Understanding

[EdLee]

Not having had a good teacher for a "non-trivial" amount of time is also not evidence
that people don't see their reading skills as poor.
It is rather an indication that they either
a) don't want to invest that kind of money in improving their go skills or
b) they are not convinced that a good teacher is necessary.

Yes, in many cases either (a) or (b) is true, or both are true --
I agree with you there, but that's not my point.
The issue is the binary-ness of the situation: either someone "sees" it, or they "don't". No in-between.
That's not the reality.

In reality, like so many things in this thread, it's a huge continuum.
It's a huge continuum of "knowing how much or how little we know and don't know."
Somewhere online there are a few Venn diagrams depicting our "knowledge" (I cannot find them ATM) --

• 1 How much we think we know.
• 2 How much we think we don't know.
• 3 How much we actually know.
• 4 How much we actually don't know.
• 5 How much we don't even know we don't know.

For most people, most amateurs, who have never had a good teacher for a non-trivial amount of time,
they have some understanding of (1) and (2).
For example, they may have some ideas about
their basics level, and their fighting level -- at (1) and (2).

This can change, sometimes greatly, if we meet a good teacher.
We find out, perhaps not at first, but after some "non-trivial" amount of time with the teacher --
Oh, we didn't realize previously we missed (3) through (5).

We thought we know very little about something (say, basics and fighting),
then, after some time (say 1 to 3 years), we realize --
Oh No! We had no idea how little we know,
and we had no idea there's so much more we didn't even know we didn't know.
This level of understanding is not so easy without a good teacher.
It does happen -- some people do figure this out all by themselves --
but those cases are not the majority, I believe.

[Uberdude]

Whether someone asks a specific or a generic question, answering "the basics" or "the fundamentals, it's huge" or "that", is not helpful. Such answers are either telling a person that there is something you know and they don't without telling them what it is, or being mystical about Go for whatever reason.

Also saying "basics/fundamentals" can be rather demeaning on condescending: it's not intermediate or advanced stuff you fail at, but basic stuff: you're such a noob! What are the basics? Anything you don't know that I do and think you should know? Do they change on the rank of the reviewer and/or player? "You need to work on your intermediate level Go techniques" might not have the same ring as "You need to work on your basics" but that doesn't make it wrong.

[Bill Spight]

Whether someone asks a specific or a generic question, answering "the basics" or "the fundamentals, it's huge" or "that", is not helpful. Such answers are either telling a person that there is something you know and they don't without telling them what it is, or being mystical about Go for whatever reason.

Also saying "basics/fundamentals" can be rather demeaning on condescending: it's not intermediate or advanced stuff you fail at, but basic stuff: you're such a noob! What are the basics? Anything you don't know that I do and think you should know? Do they change on the rank of the reviewer and/or player? "You need to work on your intermediate level Go techniques" might not have the same ring as "You need to work on your basics" but that doesn't make it wrong.

First, I do not think that Ed is adopting a superior attitude. That does not fit with what I have observed of him here (which is the only place I know him from). Second, his first response to Tami which brought up the question of the basics ( viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10884&p=174083#p174083 ) makes a good point. To paraphrase it, when an amateur is frustrated (puzzled, confused) about a certain kind of situation, the problem often lies elsewhere, in some gap in basic knowledge or technique. Nearly all amateurs have such gaps. Take care of the basics and the puzzling situations disappear. (To be replaced by other puzzling situations, OC. ) Now, without a good teacher, the amateur is somewhat at a loss, because she or he does not know what to work on to alleviate the perceived problem. That is one reason why I advise people to study everything. And, I suppose, why Ed focuses on the basics.

When I was a kid I bought a book by Red Auerbach, legendary basketball coach. I was surprised to find out that, even with championship teams, Auerbach drilled his players on the basics. To stress the basics is not demeaning.

When I first discovered go literature the English literature was almost non-existent. But I easily found Takagawa's Go Reader (5 vols.), Sakata's Killer of Go series (6 vols.), and a Nihon Kiin series of Basic {fill in the blank}, all in Japanese. Not that I still did not have some basic gaps, but they gave a pretty well rounded introduction. This morning I made a quick survey of current English go literature on SL. It is wonderfully vast. At the same time, I don't think it would be all that easy to come up with 5 - 10 books that pretty well cover the basics. {shrug} Until after you have read the books, OC.

[Knotwilg]

To stress the basics is not demeaning.

