking probably involves more than decomposition by posing similar questions.



No, I get that. I just don't see how it's an example of thinking. It's an example of recall. Furthermore, they are operating on different levels. If you cannot remember the whole face at once, that is because your recall is imperfect for some reason. You can deal with this by trying to recall bite-sized parts of it. But if you can remember the whole thing you aren't really taking some kind of different, synthetic approach to a problem because there is no problem to solve in the first place. Hence there is no 'thinking'. You are simply recalling the face.

If you can describe an equivalent approach to resolving the problem of imperfect recall by decomposing the parts of the face and remembering them individually that would be synthetic, I would very much appreciate it.

EDIT: I think I've pinpointed the conceptual problem with the example. If the problem is "How do you reproduce the whole?" I do not see how "Reproducing the whole," which would be the holistic/synthetic 'thinking' is actually a method of problem solving. It's simply the solution. Thus it produces a one-sided case. The only way, outside of simply already having the solution (the whole) is to work analytically.

Perhaps in an example where "How do you reproduce the whole?" was not the problem, I could understand it better.

Even more trivially: I think this issue may be further confounded by trying to use faces as an example. Faces are special to brains. You'll note in one linked article, a fish swimming in a pond is used. This is probably surprisingly different to faces.

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First, for all that's been said here, we don't know that facial recognition works by seeing the whole picture. For all we've said here, it works by remembering an image of the mouth, the eyes, and some data about the distances between those things and the ears. The conscious mind would have no idea how it works, but it would be every bit as much a process of pulling out details.

It feels like we remember the whole face, but that doesn't mean we do, anymore than the fact that we don't notice the blind spot in our vision makes it the case that it's not there.

Second, how does this generalize? If face-recognition is our example of visual perception, how does that characterize the entire way that Asians think?

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Monadology:
i am not sure if i can explain it any better than other before me, but i will try...

i think the example with faces might not be the best possible, nor the term "visual thinking", though both work for me.
lets try to illustrate the difference at playing go. i remember one Korean troll at KGS chat who repeated how Westerners can't be good at go and play terribly slow, because they rely only on reading all possible variations while Asians have much better whole board thinking and "feeling" for the game (i lack a better word here)

example right here at L19 might be Malkovich games - Magicwand's games can represent Asian style and i guess topazg's could represent western style

my explanation surely has some flaws you can argue about but if you want to understand, i hope it can help (and it is half past midnight here anyway, so i can't write anything better)

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I might be wrong, but probably not.

@Laman I've heard the exact opposite: that Korean players start pff fighting like crazy, and only later worry about the opening and subtlety, while Western players start asking about the newest research concerning the 3-5 point while they're DDK.

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I'm not sure if that's contradicting Laman, it sounds like you're rather supporting his point. Western players start asking about research and theory, Korean plays just fight because it's cool and feels good

"Much of the material in this book is definitely not available in English language Go literature. In fact, I doubt that this material can be found anywhere in the world because Mr. Yang did not formulate these ideas until after he arrived in the United States in 1986. He once told me that when he taught Go in China, his students would say, "Yes, Teacher, I believe you." After arriving in the US, however, he began encountering students who say, "Yes, Teacher, I believe you, but why? How is that a small change - one line up or down, left or right - can make such a drastic change in the analysis?""

Written by Joel Sanet on the back of Yilun Yang's fundamental principles of Go.

I have little doubt that there's a really strong mindset difference between Asian and Western culture.

The interesting question is not whether there are differences. Differences are obvious. Admission to Chinese universities is weighted much more to quantifiable, logical, rational processes (test scores) than American universities that look for a holistic picture of their applicants via personal essays (wait, what?!).

It's whether those differences are part of some big picture holistic vs. analytical thingamadoodle, and you can consistently categorize those differences in a way that isn't ad hoc and just looking for patterns.

For all my snark in the first paragraph, I think it's a fascinating topic. There's a half read book on my shelf, The Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett (the badass social psychologist) that summarizes recent research on the subject. I had half a mind to do a review of it for L19, but never finished it, and also decided I wasn't in a position to review it very authoritatively.

