Rank obsession

[jts]

So if your question is "Would you enjoy spending lots of time studying, and never learning anything?" I would answer, "No, that would be ridiculously frustrating." But that can't get you to the conclusion that people don't enjoy learning!

Well, let me try to explain, since what you say is not really what I mean. First, some example questions:

1. Would you enjoy studying a joseki if you knew you will never have a chance to play it or anything like it?

It's a little unclear what you have in mind (by definition, joseki occur regularly), but I think I can definitely say yes. One of the things that I enjoy most in studying joseki is understanding the inferior sequences that make the main line a joseki. That's the moment at which I "get" the joseki. If you'll let me use intellect as a verb, it's frequently the lines which I expect to never see in a game that allow me to intellect the joseki. And that's enjoyable.

Two more related points:

I find the device of "would you enjoy learning about X if X were impossible?" to be sophistical, because I think that in general you can't learn about things that are impossible. To learn about something either you have to interact with it, or the person you're learning from has to have interacted with it, or possibly both. Otherwise trying to think about this impossible, inconceivable, non-existent thing would be gears whirring in thin air, their teeth failing to connect.

On a tangent; there are certain tesuji and myoushu which I suspect I will never, ever be strong enough to spot in a game. Nonetheless, I think I may eventually be strong enough to understand them somewhat, and when I am, I suspect I'll enjoy studying them. And I think a lot of other players feel the same way.

2. More extreme - would you enjoy studying Go if you knew nobody else in the whole world will ever play it?

I would still enjoy it, but not as much - in the same way I enjoy logic puzzles in general.

Another note:

My answer is connected to the point I made above about the nature of learning. Could I enjoy Go if no one else played Go? Could I enjoy reading if I was the only literate person who had ever existed? Could I enjoy skiing if I were the only person to ever ski? Of course, but only to a very limited extent. If there were no other Go players, I never would have advanced beyond a very primitive understanding of the game. If there were no other literate people, the great works of literature would never have been written. If I were the only skier, I would probably have stopped at a nice, easy wedge over a nearly-flat surface. I'm mixing together several different principles here, but what binds them is that it's hard to learn from yourself, and the less you learn, the less enjoyable an ability is.

3. Or maybe - would you enjoy studying Go if you knew that you will never win a single game?

Yes. That sounds amazing. Like if I got the collective membership of the Nihon Kiin as my personal Go tutors, on the condition that we only ever played even games? Sign me up.

Yet another note:

As with many of your examples, Bantari, this one sounds a little weird, and it's hard to know with certainty how I would feel. But I have some experience with this - I can't remember the last time that I enjoyed winning a squash match. All of my regular squash partners are much, much better than I am... but I can put up enough of a fight that it's really fun. I can easily imagine I'll lose every match I play this year, but I'll still enjoy playing, or even just practicing by myself.

4. For your own example - Would you enjoy learning a formula if you knew it does not come up on the test and you will never use it?

Yes, of course. This happens all the time, actually - I spend more time studying things that are intellectually stimulating than what I actually expect to show up on a test. This may be a personality quirk of mine, but I think it's quite common, as quirks go, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's especially common among Go players.

My point is that for most people, learning is the means to achieve something, not the goal in itself.

Again, it depends who and what. Some people just dislike learning, period. Other people really enjoy it. With most (all?) activities, there are people who just want to know enough to get by, and people who become experts for the sake of expertise. Learning to drive - that's a good candidate for "means to an end". Driving is good for getting places, so learning to drive is good for getting places. Learning to play Go is good for X because playing Go is good for X... can you fill in the blank?

For most Go players, learning and studying is are the means to beating other people.

Ah, okay, X={beating people}. I think I mentioned why this is unlikely in my previous post. It's grossly inconsistent with the way Go players actually behave, what they actually want, what they avoid...

They think 'if I study hard and learn enough, i can beat him!' And so they learn and they study, and at the end they hope for the payoff - beating 'him'. If there was no 'him', most of us would not spend much time learning, we would be much weaker, and we would mostly play fun games rather than sweating over Go books.

Are you projecting? I would love to hear the story of the man who inspired you to study Go, and the final showdown in which the padawan became the master. But there has never been a specific person that I've wanted to beat at Go. I fear that here our personal experiences are giving us hugely different views of the psychology of the average Go player.

Self-indulgent reasons to think my personal experience is more widespread:

I think we all know that there's a sort of social hierarchy of victory. If there's a "him" who beats you at something, you don't have to beat him at the same activity to "beat" him. Like if he beats you for the last slot on the math team, you could sleep with his girlfriend. Bam, headshot! So we are looking at this population of people: (i) They play go games with other people. (ii) They lose to "him," and take the loss personally; "Vengeance shall be mine!" (iii) They decide that the best way to triumph over the person in question is... to beat him at Go. (iv) Then we need to integrate this population of people over the probability that their desire for vengeance, and certainty that Go is the correct arena for vengeance, are strong enough to motivate a certain number of hours of studying. (And remember - these people don't enjoy studying. It makes them sweat. I suggest they get iPads. I've been sweating much less during Go-study since I stopped flipping pages.)

