Getting past your OK plateau

[Stable]

Actually cdy, I was thinking about trying to change the way I see shapes/the board. I currently see shapes (as the name implies) as objects, like a table, etc. Perhaps it would be more effective to try and get a feel for the board as a path, or landscape. I've been thinking I need to play stronger players more for some time, and about getting weekly lessons when I've finished my thesis.

Also, I was thinking I need to change the way I train techniques in capoeira, but that's definitely off-topic.

[entropi]

Nice article, very interesting reading indeed. But what does it say exactly?
There are no limits but just plateaus, implying you can improve virtually endlessly, if you are never satisfied with your level and think differently.

This smells like "anyone can reach 5 dan if he wants enough". I say a big NO!

People only listen those who managed to do it, and they of course say "you can also do it if you try hard". But where is the proof that "anybody" can do it? There are also millions who tried and failed. It is inspiring and very well written but sorry I don't buy the essence of it.

Or maybe I missed another important message in the article???

[daal]

This smells like "anyone can reach 5 dan if he wants enough". I say a big NO!

What about "anyone can reach 5 dan if he works at it hard enough in the right manner and under optimal conditions?"

[Stable]

The point as I see it entropi is that trying hard is not enough. You have to try hard in an efficient way. That's the point of the plateus (plateux? hehehe) - the author got stuck and discouraged despite hard work, until he was shown a different way of training.
I wonder how much of a highly skilled person's (let's avoid the genius debate) success is due to naturally thinking/training in a more efficient way, and how much is due to being shown the right way by an enlightened teacher early on and taking the lesson well.

I still doubt that "anyone" can make it to the higher levels of skill in any given activity, but maybe that's not the point. Probably (certainly?) lots, or at least more people can do better than they otherwise would, if they are given training in how to train more effieciently. No?

[cdybeijing]

Nice article, very interesting reading indeed. But what does it say exactly?
There are no limits but just plateaus, implying you can improve virtually endlessly, if you are never satisfied with your level and think differently.

This smells like "anyone can reach 5 dan if he wants enough". I say a big NO!

People only listen those who managed to do it, and they of course say "you can also do it if you try hard". But where is the proof that "anybody" can do it? There are also millions who tried and failed. It is inspiring and very well written but sorry I don't buy the essence of it.

Or maybe I missed another important message in the article???

To go with your example, my interpretation of the article is that if everyone in your go playing environment is 5 dan or stronger and you play go against them for a long enough period of time (a couple or several years, let's say) then yes, everyone can and should reach a level of 5 dan.

I believe that is a reasonable proposition assuming the subject still has the requisite mental agility and drive to persist.

Edit: I should not say that this is my interpretation of the article, because that's not accurate. Rather, I meant to say this is a conjecture I find supported by my interpretation of the articles comments about plateaus.

[entropi]

What about "anyone can reach 5 dan if he works at it hard enough in the right manner and under optimal conditions?"

OK, but even for that, where is the proof? Or let's not say proof but where is even the slightest indication that "anyone" can do it? That's exactly what I don't believe.

The point as I see it entropi is that trying hard is not enough. You have to try hard in an efficient way. That's the point of the plateus (plateux? hehehe) - the author got stuck and discouraged despite hard work, until he was shown a different way of training.
I wonder how much of a highly skilled person's (let's avoid the genius debate) success is due to naturally thinking/training in a more efficient way, and how much is due to being shown the right way by an enlightened teacher early on and taking the lesson well.

I still doubt that "anyone" can make it to the higher levels of skill in any given activity, but maybe that's not the point. Probably (certainly?) lots, or at least more people can do better than they otherwise would, if they are given training in how to train more effieciently. No?

Of course with right training everyone would improve, but my point is that this improvement does have its limits. One cannot simply say "if you are stuck at a level, it must be a plateau but not your limit" without proving it. Well, proving such a thing is anyway hard (if possible at all) but I mean if one says something like that, there must be at least an indication or a reason why he thinks this is applicable to anyone. I don't see it in the article, but as said maybe I missed it.

[phrax]

I think its a mistake to take statements like "there are no limits, only plateaus..." so literally (especially quotes coming from a martial arts master). It feels more proverb-ish than meant to be taken as a scientific fact. I think those sorts of statements speak to a required mindset if you want to improve or really excel. In that context, I think there is value to understanding how the elite become elite. And what is more likely, you're at your absolute limit of what you can achieve, or you've just plateaued?

[daniel_the_smith]

Is it possible to for you to learn a single new thing, no matter how small, about go?

Will you ever answer that with a "no"?

If you answer "yes" and "no" respectively--as I think most will--then congratulations, you never need stop improving.

However, since progress is (very likely) measured on a roughly exponential scale, and the speed at which you acquire new go knowledge is likely to be linear (a 2d doesn't magically learn twice as fast as a 1d!), at some point your rank is still likely to stall for a veryyyy long time.

There, see? Everybody is right

[Monadology]

What about "anyone can reach 5 dan if he works at it hard enough in the right manner and under optimal conditions?"

OK, but even for that, where is the proof? Or let's not say proof but where is even the slightest indication that "anyone" can do it? That's exactly what I don't believe.

