Understanding

[EdLee]

Waiting for Godots?

Excellent.

[paK0]

If you are talking about a curve made out of dots do you weight them as well? Clearly not every area is equally important/easy to grasp.

Also some might be interchangable, but not in a 1:1 ratio.

[EdLee]

If you are talking about a curve made out of dots do you weight them as well?
Clearly not every area is equally important/easy to grasp.

Also some might be interchangable, but not in a 1:1 ratio.

Hi pak0, interesting question. I didn't think of weighing them.
As in, "some basics are more important than others,
so grasping them is worth more than others." Interesting!
I'm not sure.

So the answer is to improve your understanding of basics.

From this thread.

[topazg]

Also potentially interesting, to me at least, is a premise that "some go-dots, either individually or in combination, are a pre-requisite of other go-dots". Some of the finer aspects of fighting with thickness or sabaki are pretty much useless in the hands of a beginner. Of course, this is because they don't understand them, but importantly I think is the fact that they are probably incapable of understanding them because the building blocks upon which they start to make sense aren't currently in place.

[EdLee]

A friend asks:

Do Go-dots correspond to something in the game, like stones, or just basic principles?

Go-dots are the basics, fundamentals. They don't map to any physical elements of Go, or to any of the rules.
Some examples from chess:

• we can assign rough values to the pieces: pawn=1, bishop==knight==2, rook=5, queen=9, king=infinite; to help evaluate the position.
• in the opening, be careful if you move a particular piece more than once, because you may be losing tempo; instead, you could develop another, unmoved piece.
• in general, the order of development in the opening: first develop your minor pieces, then the rooks, and finally, the queen.
• if you pull your queen out too early, she may get in trouble because your opponent can attack her and profit from the attack.
• beware of a doubled pawn -- it could be a weakness.

The basics include things like basic skills or techniques, basic strategies. Often, there are exceptions to any of the basics. That's one reason they are so difficult to master,
because it takes a tremendous amount of work, time, and (painful) experience to learn when something works, and when it fails miserably.

[PeterPeter]

What is the difference between a Go-dot, and a Go proverb?

[Polama]

First off, I really like the analogy.

Going forward, Jane will have a much better chance to advance to 2-dan or higher.
Her basics are solid 1-dan. She has few bad habits. She has a good foundation.
She has sufficient Go-dots to move forward.

Tom lacks Go-dots. When he faces other 1-dans or 2-dans who are similar to Jane,
who have done their work, who have solid basics and fewer bad habits,
Tom will lose to them more often than not.

Compared to people like Jane, Tom is missing a tremendous amount of Go-dots.
If Tom is "stuck" at "1 dan," this is a big component.
To get past this Go level barrier, Tom must go back to study all the basics
he missed or neglected over the years. He must go back to pick up many of the missing Go-dots.

I wonder about this claim. My instincts are the opposite, that Jane was described as having a better study regimen, but if Tom decides to focus on improving seriously, he'll find it easier to. Going from, say, 10kyu joseki to 8kyu joseki seems easier than 1d to 2d. That is, Jane will have to increase all of her skills a dan level, while Tom merely has to double back and pick up some easier kyu lessons he missed.

Or in the analogy, Jane collected 80% of the go-dots each level and now needs to collect 80% of the difficult 2 dan go-dots. Tom ran ahead, so he already has some 2nd, 3rd and 4th dan dots. He needs more, but he can go back to the 5kyu level and pick them up with comparative ease.

[EdLee]

What is the difference between a Go-dot, and a Go proverb?

Hi Peter,

Examples of Go-dots:

• Learn to see ataris. ( Understanding of ataris. )
  By the way, this is not digital, not either-or. It's a continuum.
  We have documented evidence that even a 9p pro can sometimes miss a self-atari.
• Understanding of liberties. Also a continuum, and related to the above.
• Understanding of throw-ins. Also a continuum, and related to the above.
• Understanding of vital points. For example, the vital point of the "rabbit five" shape.
  Also a continuum, and related to the above.

Examples of Go proverbs:

• Stay away from thickness. ( This is a huge trap, like most or all Go proverbs. )
• Don't peep where you can cut. ( Also a big trap. )
• There's death in the hane. ( Another trap. )

[Knotwilg]

Sorry removed post.