Okay, so how many cumulative hours of Go-study do we have, after considering (i)-(iv)? What percentage of total hours of Go-study is it? I would guess very little, just because the chain of necessary events is so outlandish.

So, what I was trying to say, is that I think that most of us do not really enjoy learning for the sake of learning itself.
All we want is to 'beat the sucker that clobbered us in that game last time' or some variation thereof.
And learning is the price we are willing to pay to get there.
And there is nothing really wrong with that.

I think I understand the conclusion you want to draw just fine. It was your initial argument for it that was too cute for me.

But then we go all noble and PC and say 'we enjoy learning'.
Because saying 'we are mad at that guy and want to teach him a lesson and beat him good' would be somehow... cheap.

That's the second time you've called enjoying learning (or claiming to) "PC". What exactly does "PC" mean to you?

I really find it difficult to believe that you've ever studied Go in order to "beat him good".

Present company excluded, of course.

I'm not at all immune to desire for victory, revenge, triumph, honor, the respect of others... no need to exclude me, at least. But to think that these are the only principles that motivate anyone to do anything is flat-out wrong; and I find it unlikely that these (and especially the first three) motivate people to study Go, in particular.

[Dusk Eagle]

While I normally have a secondary reason for learning any one specific thing, I definitely do think I love to learn in its own right. A couple of years ago, I was looking for a game I could devote my mind to, as I had lost interest in gaming a few months earlier (after being disillusioned by SSBB, but that's another story). I wanted to satisfy my urge to compete, but also my urge to learn. I really do think learning is one of the most enjoyable things I do. You seem to be drawing some distinction between learning and improving, but I don't understand how that can occur in a thinking-based activity unless you simultaneously forget old knowledge as you learn new things, which seems unlikely in a normal human brain. Would I enjoy learning without ever improving? I would say I'm not really learning in such a case.

So, like I said in an earlier post, part of why I enjoy learning is to be stronger/better than others (in that subject field), fulfilling my competitive urges. However, were I not studying Go, or even competing at all, I would definitely have to find something else to fill my brain, as I don't like going more than a day or two without trying to learn things, and University is about to be over for the summer.

[entropi]

Imagine the following situation:

Short after making your move (which was a normal move not an obvious mistake or so), you notice a nice tesuji for your opponent. If he finds it, you will lose a game where you thought you were ahead.
But your opponent misses the tesuji (suppose you are sure that he has really missed it, so no "found an even bigger move" kind of thing...)

Now, what are your feelings?
a- You are happy that your opponent missed it -> immediately fix the weakness in your shape
b- You get sad because the "true" game is somehow spoiled and you will eventually win a game you don't deserve
c- You still get upset with yourself (even though you are going to win) because you failed to see the tesuji beforehand


I think the honest answer to this question determines your attitude towards the game, in respect to this topic.

[Dusk Eagle]

'a' and 'c' for me.

Anyway, I was thinking about learning without improving more, and I was thinking about how learning Go history, for example, does not help your rank improve. I guess that provides a counterpoint to where I said "learning without improving is not really learning." Of course, you could always place that type of knowledge in a separate category than learning things about how to play the game itself...

Anyway, Bantari, doesn't the fact that many people enjoy learning Go history, for example, even though it rarely will improve your play, show that people do enjoy learning without any other benefit attached?

[topazg]

More interesting stuff in this thread too.

Kirby, I find it interesting that you see the rank as the benchmark that compares you against others and enables you to gauge where your winning chances are about even, which helps in your goal of achieving the objective of winning the game.

Maybe I'm odd, but my objective is almost entirely separate from the game result, which matters little to me. I like getting stronger, because the more strong I become the more I appreciate good moves, sequences and ideas in the game, regardless of whether I win or lose. Given the choice, I would like to play every game against a professional in an even game, despite 0% winning chances. Why? Because I get to admire and respect their skill by being on the receiving end, and I suspect I would learn and improve by just playing.

If I couldn't get any stronger, I wouldn't care about the game, even if I could beat everyone on the planet. It just wouldn't be fun for me. The fact with a lifetime's journey I'll never get there is unbelievably endearing to me. Am I the only one that just likes playing Go because it's elegant, deep, always just out of reach..?

[mic]

Am I the only one that just likes playing Go because it's elegant, deep, always just out of reach..?

No . I especially like Go because of its depth and being always out of reach. Altough I'm not sure what will happen to my interest if I'll ever reach some kind of plateau that I possibly can't overcome (wasn't there a thread about this?). Of course I can still appreciate good moves, but knowing that you'll never have the correct understanding / the ideas to play them by yourself could be quite tough.

I hope that this plateau -- if it exists -- is still far, far away.

Michael

[Kirby]

More interesting stuff in this thread too.

