Honte - a primer

[daal]

Furthermore (as an answer to some of the recent postings), I doubt there is a technical fix. Sure, you can close the discussion to invitees only, but you lose a lot of what makes people want to discuss in an open forum in the first place, the surprising insight from a third party, the openness of discussion, where you don't have to make decisions among those worthy and not worthy of contribution ... and of course the mere suggestion of a closed discussion is like telling John Fairbairn, Lifein19x19 isn't the place, where he can have the discussion, he would like to have

I think John knows perfectly well which posts are contributing to a discussion and which posts detracting from it. I think the rest of of us do as well. As for technical solutions, I don't know why moderating one's thread should be a burden. 99% of the threads here need no moderation.

[John Fairbairn]

As for technical solutions, I don't know why moderating one's thread should be a burden. 99% of the threads here need no moderation.

Just a few burdens for starters: having to monitor the thread with high frequency to avoid things getting out of hand; cleaning up the mess that develops when you're asleep in a different time zone; dealing with the person whose post you banned.

And even if you put counter-arguments, I still wouldn't do it.

[Bantari]

As for technical solutions, I don't know why moderating one's thread should be a burden. 99% of the threads here need no moderation.

Just a few burdens for starters: having to monitor the thread with high frequency to avoid things getting out of hand; cleaning up the mess that develops when you're asleep in a different time zone; dealing with the person whose post you banned.

And even if you put counter-arguments, I still wouldn't do it.

I will add two more things:
- the danger of 'owners' deleting good posts which they simply disagree with - nobody wins, and
- as I said - I don't think phpBB comes with this functionality - so its a moot point, unless you want to do some serious code crunching and possibly invalidate patches, updates, and plugins.

[Bill Spight]

The difference between (exceptional) honte as used in professional comments / presented by John Fairbairn and (common) honte as advocated by Bill Spight resembles the eternal question "what is the meaning of a word?".

It does. To repeat myself, I feel that the main difference between John and me about go terminology is that he leans towards prescriptive definitions while I lean towards descriptive definitions.

"Exceptional honte" is in line with "the use of a word is its meaning" while the "common honte" school presupposes another meaning that is always "meant", but in which it is never actually used, because it is so common.

We are talking about usage in game commentaries. There two types of honte receive comments, exceptional plays and doubtful plays. My belief is that it is the exceptionality or doubtfulness that elicits the comments, and that in between honte go uncommented. (Possibly with some exceptions, but none come to mind.) If only exceptional honte received comments, then I would agree with John.

What probably matters to this discussion is, how Go is taught to Japanese beginners / intermediate players.

Good point. That is why the books on honte, Segoe's, Otake's, and Hane's, are good references on the question.

[Matti]

I find John´s phrase for honte "safe and sound move" a good one. However I don´t expect the players to stop saying "proper move", which they said used posiibly for decades.

[Bantari]

I remember I first run into this term in late 80's or so, when i was around 1k... in a commentary to one of Shuko's games. It gave me a lot to think, especially since the resources available to learn about it then were much more limited.

In my mind, I figured out something similar to John: 'honte' can be described by the whole bunch of S-es... Safe, Secure, Steady, Strong... but also Slow... I think it was the slowness that gave me the most to think, and which to me at that time was one of the most characteristic aspects of 'honte'. Each time I saw a 'honte' I could not stop myself from thinking 'that's Slow'.

The other most characteristic S-es of the bunch was Strong. A move which, while slow and safe, also had a visible strength which potentially went far beyond local situation and radiated across the whole board, sometimes defining or even redefining the struggle ahead, just by being there.

Safety was always just a minor aspect to 'honte' for me...

I always thought of 'honte' as 'proper' move, and sometimes as 'honest' move - a move with no 'hidden agendas', what you see is what you get... but once you see it, you appreciate it.

Some of John's examples were a little bit of eye-opening to me.
Makes me thing the pros don't have a very good grip on this concept.

[John Fairbairn]

In my mind, I figured out something similar to John: 'honte' can be described by the whole bunch of S-es... Safe, Secure, Steady, Strong... but also Slow... I think it was the slowness that gave me the most to think, and which to me at that time was one of the most characteristic aspects of 'honte'. Each time I saw a 'honte' I could not stop myself from thinking 'that's Slow'.

I like this. Although I know it will never happen, I would not be unhappy to see honte translated as an S-move.

Makes me thing the pros don't have a very good grip on this concept.

Two things about this. One is that it's ignoring my claim that the term is really just commentator rhetoric rather than a pro's theoretical concept (from which it follows that you can't properly define what doesn't exist).

But taking up the jokiness which is the main point of the quote, in preparing the piece on DoP I have found several rather different views by pros as to what it refers to, and although it is possible to reconcile them in a rough and ready way, the main difficulty - just as with S-moves - is that references to DoP only tell you there has been a phase-change in the game. As useful as that is, it doesn't tell you how to recognise phase-change opportunities for yourself, or precisely which move to choose if you do get that far. However, although a good grip is probably not achievable, at least by me, I have found something by Takemiya that I hope can serve as pine-tar.