Oh but I wholeheartedly agree on that! What I wanted to say is that it is even less helpful to be mystical about it than to not mention them at all. This is why I continue to highlight Minue's "Haengma tutorial for beginners": this was the first time I really felt someone explained the fundamentals and made me understand why they were fundamental.

As much as I hate analogies for their obscuring effect, I must harvest from my recent immersion in table tennis. Here the basics are: grip, bat angle, swing, body position & footwork, in short, all joints of the body cooperating in the play. As an aspiring player you get caught up in spin, pivoting, disguised serve, 3rd ball attack, in short, winning tactics ... Every so often you hit a plateau or get into a slump and the best thing to do then is to get back to the basics.

I won't dwell on table tennis but the call for basics is very true there as well. It's however imperative that the basics are known: how to grip the bat, how to tilt it, how to swing your arms, keep your body and feet, all this for the four basic strokes and how to return to a ready stance. After a while you know this and can rework it on your own. First, someone needs to explain it, because figuring it out on your own will be time consuming and you'll have developed bad habits before you got round to do so.

The same is true in Go, although it seems harder to discern the basics. I think Minue did a tremendous job there.

[snorri]

The whole godots analogy is interesting, but one thing I think it doesn't surface sufficiently is the difference between knowledge and conditioning. When an SDK misses an important atari due to a lack of attention, we don't say: ah, let me explain this basic you must be ignorant of because you ignored it. It's called atari, and it happens when...

Such a criticism would be ridiculous. And yet, there is something there that is pretty important.

It's possible to pick up a lot of knowledge that isn't very useful (yet) because it is not crystallized. It's there, somewhere in the cobwebs of our minds, but it's awkward to access and not automatic or integrated. The only way to integrate it through thoughtful practice and repetition. But as the saying goes, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.

The stronger player doesn't miss fewer ataris because of a deeper understanding of atari. It's more likely that the reason is that the stronger player has more experience looking at and playing many, many, positions where liberties matter. Their better habits of shape help them avoid shortages of liberties in the first place, and their conditioning helps them trust their sense of shape more.

For fighting, we have a problem pedagogically, because, as Ed mentions so much depends on the specifics of the position. Thus it is harder to drill (i.e., condition) correct play...sometimes the bamboo joint is a good shape here, except well, when it's not, so you don't want to over-condition making bamboo joints. So where are the good forms to use to condition fighting skill? Maybe the best is from pro games. But then we have this infuriating problem that all pro games and fights are different. This is hard. But no one said it was easy...

Maybe godots is okay. But what really happens is that you have to eat the same dot dozens (if not thousands) of times before you can digest it. The first few times you try to eat it, you just spit it up...

[Uberdude]

Whether someone asks a specific or a generic question, answering "the basics" or "the fundamentals, it's huge" or "that", is not helpful. Such answers are either telling a person that there is something you know and they don't without telling them what it is, or being mystical about Go for whatever reason.

Also saying "basics/fundamentals" can be rather demeaning on condescending: it's not intermediate or advanced stuff you fail at, but basic stuff: you're such a noob! What are the basics? Anything you don't know that I do and think you should know? Do they change on the rank of the reviewer and/or player? "You need to work on your intermediate level Go techniques" might not have the same ring as "You need to work on your basics" but that doesn't make it wrong.

First, I do not think that Ed is adopting a superior attitude. That does not fit with what I have observed of him here (which is the only place I know him from). Second, his first response to Tami which brought up the question of the basics ( http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 83#p174083 ) makes a good point. To paraphrase it, when an amateur is frustrated (puzzled, confused) about a certain kind of situation, the problem often lies elsewhere, in some gap in basic knowledge or technique. Nearly all amateurs have such gaps. Take care of the basics and the puzzling situations disappear. (To be replaced by other puzzling situations, OC. ) Now, without a good teacher, the amateur is somewhat at a loss, because she or he does not know what to work on to alleviate the perceived problem. That is one reason why I advise people to study everything. And, I suppose, why Ed focuses on the basics.

I'm not saying Ed means to be condescending, but it could come across that way. Also maybe he calls things basics which I don't consider basics. For example is a snapback basics? Even though I've seen loads of them I still think they are pretty cool and clever and am not sure I would classify them as basics. Maybe everyone else would. On the other hand something like "extend to make a base" I would call a basic idea, though of course the exact place to extend, when and how is far from basic. His favourite shape of the ripped keima I would also call a basic, and yes this comes up a lot in kyu reviews here so I understand focusing on it, but also one cannot blindly apply the ripped keima detector or else it will stop you playing good moves, it is not basic/simple to see when it is ok to allow. The [sl=BasicInstinct]basic instincts[/sl] like blocking a push I would consider prototypical basics, but there can be multiple moves that are all "basics" (e.g. hane or extend) and choosing which one is best is far from basic so it's not useful to just say "learn basics" when they do the wrong one.

