Age & Improvement

[lemmata]

Becoming a pro in any sport (including go) is a difficult task regardless of the age at which you start training. For go pros, the extra tricky thing is that you must be stronger than the vast majority of existing pros in order to be certified as a new pro. To achieve that level of strength is a truly monumental task indeed.

If we are talking about reaching Tygem 8 dan (or bottom-rung 9 dan) strength, then I think that a person in his 20s need not despair. Frankly, I feel that a person in his 40s could do it if he had the right guidance and sufficient self-discipline. Of course, those two conditions are nontrivial...but it is known where good teachers can be found and the second part is a matter of willpower.

Oh yeah, this is probably impossible if you have kids...but most 20-somethings don't.

[EdLee]

For go pros, the extra tricky thing is that you must be stronger than the vast majority of existing pros in order to be certified as a new pro.

I believe this is false. What is the source of this information?
In China, Japan, and Korea, my understanding is one has to achieve a certain win-loss threshold
in the annual pro qualifying tournament. In other words, one has to make it into the "Top N" slots
(where N is different in each of China, Japan, and Korea), so the candidate has to beat the vast majority
of the amateurs, not pros, who are also taking the same pro qualifying tournament.

[HermanHiddema]

For what it's worth, most of us answered you seriously: age doesn't affect very much except how much motivation and time you have, how good your concentration span is, how likely you are to put up with boring practice rituals, and so on. Your brain does deteriorate, but the effect of it on an average 23-year-old is dwarfed so much by all the other factors that you can't even notice it.

I still wonder why so many people in this thread seem to think this is true. An unwillingness to accept that they have limitations?

The truth of the matter is that there are no examples of people making professional when starting in their twenties, no matter how much time they put in it. Meanwhile, there are kids that make professional by age 11 or 12, so they have had perhaps 6 years to get that far. Surely someone in their twenties can put in a similar amount of time and effort in, say, 10 years?

All the evidence we have indicates that starting age is extremely important.

[hyperpape]

Surely someone in their twenties can put in a similar amount of time and effort in, say, 10 years?

How many actual examples of anyone putting that time and effort in during their twenties do we actually have?

Here's someone's attempt with golf: http://thedanplan.com/

(I tend to agree with you Herman, but I'm playing devil's advocate).

[Boidhre]

For what it's worth, most of us answered you seriously: age doesn't affect very much except how much motivation and time you have, how good your concentration span is, how likely you are to put up with boring practice rituals, and so on. Your brain does deteriorate, but the effect of it on an average 23-year-old is dwarfed so much by all the other factors that you can't even notice it.

I still wonder why so many people in this thread seem to think this is true. An unwillingness to accept that they have limitations?

The truth of the matter is that there are no examples of people making professional when starting in their twenties, no matter how much time they put in it. Meanwhile, there are kids that make professional by age 11 or 12, so they have had perhaps 6 years to get that far. Surely someone in their twenties can put in a similar amount of time and effort in, say, 10 years?

All the evidence we have indicates that starting age is extremely important.

I think people are confusing becoming very, very good at something relative to most people (say 5d EGF) with getting to the very top. Which is what lemmata was getting at.

[HermanHiddema]

Surely someone in their twenties can put in a similar amount of time and effort in, say, 10 years?

How many actual examples of anyone putting that time and effort in during their twenties do we actually have?

Here's someone's attempt with golf: http://thedanplan.com/

(I tend to agree with you Herman, but I'm playing devil's advocate).

I have no idea, I don't know how much time most people have put in. I think the best chance of making it would be if you are from Japan, Korea or China, as you would have much easier access to professional teaching during those ten years, and to strong opponents for practice. But I don't know if I know any Asian players who started as adults.

Still, I have not heard of even one example. I think if someone became pro in their late twenties or thirties after only starting as an adult, it would generate plenty of interest. Until such time as such a case is reported, I will remain sceptical.

[Polama]

Some possibilities for why people at the top of certain skills start young:
1) There is something fundamentally different about a young child's capacity for learning.
2) Children are forming routines for the first time: it may be much easier to practice 10 hour days as a first routine then switch to it later in life.
3) Young children have much more free time.
4) Some spark of natural talent and interest seems necessary. It may be unusual for a prodigy to make it to 20 without any exposure to their natural predilection.
5) If a 9 year old and a 30 year old reach comparable levels of excellence after 3 years of practice, we view the 9 year old as far more talented. Partially it's, 'wow, she's so young!', partially it's 'if he improved that much already, what will he be in 20 years???', while the 30 year old we perceive as probably at their peak already. It's easy to mistakenly make linear extrapolations in improvement, not 'wow, this 12 year old already reached close to their peak', but 'their peak must be twice as good as they are now!'
6) Similarly, if it's accepted that top violinists always start by 5, and it takes 10 years to reach mastery, it may be very difficult for a 15 year old to find top quality teachers willing to put the time and encouragement in to helping the student reach an elite status. It may be hard to convince orchestras that this 25 year old they've never heard of is one of the best in the world.

I can believe it's any and all of those. Ultimately, we still don't understand the brain particularly well.

[wineandgolover]

G. H. Hardy, wrote in his 1940 memoir, A Mathematician’s Apology, “No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man’s game.”

