lemmata wrote:HermanHiddema wrote:IMO, there are two kinds of players:
1. Intuitive players.
2. Weak players.
One definition that philosophers like to use for intuition is
knowledge without justification. If you are an intuitive player, you already know things without having learned them! It is only natural that they are stronger than the rest of us given that they had a head start. No wonder I am so weak...
[TLDR; Intuition exists, don't question it, exploit it ruthlessly instead!
]
While we might have trouble agreeing on a definition of intuition, most of us should be able to agree that our brain does things that we're not actively conscious of, at least to some extent.
For example, your heart beats, you can walk, form sentences, catch balls, drive cars etc. When you throw a ball a long way for a dog, how does the dog know where to run to to catch it? Why do they tend to take the shortest path? Can dogs do calculus? Not really.
The implication that relying on intuition is somehow lazy or didn't require learning doesn't ring true to me. Intuition is the precious result of experience and learning.
How does one develop intuition in Go? Some of the ways I know of include, playing lots of games, solving lots of Go problems, replaying lots of pro games and looking at lots of examples in books. Perhaps we love Go, but to many people that would sound like hard work. When you do the 'work' though, something a little bit magical starts to happen, you start to see good moves and have good ideas more often - reflexively. I'm not claiming to understand how that works, but my personal experience and the anecdotal experience of others suggests that there's something there.
Looking at Herman's categorization, pretty much all us here fall into the category of weak players (feel free to exclude yourself from this grouping if you feel offended
), because most of us didn't learn Go until were already adults (or at least teenagers). The adult brain is (has learned to be?) more analytical and less intuitive in the way it thinks. So it's natural for us to think more in terms of principles, but intuition is still important too.
The real intuitive players are the ones who learn Go from a very young age, as if it's a second language. People like Lee Sedol.
I find it really hard to believe that anyone, even Robert J, doesn't rely on intuition to some extent when playing Go or doing other things that they may be skilled at. Surely there is nobody here he feels the need to rationalize every minute decision they make throughout a day?
There are countless examples of case studies that scientists have looked into to try and understand our brains better. Like the famous one about the more senior fireman in Britain who sensed that he had to get his team out of the building before it exploded (when none of the young guys had any inkling about it). I remember studying that one at university. That kind of 'sense' is a product of great experience.
Going back to Go... Relying on intuition doesn't mean you just play moves without thinking about it. It means you might have a feeling that 'this is the important place' (some might call that temperature) or 'this is the move', but after that you read and analyze the situation to see if your intuition is good.
Using my personal experience as a reference point, when I get my games reviewed by a pro, I notice that most of my biggest mistakes these days are made when I choose to ignore my first instinct and rely on some sort of principle instead. One of the biggest improvements to my game occurred when I learned to listen to the strange feeling that tells you 'this move is heavy'. And heavy is a very vague term.
Robert, with regards to this comment:
RobertJasiek wrote:I wish I could ask the "intuitive" players how they learn, but, lacking logic, maybe they can't? I ask because I have also countless teaching by example books (with useless text if any) for intuitive players and want to learn more from them than I can so far. How? (Note: IMO, intuition does not exist. So advice of the kind "apply your intuition" won't work.)
You've hit on something interesting here and I started to see things from your perspective. Think about what it 'feels' like trying to read one of these books with 'useless text if any' and then imagine that some people might feel very similar when reading a book about capturing races. I'm not trying to devalue your work, so please don't feel the need to defend it. I respect your books. I'm simply pointing out that people are different and learn in different ways.
A lot of the logic that stronger players present to explain the reasons for a particular move is presented in a post hoc manner anyway. Intuition comes first and reason comes second.
Personally, I don't feel a burning need to define all things and explain how intuition works. For me it's just enough to know that it works and to make as much use of it as much as possible
- because it produces better results in less time. I'd rather spend my time working on other things and, if I have any time left, I still like to play Go now and then
.
Some might call that laziness, I see it more as pragmatism.