What about the study cited in which a sample of people were shown 10,000 images and remembered a surprisingly large number of them? This seems to imply that at least our capacity for memory is probably quite a bit higher than we often assume even for most people. I don't think that means that anyone can break world records or become the absolute best, but it's an indicator that probably a lot of the time we're hitting plateaus when we think we're hitting limits.

Either way, though, you're definitely not going to improve if you assume you've hit a limit rather than plateau. The article does provide good reasoning that a lack of progress isn't necessarily sufficient evidence that a limit has been hit.

[Perception]

"Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but "effortful study," which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time. It is interesting to note that time spent playing chess, even in tournaments, appears to contribute less than such study to a player's progress; the main training value of such games is to point up weaknesses for future study.

Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance--for instance, keeping up with one's golf buddies or passing a driver's exam--most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind's box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields. "

"Thus, motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise."

"Simon coined a psychological law of his own, the 10-year rule, which states that it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field."

"The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born."
http://www.duke.edu/~meb26/The%20Expert%20Mind.html

Read the full article, I think it's pretty interesting and it also seems relevant to the current discussion.

[topazg]

I think a lot of this discussion appears to be drawing parallels that are only true if Go was a memory game. If the game was to memorise 100 pro games I'd believe anyone could learn to do it very well. I don't think for a minute that the brain is that easy to train to do any complex task there is.

Do I think most people, in the ideal learning condition, could be the next Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein? No, I'm sorry, I really don't believe this to be the case. To be truly excellent you need lots of innate talent, lots of encouragement, lots of support (including financially), lots of time to devote to it, and a personality / psychology that perseveres no matter what the setback.

You can train some things, and money can buy others. But to be truly exceptional you need all of them, and most people just haven't drawn that lucky straw.

[entropi]

I think a lot of this discussion appears to be drawing parallels that are only true if Go was a memory game. If the game was to memorise 100 pro games I'd believe anyone could learn to do it.

Maybe the importance of reading is overemphasized. According to the cited studies memorizing pro games could be an efficient way to improve. Maybe internalizing shapes by memorizing games is as important as (or maybe even more important) than reading.

Nevertheless, this discussion still does not say much about the plateau/limit issue.

[snorri]

I think a lot of this discussion appears to be drawing parallels that are only true if Go was a memory game. If the game was to memorise 100 pro games I'd believe anyone could learn to do it.

Maybe the importance of reading is overemphasized. According to the cited studies memorizing pro games could be an efficient way to improve. Maybe internalizing shapes by memorizing games is as important as (or maybe even more important) than reading.

Nevertheless, this discussion still does not say much about the plateau/limit issue.

Yeah the article doesn't say to much. I get these points:

Point 1: Most people don't push the limits of their skills. In go, think of the countless online players one encounters who have thousands of games under their belts but are still DDK. It's fair to say that most of them have accepted a plateau.

Point 2: Memorizing cards is really easy compared to go This guy, Joshua, trains for what? A few minutes a day for a year? Then he's U.S. champion at memorizing cards? Pfft. This is not about whether anyone can be 5-dan or even 1-dan. We're talking about a very specialized skill that very few people ever bother to try to improve.

Point 3: The top memorizers have ordinary brains and are, in fact, ordinary in most ways except that they dedicate themselves seriously to training these specific memory skills.

One comment I did find interesting:

More than anything, what differentiates top memorizers from the second tier is that they approach memorization like a science. They develop hypotheses about their limitations; they conduct experiments and track data. “It’s like you’re developing a piece of technology or working on a scientific theory,” the three-time world champ Andi Bell once told me. "You have to analyze what you’re doing."

I think as Go players we can learn from that. I think that most go books and teaching focuses on what is going on the board. We don't think much about what's going on in our heads. For the memorizers, their tasks are so simple that there are very few external techniques available for them, so they have to focus on what's internal. In go, we can be distracted by all the external things we can learn; new josekis, new tesujis, new opening ideas, etc. and lose track of the fact that there are still these core skills that have to be conditioned a lot like an athlete in order to improve. Maybe the biggest advantage these mnemonists have is that they do treat it like a sport.

[hyperpape]

Monadology: if I read the article right, that study concerned ordinary people, without special training or preparation. So it's really just a surprising fact about memory--nothing to do with pushing limits.

Snorri: The article did note that the US record is very slow compared to the rest of the world.

[Monadology]

Monadology: if I read the article right, that study concerned ordinary people, without special training or preparation. So it's really just a surprising fact about memory--nothing to do with pushing limits.

The point is that a lot of people assume they can't remember nearly as much as they actually can, which probably leads them to project limits that aren't actually there. More broadly it indicates that our folk-psychological approaches to our mental capacities "Oh, I just have a horrible memory", "Oh, I'm just no good at math" probably have a lot less to do with the actual limitations our rather sizable homo-sapiens brains have than they do with what we bother or care about applying them to do. That actually does relate to pushing limits inasmuch as the general idea is that limits are the product of an inherent incapacity to perform certain mental tasks. If those limits are generally set much lower than the brain's actual ability, I think it provides pretty good evidence that most of our assumptions about how far we can take our ability to memorize are inaccurate.