John raises a key issue, one so vital and fundamental that it deserves its own thread (if not an entire Library of Alexandria) - an issue so basic that it impacts all Go players of all abilities and all ages, from rabbits like me to tigers like him, and from newborn babies like me to old farts like him (no offence, John):


The article John refers to (but doesn't cite! - how unscholarly!! ) can only be, i am afraid, airy-fairy pseudoscience bollocks; i've seen its introspective opinion voiced dozens of times over the last 30 years or so, ever since the computer became popular.

Some of my former colleagues used to joke that their students were living in a post-literate age, as they spend more time Tweeting than reading Shakespeare - but those jokers were mathematicians, and if there's one type of animal in the mengerie you should never listen to, its the mythematician who Big Bangs on and on about his nonsensical idealistic abstract imaginations of the history of the Universe.

Writing, the printing press and the worldwide web have had enormous impacts on communication, but there is no credible statistically significant psychological evidence whatsoever that electronic technology has changed the way our brains work; moreover, there is no neuropsychological evidence that even the invention of writing changed anything about how people think, which has changed little, if at all, over the last 200,000 years:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=2205530

The latest evidence is that Neanderthals' minds (as well as their genomes) were pretty similar to our own; they were capable of symbolic reasoning and projection too. Moreover, everyone of European descent has about 2% Neanderthal DNA in their bones:
http://www.ebroadcast.com.au/tv/detail. ... ta=1&fox=0

Viruses, bacteria, and even Galapagos finches, evolve quickly - but mammals don't.

Go and golf have more in common than two letters: in both endeavours, there is an inverse correlation between age and power: that's to say, the scale of rabbit... tiger more or less matches, backwards, the scale of young...old.

The older you get, the dumber you get. Einstein did his best work before he was about 25 years old, and didn't have an original thought after that, despite trying strenuously during his decades-long free ride cosseted snugly within the leafy vine-clad walls of Princeton with nothing else to do.

Ke Jie is younger and stronger than 99.99% of other pros, just as Tiger was once younger and stronger than other pro golfers.

The older you get, the more memories you have, but that doesn't translate into greater playing strength.

It does translate into wisdom, but that's a different thing - basically, wisdom is the caution gained from painful experience that rushing in recklessly is often not a good idea.

Of course, there are exceptions to this general rule: Go Seigen rushed in recklessly right to the very end: i remember seeing his pithy deathbed exhortation somewhere, but cannot now find it again...

But back to the question John raises: are videos bad for your Go eyes?


Richard Feynman's lecture antics are definitely all too temptingly enjoyable; his students adored them, and they all came out of his class thinking he was wonderful, but most of them couldn't remember a single thing he had said about physics!


Nevertheless, almost by definition, if you don't enjoy what you are watching/reading, you won't remember anything about it. Our strongest memories are our fondest ones; the brain has a way of conveniently forgetting unpleasant memories, except for events that provoked strong emotions at the time. The relationship between emotion and memory is one that cannot be overemphasised.

And that raises a subquestion: is it worthwhile trying to memorise joseki?

That aside, aside from fictional novels (which incite our own imaginary videos inside our own heads, as the first goat pointed out [1]), videos are much more efficient and effective transmitters of factual information than books, for reasons explained here:




[1]:
Two goats were strolling along Hollywood Boulevard, when one noticed a dustbin of old film and started munching on it.
"What's it like?" asked his companion.
"Not bad...", he said,
"... but it's not as good as the book!"

_________________
i shrink, therefore i swarm