We all know the pictures of old Einstein. But E=Mc^2 was derived when he was 26. There are many similar examples.

Do mathematicians gets stupid once they hit their 30's? No. But their most insightful, innovative days are behind them.

There is no reason to believe go is any different. And, all the real-world evidence says it isn't. Strong pros may stay strong into their 30's and well beyond, but they don't become strong in their 30's.

[Magicwand]

1) Young people will have less preconception. Their minds are free to think and make a judgement on its own.
which means that their creativity is always greater than older person.
2) Young people will have better mental concentration than older person.
I am sure Cho hunhyun can value position well as young players but he can no longer maintain the level of concentration as he did during his prime. I notice that i make dumb mistakes lately and i didnt have that problem when i was younger.
3) I know at least one case in korea where they learned the game after 20 and became professional. then again..it was long time ago and level of professionals were far weaker than now and also he was never the top professional.
4) Einstein was never good at math and i pointed that out before in this forum before. and i am not trolling.

final thought: if you learn this game over 20 years of age anyone can reach strong 5d possibly 7d. BUT past that??? i think it is very very hard.

[HermanHiddema]

4) Einstein was never good at math and i pointed that out before in this forum before.

Well known urban legend, actually: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php ... in-school/

[Polama]

We all know the pictures of old Einstein. But E=Mc^2 was derived when he was 26. There are many similar examples.

And of course, Hendrik Lorentz's work was hugely influential to Einstein's development of relativity (The changes in size we perceive in a very fast moving object are described as Lorentz contractions because he formalized that before Einstein.) From Wikipedia, it appears he first published on 'local time' at age 39, published the lorentz transformations at 52, and reformulated general relativity in a coordinate free way at 63. There are many similar examples of great contributions at young ages, but there are also many examples of great contributions later in life.

if you learn this game over 20 years of age anyone can reach strong 5d possibly 7d. BUT past that??? i think it is very very hard.

If you learn this game at the age of 3, I would think getting past 7d is still very hard.

How many 25 year old's have the freedom to not work and just study Go all day? How many people live in a country with a professional system and professional level teaching but aren't exposed to the game until their 20's? If we expect that to be a smaller pool than for children, then just by statistics we'd expect them to be inferior.

There's so many confounding factors, and whenever you're talking about the top fractions of a percent of the population you're in such a noisy part of the distribution, I really don't think there's any strong evidence one way or the other about the impact on age and peak performance.

[SmoothOper]

4) Einstein was never good at math and i pointed that out before in this forum before.

Well known urban legend, actually: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php ... in-school/

Einstein probably just had issues with parts of math, that he didn't believe in or didn't find useful. There are certain axioms that many people don't believe in and can render much of mathematics useless, for example if you believe in the axiom of determinacy then proofs that rely on the axiom of choice are invalid, and a large proportion of mathematics becomes invalid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_determinacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_choice

[lemmata]

For go pros, the extra tricky thing is that you must be stronger than the vast majority of existing pros in order to be certified as a new pro.

I believe this is false. What is the source of this information?
In China, Japan, and Korea, my understanding is one has to achieve a certain win-loss threshold
in the annual pro qualifying tournament. In other words, one has to make it into the "Top N" slots
(where N is different in each of China, Japan, and Korea), so the candidate has to beat the vast majority
of the amateurs, not pros, who are also taking the same pro qualifying tournament.

A certain win-loss threshold against a pool of amateurs that is much stronger than before.

Kim Seongryong 9P has been quoted on Baduk TV saying that pretty much no one from his generation (born in the mid 70s, pre-Mok/Ahn) can beat the Class 1 yeonguseng and plays even games against Class 2. This was a couple years ago. The notable exceptions were Lee Changho and Choi Myunghoon (currently #70). He also explicitly said that there are many yeonguseng who do not make pro despite being stronger than pros. Extrapolating from that quote and looking at some of the players ranked in the 50-100 range in Korea (out of about 240 pros total) I don't think that the claim is an exaggeration. The strong new pros like Byun Sangil, Na Hyun, Lee Donghoon bolt into the top 20 and the weaker new pros make the top 100. Cho Insun could never pass the pro exam but made pro thanks to the new points system by steadily beating pros in open events. He is ranked 51. Perhaps "vast" majority is an exaggeration, but I do think that being barely better than 50% of the pros in Korea will not be enough to get you past the pro qualifying exam. Perhaps things are different elsewhere.

[HermanHiddema]

4) Einstein was never good at math and i pointed that out before in this forum before.

Well known urban legend, actually: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php ... in-school/

Einstein probably just had issues with parts of math, that he didn't believe in or didn't find useful.

No, Einstein just excelled at math.

[Boidhre]

No, Einstein just excelled at math.

He wasn't a professional mathematician though and knew when to bring one in to help him. I think people confuse this with him not being capable of doing the maths that got people to help him with, this wasn't the case it was just to be an expert in that area of mathematics he couldn't equally be an expert in theoretical physics due to there only being so many hours in a day.

People hear: "He got mathematicians to help him sometimes" and don't grasp why this is isn't indicative of Einstein's mathematical ability. Academics at the top level are so specialised that even within the same field you might need to enlist the help of other people not because you couldn't learn to do it yourself but because it would be grossly inefficient for you to sink several years developing the correct expertise and experience.