John/Robert, I also have a (lengthy) response to John's point, so moved it out to a new thread so as not to distract from this "How to AI cheat" one:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15805

Here are some things I like about go and chess that don't involve winning:

• Understanding the game better. I see go and chess, like math and physics, as languages that operate in a semantic space other than the usual description of our human experiences. I gain great pleasure from becoming more fluent in these languages.
  
• Aesthetic appreciation. I can glance at a chess position (go is harder) and it tells me a lot, immediately, in aspects that I have trouble putting into words (see the previous bullet). Just the way that pieces are configured awakens many patterns and recollections and ideas. I love being able to have this rich aesthetic reaction to things like game positions rather than just poems and paintings and nature.
  
• History. I love that in both games there is a rich history going back centuries, where a large part of the history are the game records themselves, which have been passed down perfectly. I know lots of chess history the way people know go history, and I love that there's a shared knowledge of the important events, from things like "who has been world champion" all the way down to very specific moves from specific games.
  
• Appreciation of expert play. Just as being better at soccer makes you more able to appreciate professional soccer, I enjoy following along with videos of professional play with commentary (or just strong players streaming), as well as playing over pro games.
  
• The social aspect. I hang out every week with friends of various skills who all love this game, and it's great to have a common specialized hobby to study and laugh and argue about together. I'm going to the US Congress this year and am looking forward to meeting other people that I "know" from L19 and AYD.

That's not an exhaustive list but it's a start!

It's possible. I'd imagine that people are influenced by culture wherever they are, from whatever time period.



I have some similar experiences. I remember a game from a long time ago at a tournament. I was 5k at the time, and there was a risky sequence that I thought my work - but it was at the limit of my skill to read it out. I played it out and it worked. I felt a lot of good feeling not just from the result, but because of the sequence I played.

But I have to wonder - had I spent the same amount of time reading out that sequence, played it out, and *still* lost the game... would I have had such a pleasant feeling about the same process? I don't think so. At least my feeling would be diminished. It would be something like, "yeah, that was a cool sequence, but I still lost".

I guess I can get pleasure from miniature sequences or moves I play out in the game, but winning the game gives me more confidence that I'm not fooling myself with their novelty. If I still lose, it's like my skills didn't seem as good as I had thought.


Agree that it lacks the people element. And further, since a lot of bots use some form of deep and/or reinforcement learning, the learning process is a bit of a black box to the programmers. So if I play an AI, I don't get the sense that I'm learning anything about the programmer's brain - I just kind of think, "huh - the algorithm figured this out after a lot of training".

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be immersed

I'm definitely with you on the social aspect - that's one of the reasons I frequent L19. Regarding the first point about understanding the game better, to me, understanding the game better is tied to understanding how to win better. Outside of that, what is there?

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be immersed

For me, it's not to win, but to be intellectually challenged and "solve" the interesting problem in front of me : "how to win this game?". If all I wanted was to win, I would just play against a 20k without handicap, but then the "problem" is trivial.

When I win by a large margin or very easily, I'm not as pleased compared to when I win a very close game (actually, I prefer losing a very close game than winning a game without challenge). A win is only important if it's meaningful

You talked about tsumego earlier, it's kinda the same : solving a 30k tsumego don't give me any feeling. Solving a complicated dan level tsumego? That's really satisfying !

As I said, it is similar to my love of math and physics. The fields of math and physics aim to optimize how much we know about the world and the logical structure of mathematics. The fields of go and chess aim to optimize how best to play those games. The study of all these fields gives me a lot of satisfaction of pleasure, which is true independent of the thing being optimized.

I'm not asking you to feel this way, of course! I'm just explaining my own feelings. I think there are a wide variety of ways in which people enjoy games, which is part of what makes them so great. For some people, 100% of their interest is in the competitive aspect; for some, it's close to zero and the rules of the game just provide a rich context for exploration and appreciation. I'm somewhere in the middle.

Time for some sort of 'AlphaScout', a neural network designed to identify dishonest play.

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On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

This probably doesn't help in the long run since a net can also be taught to cheat undetectably, imitating typical human error distributions. Actually you may not even need a specific net for that.

I agree, and this is kind of my point. The enjoyment has a tie to winning the game - your objective, is to solve the problem that you've stated: "how to win this game?".

Accordingly, from that perspective, if I *lose* the game, I have failed at my objective. Comparing to tsumego problems, it's as if I got the tsumego problem incorrect.