The whole godots analogy is interesting, but one thing I think it doesn't surface sufficiently is the difference between knowledge and conditioning. When an SDK misses an important atari due to a lack of attention, we don't say: ah, let me explain this basic you must be ignorant of because you ignored it. It's called atari, and it happens when...

A good point. Yesterday in a cafe game (I wasn't paying much attention in an even game against a 3-4 stones weaker player) I (white) tenukid because I didn't see the following tesuji (which includes a snapback) to ko connect (which meant a big group came back from the dead):

$$B
$$ . . . O . X . . .
$$ . . . O . X . . .
$$ . . . . . X X . .
$$ O O O O . O X . X
$$ X X O X . O X X .
$$ . . X . 1 . O . X
$$ -----------------

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ . . . O . X . . .
$$ . . . O . X . . .
$$ . . . . . X X . .
$$ O O O O . O X . X
$$ X X O X . O X X .
$$ . . X . 1 . O . X
$$ -----------------[/go]

It's not something I spot at a glance, though if I read I can find it. Probably if I did more tsumego with kosumi tesujis I would spot it at a glance. Is this "basics"? I would say no. Maybe a pro would say yes: it's "basics" for him.

[xed_over]

while I agree with Bill that Ed is not intending to be condescending, I agree with Uberdude and Knotwilg that mentioning "the basics/fundamentals" without defining what those are exactly, does not come across as being very helpful -- and can feel quite condescending.

but, then maybe the student needs to just "suck it up", and not let his feelings get hurt so easily. Keep practicing and learn to ask the right questions. Maybe we're also doing the student a misservice by making the teacher worry about having to walk on eggshells with his teaching.

there's a balance in there somewhere. not sure where it is exactly.

[daal]

Discussing the quality of Ed's teaching misses the point of this thread. The question is not how well Ed gets his ideas across, but rather what those ideas are.

His main point in my opinion, is that there is a general flaw in the approach many of us have to improving at go. Instead of taking it seriously, and building solid skills from the ground up, as we would if we were planning to excel in some other field, such as playing the piano, we jump to trying to learn high level skills before having an adequate command of the basics. Similar to a child taking algebra who does not have a good command of the multiplication tables, one's ability to progress will be impaired.

Telling someone to learn the basics when they have a specific question may not be helpful, but in the context of this thread, the point is that questions about high level concepts are misplaced if the prerequisites have not been met. For example, the question about the best joseki to play in a certain situation is not the most important question to ask if one fails to count liberties while playing out the joseki.

[Knotwilg]

For example, the question about the best joseki to play in a certain situation is not the most important question to ask if one fails to count liberties while playing out the joseki.

If that is the gist of this thread then we're fighting the same battle. I'll rest here.

[daal]

As much as I hate analogies for their obscuring effect, I must harvest from my recent immersion in table tennis.

Analogies are always a sign of running out of arguments

Analogies have their place. Their purpose is express a concept in terms that may be more readily understood.

[Knotwilg]

Disagree, analogies borrow a truth from another context to pretend a similar degree of truth in a more contested context, without proving that the transfer preserves all necesary attributes of the comparison.

When I talked about table tennis - reluctantly - it is a field which I currently concentrate on and learn from conceptually. However, I am fully aware its concepts cannot be transposed to the field of Go just like that.

For example I could use "young kids (should) start on small fields with small goals in football" to advocate that "beginners should start playig go on small boards". But football is a physical sport and young kids are physically small, so that overall size reduction may be a good measure in football. It is not proven that beginners have smaller sized brains which thrive more on small boards. I should use go arguments, not football arguments.

Leaving the domain in which the discussion resides, abstracts out aspects of the domain which are often vital for the truthfulness of the proposition. Analogies are a rethorical (de)vice: because you can't really argue about the analogon, when well chosen, you're left to disprove the conservation of all aspects in the transfer. Which can be fun, I admit

[daal]

For example I could use "young kids (should) start on small fields with small goals in football" to advocate that "beginners should start playig go on small boards". But football is a physical sport and young kids are physically small, so that overall size reduction may be a good measure in football. It is not proven that beginners have smaller sized brains which thrive more on small boards. I should use go arguments, not football arguments.

