First of all, I regret not being able to read Japanese fluently. Must be fun to read Sonoda's book.
John Fairbairn wrote:
On past form you will be looking for a classic, watertight definition in the manner of Aristotle. Like very many areas where we use the human brain as the main tool in a very complex world, go is better suited to Wittgenstein's fuzzy families. There are so many examples in this book that by the time you've looked at them all, you will have created a fuzzy family of your own. It will be a little different from mine and we'll both be different from Sonoda and everybody else, but we'll be able to talk to each other in exactly the same way that we can usefully talk about birds and yet still disagree whether a penguin is a bird.
RobertJasiek wrote:
Very many examples and words with still not more than fuzzy ideas do not help me at all.
May I try to assist you in cutting the Gordian Knot ?
Dear John, I am afraid that "creating a fuzzy family of your own" might be a bit misleading, as far as "FUZZY" is concerned.
Following your comments on Sonoda's book, I have understood that Sonoda wants to direct the reader's view to several important aspects of a given board position.
The game of Go is extremely complex, so Sonoda's approach is offering a lot of example positions that the reader has to work with on his own.
Sonoda's explanations are more or less "FUZZY", just because he is so clever not to torture the reader (explicitely) with HIS "RULES". He seems to know that there is no rule without exception, and that HE is the only one who knows the exceptions of HIS "rules".
Instead, as you have written, Sonoda expects that -- over time and over many examples -- every reader will have developed THEIR OWN family of "rules" for evaluating a given board position.
C-rules, JF-rules, JR-rules, XY-rules, all will be different from the "original" Sonoda-rules, but what is important is that every reader will have understood THEIR rules (and THEIR exceptions) and will be able to apply these. No matter whether any of these rules will be always appropriate (maybe "= right" in Robert's world).
Dear Robert, I am afraid that you will have to read Sonoda's book on your own to eliminate the "fuzzyness" that you feel so sorry about in the moment.
Probably it might not have become clear to you what I wanted to say, so here comes another try.
During my study of shape issues in one-move life-and-death problems, I needed several passes. All of a sudden -- when busy with larger shapes -- I realized that I forgot to mention an important issue with the smaller ones.
And even analysing the shape issues in three-move life-and-death problems had some kind of retroactive affect on the one-move problems.
Sonoda's "fuzzyness" gives the reader the chance to experience a lot of such "flashes of genius".
_________________
The really most difficult Go problem ever:
https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htmIgo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)