Kirby, I find it interesting that you see the rank as the benchmark that compares you against others and enables you to gauge where your winning chances are about even, which helps in your goal of achieving the objective of winning the game.

...Am I the only one that just likes playing Go because it's elegant, deep, always just out of reach..?

Maybe the basis for my feeling is that it is difficult for me to really feel that I have become stronger if it is not reflected in being able to win more. I think that I feel that way in other areas of life, too.

I'm a software engineer in real life. It's hard for me to measure my "strength" as a software engineer unless I can see specific accomplishments that help my self-esteem. If I were very skilled as a software engineer, but it never amounted to anything that I could measure, it's hard for me to have any confidence in my ability at all. I could think to myself that I am awesome, but some part of me would say that I'm kidding myself.

In go, I can study and try to learn new things. If that effort is not projected into something that I can measure or feel, then I must admit that I have doubt that I'm really learning.

---
I will say that, in addition to winning, I do get some satisfaction from go problems. I feel like I've solved a puzzle, which is a good feeling. I can have that feeling because I feel accomplishment in getting a solution to the puzzle. In some ways, maybe solving a go problem feels like "winning the problem" to me.

If I were to work toward a game that had no solution, or no way to measure if I could win, it'd be hard for me to really tell if I was learning anything, or just... thinking, I guess.

When investigating go, I like to feel that I am improving, and not knowing less. If I do not have any sort of feedback (eg. winning, solving a go problem), it's hard for me to have confidence that I am really learning about go.

[daal]

I definitely don't play go because it's "fun," and if you do I'd like to see your fun-o-meter while you're getting beaten in an even game. I do enjoy the thrill of battle up to a point; namely, up to the point at which I think that I still have a chance of winning. The only reason I play go is because I think it's cool.

[Kirby]

...Would I enjoy learning without ever improving? I would say I'm not really learning in such a case....

Plus one to this thought... I would say that I can relate to this sentiment quite a bit. In addition, I treat winning and/or solving go problems as an indicator of improvement.

If there were another indicator of improvement, I might be satisfied with that as well. But so far I haven't found any. It's hard for me to have much confidence in improvement without a concrete indicator such as a win or being able to solve a go problem.

As a sidenote, I often wonder these days if I have gotten worse at go - probably because I do not experience these indicators as often as I used to... Maybe I'm just in a slump.

[hyperpape]

But when I wish to learn and become stronger, I think about wanting to understand the professional games that I watch.

1. You actually give a pretty intelligent and good reason for wanting to improve - and one that I can wholeheartedly agree with. To understand better and thus enjoy more the games of stronger players. Probably the best reason I have ever heard.

Perhaps. But I also don't study as much as most people on the boards, or play as much, or improve as much. Maybe it's a coincidence, but perhaps really strongly wanting to win and compete is a better route to improvement.

[Bantari]

But when I wish to learn and become stronger, I think about wanting to understand the professional games that I watch.

1. You actually give a pretty intelligent and good reason for wanting to improve - and one that I can wholeheartedly agree with. To understand better and thus enjoy more the games of stronger players. Probably the best reason I have ever heard.

Perhaps. But I also don't study as much as most people on the boards, or play as much, or improve as much. Maybe it's a coincidence, but perhaps really strongly wanting to win and compete is a better route to improvement.

Probably.
I am not trying to say what is a better path.
Primal hunger served humanity pretty well in the past. Greed serves it well right now - it creates riches and success.

All I am speaking for is not hiding behind pretenses.

[Kirby]

All I am speaking for is not hiding behind pretenses.

Hiding behind pretenses is not good, but who is to say who is hiding behind pretenses? I would say that someone honestly admitting that they care about winning and rank is less likely to be hiding behind pretenses than someone that claims to have a more altruistic goal in playing go.

I am not trying to say what is a better path.

1. You actually give a pretty intelligent and good reason for wanting to improve - and one that I can wholeheartedly agree with. To understand better and thus enjoy more the games of stronger players. Probably the best reason I have ever heard.

?

[mayweed]

Isn't the fear of losing one of the greatest roadblocks on the path of improvement?

[voice1]

HI all,
I just have some quick things to say. First off is rank to me means nothing. I have been ~6-4k for about a year now and still enjoy playing Go. I have played game against 1k players, in the past, without handicaps and have won. So is saying I'm 1k accurate? No. Also on the other hand I've played against ~11k players, without handicaps, and have lost. Does that make me 11k? No. Ranks are just an estimate. I enjoy playing whoever whenever. Why? Because no matter the rank attached to the name you never know what will happen. I have learned a lot from higher ranked opponents, likewise lower ranked opponents. Not playing someone because of their rank seems ridiculous to me because you could miss a chance to improve, or help someone else to.

Now that's not to say I don't play mostly close to my rank, but for me that's more of a convenience thing. I find that most players will only play others who are 1-3 ranks away. Why? I think it's because they are convinced that that's where they are most likely to have a challenging game.