That's just a bad analogy Your table-tennis analogy however was not. This was a good analogy, because it reinforced the point that in a skill-based system, when difficulties arise, it is common and valid advice to revisit basic skills. This rhetorical device may be effective when despite previous arguments specifically concerning how to improve at go, some readers might still follow the misconception that the best way to improve is to learn more and better high-level techniques (disguised serve, etc. ). The truthfulness of this analogy is based on the idea that there is an essential similarity between two skill-based systems, one that a go-centric person may not have recognized. This does not sacrifice truthfulness - no one thinks that go and ping-pong are the same in all aspects. What it does is offer a different perspective. In this thread, Ed has proposed an analogy of "go-dots" as a tool to get a handle on a difficult concept: understanding go. Examining the ways in which the analogy works or fails is useful for clarifying what we think understanding go means.

[EdLee]

But what really happens is that you have to eat the same dot dozens (if not thousands) of times before you can digest it. The first few times you try to eat it, you just spit it up...

Hi snorri, that's a nice idea.

Different people also have different rates of digesting;
for example, some children can digest faster than some adults.

I'm still working on an analogy for bad habits.

Something like this: some of the go-dots are good; some bad (bad-dots, or lemons. )
But they look very similar, especially to some beginners.
Over time, if we don't have good guidance, we've collected
many of these lemons. We grab one from our backpack, load it to our stun-gun,
and it's a dud. We need guidance to differentiate the good-dots from the
lemons. This takes time. And even with guidance, some people
will learn more quickly to tell them apart. Others will need more time
to slowly purge the lemons from their inventory, one by one.

And of course, the sooner we have guidance after we've started Go-Man,
the sooner we learn to distinguish them, so we keep more good-dots, and
discard more lemons, resulting in fewer lemons in our backpack,
which in turn means we can advance to higher levels faster.

He needs more, but he can go back to the 5kyu level and pick them up with comparative ease.

It takes work to digest the good-dots and to remove the lemons.
This may help visualize why it may not be so "simple and easy" to go back.
Because we are also carrying lots of lemons in our backpack,
unbeknownst to us when we first picked them up. Now, it takes more time
and effort to fish them out and unload them.

My anecdotal evidence for bad habits, and for how difficult it is to get rid of
them, comes from experience in various fields. Including, the literal weeds --
the vegetation, which is where I noticed the similarities between weeds and
bad habits: without an active external force, weeds and bad habits just grow
and grow; and the longer we've had them, the deeper their roots, and it's
really a ton of work to remove them -- they are a real pain.

The backpack analogy has another function: to help understand
why game reviews are important -- but that's for another post.

[Bill Spight]

Maybe godots is okay. But what really happens is that you have to eat the same dot dozens (if not thousands) of times before you can digest it. The first few times you try to eat it, you just spit it up...

Well, dots dot.

[Bill Spight]

Also maybe he calls things basics which I don't consider basics. For example is a snapback basics? Even though I've seen loads of them I still think they are pretty cool and clever and am not sure I would classify them as basics. Maybe everyone else would. On the other hand something like "extend to make a base" I would call a basic idea, though of course the exact place to extend, when and how is far from basic. His favourite shape of the ripped keima I would also call a basic, and yes this comes up a lot in kyu reviews here so I understand focusing on it, but also one cannot blindly apply the ripped keima detector or else it will stop you playing good moves, it is not basic/simple to see when it is ok to allow. The [sl=BasicInstinct]basic instincts[/sl] like blocking a push I would consider prototypical basics, but there can be multiple moves that are all "basics" (e.g. hane or extend) and choosing which one is best is far from basic so it's not useful to just say "learn basics" when they do the wrong one.

Good point. What is basic is not clearly delineated from what is more advanced. I have mentioned the books that I studies that covered the basics pretty well. But a few years ago I got a good deal online for two go books, one of which I wanted, and one of which was a go primer from the mid 20th century. The primer introduced the idea of the Big Eye, which none of the books I had studied did. I would say that it is a basic concept in go.

(;GM[1]FF[4]SZ[19]CA[ISO8859-1]AP[GOWrite:2.3.46]ST[2]PM[2]PB[ ]GN[ ]FG[259:]PW[ ]
;B[cd]
;W[ec]
;B[hc]
;W[hd]
;B[id]
;W[gc]
;B[ic]
)

In this (partial) joseki, I would consider all of the plays except maybe the attachment to be basics. But I never learned the counter hane as a basic play, nor the solid connection in response to the counter hane. Even though they are common and basic responses.

Gotta run. More later.