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I agree that binary categories are inappropriate when discussing such a broad topic as factors that influence thought, but that's no reason not to attempt to draw distinctions between an analytic approach (the circumference of a football is 2π r) or a visual one (The football is as big around as a plate). Likewise, aside from possibly offending people, there's no reason not to consider whether geography, genetics or culture play a role in how we think.

Just to be clear, the above quoted article points to faults in studies making sweeping generalizations about cultural differences; it in no way suggests that cultural differences are non-existent.

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Just to respond to your snark, perhaps the contradiction is only on the surface, and what we are seeing in your example is that American universities are looking for potential students that might stand out in ways other than test scores, and Chinese universites are looking for those who they believe might best contribute to their society as a whole. Just a conjecture.

BTW, The Geography of Thought is the book I mentioned in post 15.

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@daal Man this thread was moving fast yesterday. I thought I read everything, but I must have missed that post.

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That's not something I ever wanted to suggest.

I think it's worth mentioning that the control group was also comprised of asian individuals. Their mean I.Q. was 101. That's seven points higher than the Baduk experts. So the question of I.Q. differences might not hinge on cultural differences. On the topic of I.Q. the study itself suggests "The relatively shorter period of formal education might be partially responsible for the fact that Baduk players tended to score somewhat lower on IQ scores than did the control group". In other words, they left school early to study Go.

To me, the topic of I.Q. is one of the least interesting aspects of the study. Consider this quote:


Or what about the running comparison of Baduk experts who began their training in childhood to London Cab drivers who began their training as adults? The paper points out "expertise acquired in adulthood can cause significant changes in gray matter volume as well as in neuropsychological profiles". Seems like a positive message to those of us that began studying go well into adulthood.

Precise rules are necessary, unless you have a passion for unfairness and unresolvable problems.


No one ever said that the Japanese were stupid. The FACT is, they are behind China and Korea. It is reasonable to ask why this is. Firstly, it sounds as if Japan has not modernized its training system for insei. (Correct me if I am wrong on this.) Secondly, Japan is unfortunately beginning to leave its traditional culture behind, and consequently the Go population is dwindling. This has to have an effect on Japan's performance. I would love to see Japan become stronger again, but right now, they're simply not.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

Nagano (only because L19 is deathly quiet and needs warming up):

Precise rules are not actually necessary as centuries of go have proven. We simply need a model that is good enough (which can, admittedly, change over time).

The reference to people calling Japanese stupid was to comments often made by people talking about their rules. The Japanese rules have served well enough for a longer period of pro tournament play than anywhere else. The very occasional glitch serves a useful purpose of getting journalists excited, so is actually good for go.

The point is, as the papers behind the thread show, westerners are apt to pick on an individual instance divorced from context. The Japanese are more inclined to take account of the context, and that context includes the community. That allows them to handle rules problems in a way satisfactory for them. That is not stupid. In social terms it's very intelligent (empathy is supposed to be a marker of human intelligence, though I see from a report today that even that is now questionable - hens have been shown to feel empathy for their chicks).

Just as there is scope for a "geography of thought" there is scope for a "geography of rules".

Centuries of void games, improper rulings and incorrect results are not what I would call "good enough".

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

It's a real shame. If Go Seigen hadn't had all those rules disputes, maybe he could've contributed something to the game.

The most powerful argument for research on rules and making changes is "why not try and simplify or clarify things?" and I've never heard an answer from John that convinced me. But he's right about one thing: rules mavens have zero credibility when they insist that the current state of affairs is THE WORST DISASTER EVER.

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I'm just waiting for instant replay to be instituted in all tournament games. Do we REALLY know he beat the clock on the last stone placed?

Hello,
People who are interested in the east-west aspects of this subject might like to take a look at my article on psychology and go in the Bob High e-Library (http://www.usgo.org/bobhighlibrary). For example, there is some commentary on the language aspect that I didn't see mentioned in this thread.
To those who posted in this thread, thanks. When I get the chance, I will try to update to include some of the links and observations mentioned here plus other new research in the field. (I'll announce it here).
Best,
Peter Shotwell