[EdLee]

First off, I really like the analogy.

Thanks.

My instincts are the opposite

while Tom merely has to double back and pick up some easier kyu lessons he missed.
but he can go back <snip> and pick them up with comparative ease.

( my emphases. )
This is an interesting portion of the discussion. I've seen cases --
not isolated cases, but numerous cases over the course of over 20 years --
where removing bad habits turned out to be much more difficult
than never having developed them to begin with.
The evidence I've seen came from Go as well as other fields.

It's a big assumption that it's "easy" to go back and pick up missed Go-dots,
or to undo "damage."

A related, though not identical situation, is discussed in the classic,
The Mythical Man Month. There, Mr. Brooks talks about software development,
and one of his observations or theses is it is much more costly
to correct mistakes late in the development cycle than much earlier on.
I understand this is different from Go learning.

The analogy is not "bullet"-proof (pun intended ).
We need to look at the specific cases. For example, if Tom has picked up so many bad habits that
it takes THREE years or more for a good teacher to remove them, then during that time,
he may remain "stuck" at his rating, while Jane can advance. It becomes too hypothetical --
now we need to look at real-world, statistical data for evidence.

[EdLee]

Also potentially interesting, to me at least, is a premise that "some go-dots, either individually or in combination, are a pre-requisite of other go-dots".

Hi topazg, yes, very much so.

These inter-dependencies are not modeled in the simple
Go-Man analogy. They can be added, of course, but I'm not focusing
on the exact mechanics and nuances of the imaginary Pac-Man variant,
but on helping more people understand some of the most often
asked and discussed areas of Go, on servers and forums.

The irony -- maybe it's not the right word -- is that Go itself
is very visual, and I'm still trying hard to come up
with other, visual analogies to help understand
some aspects of Go, and of understanding itself.

[EdLee]

So Polama, topazg, ( and others, of course )

Here are two more analogies I'm working on.
They are much less developed and much less "field tested" as Go-Man.
Mainly because they are much more recent developments.
Go-Man has been in my head for over a year now, I think,
maybe even longer. That's one problem of not writing down every single
new idea that came along, with its inception date.

This one has to do with all the sand on a giant beach, building
a big, elaborate multi-level sand castle, and having to travel from miles
away, every day, and having the capacity to carry exactly one small spoonful of
sand every day from the beach to the construction site of the sand castle.

Naturally, in this story, the sand particles are the equivalent of
the Go-dots in Go-Man. And the daily transport of only one small spoonful of
sand symbolizes the tiny morsels of Go knowledge from study every day.

It seems to me there's a lot of good stuff here. Many nice imageries.
The importance of laying a good, solid ground-level foundation. The very slow,
tedious nature of carrying a few specks of sand every day. The precarious
conditions: so easy to drop the sand or to lose it to just a sneeze.

The Frog of the Well story.

Back to First Principles:

• The turtle has an understanding of the ocean. There's a particular configuration, or configurations, of the turtle's neural system that formed
  as a result of the turtle's direct personal experience with the ocean.
• The frog lacks this understanding of the ocean.
• Is there any way for the frog to gain an understanding of the ocean ?
• Clearly, this has strong ties with the Monk-River story in post 3.

Sorry removed post.

Hmm, it seemed an interesting thesis,
so here's a try to reproduce it, as close to verbatim as possible:

Is this an attempt to turn Go back to some esoteric dark age? Few things are more opaque than the talk of understanding in this thread.

( Post 69. Time stamp: Thursday Oct 9, 2014. 3:25 pm PDT. )

[Knotwilg]

I request the right to remove Posts if immediately after creation i am unhappy with them, both technically and morally.

[topazg]

I request the right to remove Posts if immediately after creation i am unhappy with them, both technically and morally.

You do, and you did

And Ed has the right to quote what you had written and respond in some form or another too. The fact you've expressed unhappiness with what you'd written shows that you don't necessarily endorse the content or tone as you had at the point of original posting, but you did still write it and leave it there for long enough to be heard and thought about by someone else.

[Knotwilg]

I left it there for a few moments maybe then thought the better of it. I don't think it shows courtesy to then expose it, without comment so actually undoing my action.

The actual comment was my first thought. My second thought is "live and let live". I'll leave it here.