Life In 19x19

The Go skill of reading (more generally, visualisation) seems to be one aspect of intelligence that some brains are naturally better at than others. Although, with enough practice, anyone can improve at it to some extent.

I am wondering if Go reading correlates closely with a more widely understood, measurable aspect of intelligence, for which someone can take a test to assess their potential?

Maybe you're thinking of something like this where you can assess your preferred learning style?

Oh dear: "You have a mild Read/Write learning preference."

That doesn't look good for achieving Go greatness.

PeterPeter wrote: I am wondering if Go reading correlates closely with a more widely understood, measurable aspect of intelligence, for which someone can take a test to assess their potential?

Even if it does, I suspect nobody knows the answer but plenty of people will be happy to give you their own baseless interpretation as if it's factual.

Since that's the way of things, I'm happy to give you my own opinion as if it's a fact. That would be, there're probably all sorts of correlations on some level, but their magnitudes are mostly irrelevant to reaching a fairly high level of go skill.

I once was required to write an essay on learning styles, and after doing some research on the topic, wrote my essay on how the idea that people that identify with a particular learning style learn better when information is presented in that style is not supported by the current scientific evidence. That is, whether you identify as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or whatever other categories they make up, it actually makes no discernible difference in how much you'll learn from a lesson versus someone with a different learning style.

As for the original question, there may or may not be a correlation between reading ability and intelligence, but I believe, though cannot prove, that any difference that intelligence makes can be overcome with effort, at least up to a fairly high level of play (higher than my own).

I was trying not to draw a parallel between Go reading and overall intelligence. I view intelligence as a broad range of mental processing abilities, and the ability to visualise sequences of Go stones is only a small, specific one. For instance, I am good at remembering numbers, but not good at remembering faces, neither of which says much about my general intelligence.

There is the classic HM case, where a patient due to a freak accident lost the ability to form new symbolic memories, though he could recall those symbolic memories he had learned before. He could however improve his skills at certain things. Take for example Yi-Changho, his teacher didn't think he would do well, because he couldn't remember the games he played.

SmoothOper wrote:There is the classic HM case, where a patient due to a freak accident lost the ability to form new symbolic memories, though he could recall those symbolic memories he had learned before. He could however improve his skills at certain things. Take for example Yi-Changho, his teacher didn't think he would do well, because he couldn't remember the games he played.

I wouldn't think of Yi-Changho as a good example of someone who has lost the ability to form new symbolic memories due to a freak accident.

I do agree that having a freak accident which damages a brain would certainly qualify as a possible reason that such brain is no good at reading in go.

If visualization had any reasonable correlation with intelligence, I would be dumb as a rock. When I was still 1 kyu (had been playing go for 13 months), in a ladder reading competition I repeatedly lost in both speed and accuracy to.. well, pretty much everyone. Against 7 kyu I didn't stand a chance, and even against 9 kyu I was still quite far behind. Reason was I had trouble visualizing stones, if I ever tried imagining more than 3 stones on the board I lost track.

I have since trained visualizing, mainly by playing 9x9 games blind and by reviewing pro games blind. Now days I don't have much trouble reading a long ladder, but I'm surely still weak in visualizing considering the effort I've put into training it.

How to tell if your brain is no good at reading?

This difficult to understand, find you will. -- Yoda (not Norimoto)

Dusk Eagle wrote:I once was required to write an essay on learning styles, and after doing some research on the topic, wrote my essay on how the idea that people that identify with a particular learning style learn better when information is presented in that style is not supported by the current scientific evidence.

eeeenteresting. Do you have the essay, references, links, or anything else a curious man should read?

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My 2 cents about topic: brains can't read at all. "Mind" would be better term there.

I think it is important to distinguish "reading" and "seeing". Somewhere in this forum there is already a thread with a couple of posts dealing with the difference (if I remember correctly Bill Spight gave - as always - some valuable insights).

I for instance don't read very often because I'm a lazy chap (yes, I do lose games because of that). What I do is seeing potential sequences/variations because I solved a lot of Tesuji and Life-and-Death problems and these shapes are all over my games. I know very few Go players who "read" more than they "see" and the ones I do know lose very often on time ^^

The point is: Seeing comes naturally - as you say yourself - due to practice and experience whereas reading skill is far more difficult to obtain in my opinion. Reading for me is broadening the view beyond the sequences you would play instinctively, discovering the unknown so to say.
A nice example in my eyes is the Guzumi (the empty triangle as a good move) in pro games. I read quite a few times already that the pro overlooked this move because instinctively he would never play it as it is more often than not bad shape. Although I would not go as far as to say the pro did not read at all ^^

tundra wrote:Makes one wonder just how seriously one should take some of the research in psychology. Which is too bad, as it looks (at least to an outsider like me) to be a fascinating field.

- Science doesn't make anything happen. It proves correlations should they exist and provides tools for testing hypotheses. It should be almost impossible to prove anything. Indeed considering how many research teams there are studying human psyche around the world, the science community can say very little that is certain about how the mind works. This doesn't mean that the research teams are incompetent. It is rather that science takes truth very seriously. Whenever someone comes up with some kind of revolutionary idea, the best attitude to take is doubt and scepticism. The world is not going to turn upside down just because someone says so.