Life In 19x19

lightvector wrote:The key thing is that it has to be a move that is instinctively shouting at me to be played, even if I have no conscious understanding or ability to justify why that move is good.

It may well be that such a move is the result of your unconscious parallel processing.

Surprised that there is so much controversy over the wording I used in one of the sentences of my post awhile back.

Yes, imitation, etc., can be good.

The main point I am trying to convey is this: computers will overcome humans in a variety of domains such that individual study is not practically useful (just use the computer to get the answer). Despite this, the value to be obtained is in the personal development obtained by such study; humans may never be the best at go again, but we can improve ourselves and learn from the game - better understand the game's meaning, etc.

From what I gathered, most of the discussion around my earlier post was unrelated to this central theme.

I probably did not convey this very well. Maybe someday, a computer can do a better job at expressing what I mean... I hope I improve myself in some way by trying to express myself, even if I don't do so perfectly :-p

Absolutely. I and hopefully most everyone else have no problem with valuing Go as a medium for personal enjoyment and development. That's part of the fun of playing and learning.

People were just quibbling over your entirely separate and unrelated claim that it's better to play only moves that you understand rather than ones you might have reason to think are better but don't understand.

Sorry, it's a long thread, and I didn't remember my earlier post.

Anyway, I don't think it's unrelated to my recent post at all: if the practical value of studying go is personal development, I think playing poorly but understanding is more useful than playing optimally without understanding.

I kind of buy into the argument that imitation is a good way to learn, but understanding has to be there at some time to get real value.

I can copy all of AlphaGo's moves and win the game, but what's the point? I haven't really learned anything.

FWIW, we're starting to get into a pretty hypothetical and abstract discussion here when evaluating the intrinsic value of studying a certain way, since we are no longer discussing methods to become the most skilled player.

I guess the main counter argument I can see to my argument is that you might reach greater depths of understanding by imitation.

Sure, I'll buy that.

But I still find value in human commentary, which can explain and reason, which is what I think spurred this post of mine.

So perhaps: human pro commentary +AlphaGo > AlphaGo >= human pro commentary

It's not clear to me what the order should be on the last part.