Understanding

[snorri]

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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.

is an Agapanthus:



I suppose that requires some explanation. Before I moved to California, I had never seen an Agapanthus. At least, I do not recall having seen any, but probably I'd seen quite a few. Then one day the time came for my wife and I to pick some plants for our yard, and she pointed to some plants on the same street and said those were Agapanthus flowers and I asked if I liked them. I said I did. She told me they didn't flower like that all the time so I'd better like them just with the leaves. I said I still did. We picked some other plant instead, but I was happy to have learned about this new, pretty plant. How unusual. Then a weird thing happened. I started noticing there were Agapanthus plants everywhere. In yards, in parks, on the side of the highway. Everywhere. Now they have some meaning because we had a conversation about them and I know the name. I had just never noticed them before.

One day someone explained to me that the counter-hane was a sabaki move, and one of the most common ones at that. Previously, I'd only been paying attention to crosscuts and attachments in that context. It had ignored the counter-hane because no one had given me the label that that was a sabaki move. Once I cared about it, I began seeing them everywhere.

[daal]

How many amateur high dans (with strong reading skills)
in Korea, China and Japan have had a professional teacher for a "non-trivial" amount of time ?

Interesting question. What is your gut feeling on this ?
If most of them have had a pro or near-pro level teacher for some period of time, what do you think of it ?
If not, what do you think of it ? I'm curious about your feelings on this.

I have pretty much zero first hand knowledge of Asia, but since you asked for my gut feeling, it was first that a significant amount of people in Asian countries probably achieved high dan without the benefit of a teacher, simply because they grew up in a culture where the game was appreciated. Then on second thought, I began to wonder ... if the game is appreciated, it is probably treated with more respect - i.e., parents would be willing to pay for lessons for their kids just as they are here willing to pay for piano lessons. I ended up sending some messages to Asian high dans on KGS, asking them if they had had lessons. The three who responded all said (paraphrasing) "no, not for a long time." In other words, they want to take credit for making it to high dan on their own, but apparently they indeed had had lessons as kids. In other words, someone who presumably knew what they were talking about had taught them the basics.

Edit: another answered: he has had no teacher; he learns by reading go books.
Edit 2: 2 others answered: One has no teacher, but has spent some time with pros and learned from them, the other has a teacher.

So from a sample of 6 high dans, 1 has a teacher, 3 have had a teacher, and 2 have gotten there without a teacher. Two of these players (one without a teacher and one who has had one) live in the West.

[EdLee]

apparently they indeed had had lessons as kids. In other words, someone who presumably knew what they were talking about had taught them the basics.

Hi daal, good that you got some sample points.

My anecdotal evidence and data for China (I dunno about Korea or Japan)
suggest that before the current economic boom (say, pre-1990), many of the
amateur high-dans probably fought their way there mostly by themselves.

In recent years, things may have swifted a bit. First, now some of the top
high-dan amateurs in China are actually ex-pros: that's right, they actually
gave up their pro status because they found other venues, sometimes with
more pay, or, they went into another profession all together. These are ex-pros.
Other top amateurs never made pro, but they went to "insei" schools
(not exactly the same as in Japan, but the closest things in China).

So if we're looking at the current "young" amateur high-dans in China,
most of them have had serious pro training. For years.
Probably there are a few exceptional cases where they
self-trained to reach high-dan, but it's rare.

[Bantari]

Some time ago, Bantari and I started a conversation.
I'll try to find the link and include it here...

What does it mean, to understand something ?

Here's a story I heard ( I'm not sure of its historical accuracy,
but I like the gist of it ):

Back in ancient Japan, a man crosses a bridge
and asks a Zen monk, "How deep is this river?"
The monk promptly throws the man into the river.

Perhaps this episode never actually occurred,
not even in ancient Asia; it's just a made-up story.
Of course, today you're looking at a lawsuit.

But it tries to convey some "understanding"
of what it means to understand something,
the different levels of understanding.