Getting the problem incorrect is not fun to me. I feel satisfaction only if I've solved the problem correctly. Similarly, it is hard for me to feel much satisfaction in playing a game when I have not ultimately "solved" the problem of "how to win this game?"

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be immersed

I guess you are saying that you get satisfaction from the study of go, rather than the result of actually playing a game of go.

I like study, too, but I seem to enjoy the feeling of feedback. If I am doing go problems, I like the positive feedback of seeing, "yes, I solved the problem correctly." In terms of playing a game, the only feedback that I really recognize is the result of the game.

If the feedback isn't positive, either with a go problem or with playing a game, I feel that I've failed in some sense, and it's not a positive feeling.



I'd like to feel the same way, and I appreciate that you're sharing your feelings.

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be immersed

I guess a point I'd make to myself would be: does the fact that you might get a go problem wrong mean that you cannot enjoy go problems? And the answer, I think, would be no.

It doesn't mean my satisfaction from the problems has some tie to solving a problem correctly - I only get satisfaction when I solve a problem correctly. But the fact that I might get a problem wrong doesn't mean that they are not worth doing.

I guess in the same way, the fact that I might lose a game of go shouldn't prevent me from enjoying playing go. But in order to "solve the problem" of playing the game of go, I had better try hard to win.

Losing all the time would still be unsatisfying, just like it would be unsatisfying to never get go problems correct.

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be immersed

Obviously you feel that way and so it must seem true for you. But there is a mental "trick" available and that is just actively shifting your priorities round. What if you were playing your child or grandchild? Would you not feel delighted if they wiped the board with you? In a way this is the Hikaru no Go story.

Actually, I know there are some (grand)parents who hate losing to their offspring and I always feel very sorry for these people. On the other hand, it's more often having children that makes the welcome prioritising knack kick in. It's a little different with grandchildren. There you have the leisure to observe and you start, very pleasurably, to see your own childhood in them - the true meaning of second childhood.

I don't know you but I sense strongly from what you write here that you would not be one of the unprioritising meanies.

Except that my enjoyement come from the process of trying to solve the problem, not having solved it. Winning or losing is not that important for me, being challenged is.

Of course, when I win I'm happy, because I solved a problem, but only if the problem itself is interesting : if it's too easy, it's not fun. But When I lose, I don't often see that as a failure (only if I played so badly that I didn't really have a try)

So you are saying that, if you have a tsumego problem that you thought was at a level that was "interesting" to you, you made an attempt to solve it, and you got the wrong answer... You'd feel satisfaction from that problem because it was interesting?

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be immersed

Thanks for the perspective. Not exactly the same, but it reminds me of when I organized several go related activities for the company I was working for. It was pretty enjoyable seeing people participate, even if I wasn't winning games or solving go problems.

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be immersed

I get a small boost in satisfaction when I solve it correctly, and a small decrease in statisfaction when I solve it incorrectly, but the main part of my enjoyement is the process of solving itself.

And Yes, I prefer spending 5 minutes on a hard problem without managing to solve it than 10s on an easy problem that I get correctly.

Interesting. I have a strong feeling that I failed if I get the problem wrong. The mental activity is pleasant, but I can't forget that I was too lazy to get the right answer.

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be immersed

For the same reason martial art students practice, despite the likelihood of them needing to use it being small in many places.

Don't think, feel. Put go stones into a go bowl, they become the go bowl. Put go stones onto the go board, they become the go board. Be like go stones, my friend.

(Jeet Shi Do, way of the intercepting stone)

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On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Three important points for myself: learning to play to play go at higher levels is a lot like learning a new language. Stronger players can *see* things that weaker players can't, and it's this continual improvement of vision on the board, that revelatory feeling in increasing one's understanding hard to match elsewhere. A metaphor may be taken from 1d/blackbelt, as an uninitiated onlooker observing a dan game is like looking at the colour black, and professionals, vantablack, as no lightwaves reach your eyes.

It leads on to point two, the better you are at go, the more people you can communicate with over the go board, and the more exquisite that communication can be. Being able to talk to someone directly over the go board, without the intermediary of commentary, in more and more elegant language is probably the most satisfying aspect for me in improvement. Still at the baby words stage though.

Not to mention the attraction of battle through the mind in a most beautiful form, and I can only allude it to kung fu of the mind. Maybe others might be able to relate to a few of these points, maybe not. Go is hand-talk, after all, I guess.

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On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

"In addition to", not "rather than"!