Monadology wrote:Finally, no one is arguing that anyone can pick up Go at any age and get to the level necessary to compete against the promising young professionals in the Korean Go scene in an hour-long game. That's simply straw-manning.
So you admit that young people can get stronger at Go than old people? Or can you suggest some other explanation?
Unless you can suggest a good reason as to why this particular difference means that old minds can't become strong at Go through hard work (and by "strong at Go" I do not mean "can compete at the highest professional level"), and I can't immediately see one, I'm not sure this difference makes a difference.
So what do you mean by strong at Go? Obviously older people can get strong at Go for some definition of strong. The whole point was that they can't get as strong as young people - which you seem to agree with. Note that there's no reasonable definition of "strength", for a competitive game, except as compared to others.