This thread touches on these various levels of understanding.

Hi Ed,

My trip finally winding down, so I will just go through the whole thread post-by-post and make my comments as thought come to mind. I know I am terribly behind on this whole discussion, but I figure it is better to start from the beginning than to try to jump in at the end.

My first thought, about the Zen monk:

The question "How deep is the river" is not a question about understanding but about knowledge - these two are different, so not sure how this relates.

To illustrate - I can "know" many things, for example the speed of light. Do I "understand" it? I doubt it. And this goes for many things.

Back to the monk - I get what he is trying to do when throwing the dude into the river, but it completely misses the point, imho. First of all, as said above, the question was that of knowledge not of understanding. And most importantly, throwing the dude into the water does not convey neither knowledge nor understanding - the most that can be learned or understood from that is that "the river is deeper than I am tall." This means the river can be 30 feet deep, 50 feet deep, 100 feet deep, or whatever. As an answer to a specific question, such answer is very lacking. I would say giving the precise number (30 feet, for example) would be much more illuminating, and possibly lead to much better understanding than the knowledge actually conveyed by the monk.

It honestly seems to me the monk did not know the answer, but did not want to admit it, so he just threw the dude in the river and walked away to cover his own ignorance. Because I don't see how his action can convey any knowledge or understanding above the trivial "the river is deeper than I am tall."

All in all, glancing at some of your later posts, which I will read carefully and comment on, it seems to me that either I misunderstand your purpose or you are unnecessarily mixing these two concepts. To me, they are very distinct. I can clearly tell the difference between "knowing" something and "understanding" something. Most often knowledge is the prerequisite of understanding, but not always. And often you can have knowledge without understanding - this is actually, I would say, a much more common case, examples abound all around us wherever we go.

Right now, I feel that this - the difference between knowledge and understanding - will be one of the points I would like to discuss.

[Bantari]

Here's a crude attempt:

An understanding is a particular state of the neural system (and likely, other parts of the mind-body).

I'm not a trained biologist or neurologist. I guess I'm about 28k at biology and 29k at neurology.
( If someone "understands" what I'm getting at with the above crude attempt, please help me word it better. )

Going back to the Zen monk story:

• (a) Hearing "This river is 30 feet deep" gives rise to some configuration in the neural system of the person's mind-body;
• (b) Getting thrown into the river gives rise to some other configuration of the same system.

Agreed.
But how useful is state (b) with respect to acquiring knowledge or understanding. The most it can demonstrate that "the water is wet and cold" and "the river is deep". What if the dude with the question was an engineer wondering how much timber he has to get to fix a bridge across the river? You need precise depth for that, getting tossed in the water really does not help.

And what if the dude had an iPhone in his pocket? It would have been ruined now! A Zen monk should think about that before trying to force his particular mindset and worldview on others. Its almost like the monk was saying "I know better what you need/want than you, and so I will give you what I tell you that you want, whether you want it or not." Which is very un-Zen-like, I think.

What if the dude could not swim?

A more Zen-like approach would be, I think, for the monk to act with more humility and inquire what is the reason for asking. If the reason was to find out if the river can be crossed without the bridge - the answer might have had a point, although the point could have been made better in other ways. If the question was of fixing the bridge, the answer was missing the point completely. And there can be a multitude of other reasons for asking, which might possibly require different answers.

[Bantari]

Here's another random list of various levels of understandings (out of the continuum), about a particular subject A:

• Don't know anything about A, but fake it, lie about it.⁽¹⁾
• Know about A, but deny it.
• Know something about A, but give out wrong or hurtful information.
• Don't believe A is possible ( Examples: Luke when his X-Wing was stuck in swamp; never heard of Go. )
• Seen A ( Examples: Yoda lifts X-Wing out of swamp; have heard of Go.)
• Know the basic rules ( Example: first 5 minutes after hearing about the basic rules of Go.)
• Still struggle with the fundamentals ( Example: kyu level )
• Very rudimentary knowledge of the fundamentals, stop tripping over oneself (Example: 1-dan).
• Can teach the basic rules to a beginner.
• Can help a beginner reach about 10k.
• Can help a 10k reach 1 dan.
• Can help a 1 dan reach mid-dan.
• Can help a mid-dan reach high-dan.
• Can help a high-dan make pro level.
• Can help someone make pro level, but don't know how to teach kyu people. (This is a very common level, as it turns out. )
• Top level expert but cannot teach a beginner. (Also very common -- teaching level is something else, all together.)
• Can help many people make pro level ( Example: Kitani )
• Can help a pro make top pro level ( Examples: Kitani, Fujisawa. )
• Top genius, only a few per century ( Examples: Go Seigen, Einstein, Feynman, Hawking, etc.)

⁽¹⁾ The first few entries are my modifications based on another article,
a very high level understanding of the martial arts, written by the late Mr. Don Depree.
In that section, he was talking about levels of suffering,
the lowest being "Not suffering but act like it" -- equivalent Chinese understanding: 無病呻吟.

Off of the top of my head, I think that a lot of the "levels" you give above have to do with behavior rather than understanding.

For example: "Know about A, but deny it."
The level of understanding does not change if you deny it or not. You understand at a certain level, and then make a decision of sharing this understanding with others or not, or misleading them or not. But this is just behavioral, and the behavior does not really impact the level of understanding you possess.

To illustrate: I understand the difference between ladder and net as techniques in Go. My level of understanding will not change if I decide to lie about it to you. Nor will it change if I then decide to tell the truth about it to somebody else. My understanding is constant, only my behavior changes.

Other "levels" have to do with other skills as well, not just understanding.

For example: "Can help a 10k reach 1 dan."
Any 1d or above has, by definition, the understanding and knowledge necessary to be 1d - so in theory should be able to teach a 10k to become 1d, he just needs to convey everything he knows. However - there are a lot of other issues involved. Communication skills, teaching skills, and so on... Often you have to actually build a curriculum to present the knowledge in specific order to be successful. A lot of additional skills are involved here. But the presence or lack of such skills does not really impact the inner level of knowledge and understanding, they are pretty much independent.

I think that if you want to talk about understanding, you should restrict yourself to that alone, not mix in a whole slew of other concepts which are more-or-less unrelated, like skills or behaviors. I think the only important concept which can be introduced additionally should be "knowledge" and how it differs or relates to "understanding".

Bottom line:
The way this issues are organized in my mind is that they can be divided into four or more separate categories, the first two being knowledge and understanding. The others being skills and behaviors. And there might be more, of course. I see them all as very distinct, although sometimes influencing each other. But any cross-influence is an exception rather than a rule. If we talk about "understanding", we should isolate it first instead of mixing it in with a whole lot of other stuff.

But I will read more, maybe I am missing a point here... I just went through a few posts, and the thread seems long...

[EdLee]

The question "How deep is the river" is not a question about understanding but about knowledge -
these two are different, so not sure how this relates.

To illustrate - I can "know" many things, for example the speed of light. Do I "understand" it? I doubt it. And this goes for many things.

Hi Bantari,

Welcome back.

This is good, because now I have an idea why you and I could not
communicate in the past: you and I were (and still are) using the same words
to mean different things, resulting in much mis-communication.

From our previous (brief) discussions and exchanges, I knew there was a gap between
our experiences and understandings. This is a good start, from first principles, to clear up some of our mis-communication:

In the above speed of light c example, you view to know and
to understand as two separate things -- I see the continuum.
This is significant. I also know what you mean.

To me, what you refer to as "to know of c" is one level of understanding.
In other words, understanding is a huge continuum -- we agree on this --
but you separate (digitize) "knowledge" from "understanding".
Whereas to me, knowledge is a "part," or a "level," within understanding.

A quick google search on the definition of "knowledge":

knowledge (noun).

1. facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.

2. awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

Notice the second part of (1): "knowledge" is inseparable from "understanding." Also note that experience is directly linked to both (1) and (2).

To me, both their (1) and (2) mean knowledge is part of understanding.
They are inseparable, to me.

Similar to your (c) example, here are some examples of what I mean when
I use the words "know" and "understand" --
The following, to me, illustrates Levels of understanding:

• I have never heard of Tom Landspeeder.
• The name Tom Landspeeder rings a bell, but I cannot put my finger on it.
• I remember Mary told me the name, Tom Landspeeder.
• I once saw a photo of Tom Landspeeder.
• I heard some gossips about Tom Landspeeder.
• I saw a 1-minute "hello" video of Tom Landspeeder on YouTube.
• I saw Tom Landspeeder for a moment, from a block away, 10 years ago.
• I saw Tom Landspeeder for a moment, from a block away, 5 minutes ago.
• I finally met Tom Landspeeder last Monday at a party, but for only 5 seconds.
• I chatted with Tom Landspeeder for the first time yesterday, for 5 minutes.
• I read an article about Tom Landspeeder once.
• I saw a documentary about Tom Landspeeder, once.
• I read a 400-page biography about Tom Landspeeder, once.
• I read a 400-page Pulitzer Prize winning biography about Tom Landspeeder.
• I worked with Tom Landspeeder for 2 months, 10 years ago.
• I worked with Tom Landspeeder for 20 years, but I still know very little about his personal life.
• Tom Landspeeder and I have been best friends since kindergarten.
• I know Tom Landspeeder; I would not trust him with one penny.
• I trust Tom Landspeeder with my life.

The above are all different levels of how much I know or understand Tom Landspeeder.
They are all merely different levels on a huge continuum.

( The list is infinite; that's why it's a continuum.
We can easily come up with similar examples with your speed of light case,
or the river-monk story. )

We must first get this straight, between us, otherwise you and I will have
huge communication problems going forward (as we had, in the past ).

[EdLee]

From Easy-to-understand Style, post 15:

I am sure it is very good (for Robert, and who else?). Nothing has helped my understanding of go theory more than my principles. Before them, everything was confusing and unclear (for Robert, and who else?). With them, everything is clear <snip> up to the point...(for Robert, and who else?).

( My emphases and questions in Blue. )

From The Roadmap to Shodan, Vol. 2 Review, post 22:

I have known Robert online for almost 20 years. He is not a mercenary. He is a dedicated seeker after truth. Before writing his recent books he spent untold hours on the thankless task of attempting to decipher the Ing rules and the Japanese rules and to propose his own rules of go. He may have capitalized upon his rules expertise in some way, but if so I expect that it is to the tune of pennies per hour. Robert has a unique approach to go which is based upon ascertaining principles instead of picking up intuitive notions through examples and play. That his books have been well received indicates that he has been able to explain his ideas well enough to his readers and students, and that they find them valuable.

[EdLee]

I started noticing there were Agapanthus plants everywhere. ...
Everywhere. ... I had just never noticed them before.

Hi snorri,

About two years ago, I went through a project that lasted about 18 months.
It was exhausting -- in terms of the stresses, the finances, and the emotions.

Here's a partial list of items I hadn't notice before the project,
but which I did everywhere afterwards:

• The floor
• Wood
• Carpet
• Different wood types
• Different floor types
• Doors
• Door knobs
• Door handles
• Door hinges
• The screws on the door hinges
• Door jams
• Faucets
• Bathroom trims
• Floor trims and skirts
• Shower handles
• Shower trims
• Shower glass doors
• Shower glass door handles
• Shower glass door hinges
• Shower curtains
• Shower curtain rods
• Shower squeegee
• Main entrance doors
• Interior doors
• Did I mention doors ?
• Tiles
• The toilet
• Toilet paper holder
• Wall-mount mirrors
• Lighting fixtures
• Incandescent Bulbs
• LED lightings
• Curtains
• Shades
• Blinds
• Cordless shades
• Corded shades
• Did I mention doors ?
• Sinks
• The ceiling
• Walls
• Windows
• Hinged windows
• Slider windows
• Stairs
• Handrails
• Cabinets
• Cabinet doors
• Cabinet handles
• Soft-close cabinet doors
• Drawers
• Drawer handles
• Soft-close drawers
• Counter tops ( Corian, granite, quartz, marble, wood, etc. )
• The fridge ( standard depth, counter depth, single door, French doors, ... )
• The oven ( so many varieties )
• The stove ( so many varieties )
• The dishwasher ( 18-inch or 24-inch ? )
• Washers and dryers ( so many varieties )
• Light switches
• Wall textures; paints
• The deck ( wood, composite, etc. )
• Fireplace
• Wall sockets
• Did I mention doors and door hardware ?!?!

Examples from my Go experience:

$$ 2 basic broken shapes for Black
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . O . . . . . . . . O . .
$$ . . O X . . . . . . X O X .
$$ . X O . . . . . . . . O . .
$$ . . O . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ 2 basic broken shapes for Black
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . O . . . . . . . . O . .
$$ . . O X . . . . . . X O X .
$$ . X O . . . . . . . . O . .
$$ . . O . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

[EdLee]

From a WIRED article about Kip Thorne, rendering a blackhole, and the movie Interstellar:

But metaphors can be deceptive; they can make people think they understand something when they only understand what it is like.

Sometimes, they don't even accomplish that --
when people only think they understand what it is like,
but actually they are merely getting a whiff of it.

[EdLee]

A Brief History of Primes -- a nice non-technical lecture -- by Manindra Agrawal.

[EdLee]

Joseki myths, posts 11, 13 -- kyu question about joseki and mid-game mistakes.


Joseki myths, posts 34 through 37 -- "understanding".

[EdLee]

From Joseki myths, post 18:

It might be that as a non-native english speaker I am...

Important piece of information.

[EdLee]

A nice quote, from post 133 of this game thread:

We have thick and thin, heavy and light. Thick and light are good, heavy and thin are bad.
Nearly everybody gets the metaphors, few players understand the concepts.
Most dan players can fairly reliably tell the difference between heavy and thick, between thin and light, but we all get it wrong at times.
If it were easy to explain these terms verbally, virtually every SDK could get it right.

Most amateur play, IMO, is heavy. And often it is heavy without trying to be thick, which is a real shame.
I think that in part it is a question of attitude. To consistently play lightly requires a flexible attitude.
It is possible to make thick plays and to treat those thick stones lightly.

( emphases added in blue )

As usual, these are different levels of understanding:

• No clue;
• A little clue;
• Hear of the terms, the metaphors, etc.
• Different levels of execution, from kyu to low dan, mid dan, high dan, etc.
• Different levels of teaching it.

A recurring theme: talking (verbally) and doing (actually playing the move) are two very different things. (Post 3).

[daal]

Hi Fedya,Are you looking for some general heuristics on
when to do some general thing (run out), and when not to ?

( Please see also understanding, starting from around posts 51, 52. )

I feel as though I've had a lot of games where things seem to go wrong
the minute I do some general thing...

There is exactly one game in this thread (so far).
People have posted their comments, suggestions, etc.,
about certain moves specific to this game.

If you want to know your mistakes in your other games,
you need to have them reviewed. One by one. Move by move.

There is no way to know your mistakes in your other games
unless you have them reviewed, one game at a time, move by move.

There may be one underlying mistake in all your games.
There may be a few.
There may be many.

My bet is the problems lie in your basics. Basics shapes, basic tesujis, etc.
And in bad habits. The only way (I know of) is to have your games reviewed.
Find out your problems one by one, move by move.
Fix them one by one.

Hi Ed, what's the difference here between red and blue?

Quotation reference: viewtopic.php?p=176558#p176558