Life In 19x19

I first came across the idea of efficiency in a go context as a 4 kyu thumbing through a book by Sakata in a department store in Tokyo. That one word made a big difference in my game. I did not require a definition or examples. (Yeah, I saw one diagram, which I think showed an extension.) I already knew what efficiency meant. I just had to apply it to go.

HermanHiddema wrote:

Large stones never die.

Quite contrarily, now that the thought of how efficiency can be understood more clearly is in the world, players will have a great difficulty to suppress that thought. Try to run away well with a group during your following games and tell me that you could forget about finding a balance between speed and safety;)

Your idea only works if you are Master of the Universe and can control everyone's thoughts, so that, for example, you can prevent people saying, "As a resut of this tewari exercise we can seen that the empty triangle is not efficient".

Knowledge is more powerful than absence of knowledge.

May be true, though as every manager knows, treating people like mushrooms (keeping them in the dark, etc, etc) is a powerful way to manage. More seriously, knowledge of the vague wider scene is often more powerful than knowledge of a precise microcosm - woods and trees and all that, to keep the plant metaphors going.

Robert: Except in the rare cases, such as a new branch of mathematics, where you can invent a new world in its entirety, it is just not possible to make definitions that everyone will follow as you intend. Go is not one of those worlds. It was living and breathing for millennia before you came on the scene and is continuing to evolve around you and independently of you as you read this. And everyone is just as ego driven as you. If you just repeat like a mantra everything must have a precise definition, you are really doing no more than saying "come into my world, come into my world, come in to my world", and anyone who enters has to play with your rules and your ball. Unfortunately your readers say, "No, I want to stay in MY world", and in their world words and concepts will often have meanings quite different from yours. Even if you present something as new, and they did accept it as such, their brains will not slot it into the same pigeon-hole as in your brain, or leave it there on its own. Instead the subconscious brain will start making associations with what is already in the brain, and that must be different for every single person. It is therefore quite impossible to communicate with someone else with a direct data-link transfer working with a precise protocol. What you need to do, as an author, a conversationalist or an L19 poster, is rather to establish an interface with the other people, and this involves quite a bit of give and take, and fuzziness. Fuzzy, but we all know from daily experience that it works. By all means try to improve the interface, tighten it up a little, but it will always remain populated by someone else's ideas different from your own, and that has to be accepted because you need to allow other people to express their egos just as much as you express yours.

Real life provides a pertinent warning example. Hans Kmoch tried to do for chess pawn structures what you are doing for go. Some of his attempted precise definitions related to control of the squares of one colour. Among many others, he coined the words leucopenia and melanopenia. The concept is so important that it will be mentioned in perhaps every second chess commentary. It is also considered a concept that weaker players have to address urgently. In other words, you'd think this was a concept ripe for a precise technical term. Even though Kmoch was apparently a greatly respected chess writer, and a master himself, and even though his book has been around since the 1940s (I think; in Engish it dates back at least to 1959) nobody takes a blind bit of notice. Instead, commentators use a multitude of fuzzy phrases (White exploits the Black colour complex, Black is weak on the white squares, White's pawns are on the wrong colour squares, Black has a weak-coloured Bishop and so on ad infinitum). On Google I got about 1.5 million hits for leucopenia, but for leucopenia + chess I got less than 50, and a quick scan indicates that all of them are comments on Kmoch's book. As far as I know, only one of Kmoch's terms has escaped to the wild and that is 'lever', though uses of it I have seen are actually - like Bill's temperature - a little different from the original sense. He also introduced 'ram' alongside 'lever', yet in what I have seen all other writers use 'ram' in a completely different sense. One of the problems of Kmoch's approach is that you end up wanting to define everything but you run out of resources and have to become increasingly outlandish. Leucopenia at least might mean something to someone familiar with Greek or medicine, but terms such as 'quartgrip' mean nothing to anybody except Kmoch and, for want of a better word, his translator.

It is more efficient to eschew such futility. It is more efficient to create interfaces or to build bridges with your audience. In Hobbit-like language, to join MyWorld with YourWorld.

PS If you accept hataraki as an equivalent of efficiency, it can be counted as a technical term. A brief eye-swivel over my lists of technical terms suggests that Japanese has about 3,000 - you can give or take as much as you like, but it's still going to be quite a lot (similar figures apply for Korean and Chinese).

John Fairbairn wrote:Real life provides a pertinent warning example. Hans Kmoch tried to do for chess pawn structures what you are doing for go. Some of his attempted precise definitions related to control of the squares of one colour. Among many others, he coined the words leucopenia and melanopenia. The concept is so important that it will be mentioned in perhaps every second chess commentary. It is also considered a concept that weaker players have to address urgently. In other words, you'd think this was a concept ripe for a precise technical term. Even though Kmoch was apparently a greatly respected chess writer, and a master himself, and even though his book has been around since the 1940s (I think; in Engish it dates back at least to 1959) nobody takes a blind bit of notice. Instead, commentators use a multitude of fuzzy phrases (White exploits the Black colour complex, Black is weak on the white squares, White's pawns are on the wrong colour squares, Black has a weak-coloured Bishop and so on ad infinitum).

I read Kmoch's Pawn Power in Chess in college. That's why I immediately understood what a leucocyte was. Question: Weren't chess writers already talking about leucopenia and melanopenia -- without using those terms, OC? For instance, didn't Alekhine talk about weakness on the white or black squares? Another of Kmoch's terms that comes to mind is leeward, but I don't remember what he meant by it.

One of the problems of Kmoch's approach is that you end up wanting to define everything but you run out of resources and have to become increasingly outlandish.

The General Semanticists used subscripts. We could try that in go. Sente-1 = the initiative. Sente-2 = a forcing play. Sente-3 = a local sequence of alternating plays that ends as soon as the local temperature has dropped and has a even number of plays.

It is more efficient to create interfaces or to build bridges with your audience.

Hear, hear!

Martin Buber said that the job of the teacher is to build a bridge to the student.

John Fairbairn wrote:If you just repeat like a mantra everything must have a precise definition, you are really doing no more than saying "come into my world, come into my world, come in to my world", and anyone who enters has to play with your rules and your ball.

1) The world of precise definitions, principles etc. is not just my world but is the world of sciences, mathematics and other fields.

2) Go is a special case of mathematics and therefore profits from precise definitions, principles etc.

3) Clear terms, principles etc. can extremely accelerate learning of those having the ability to understand and work with terms and principles, even when only ambiguous terms or examples do not trigger such a learning effect. It requires only seconds to make clear terms, principles etc. ambiguous so that those preferring abiguity can learn well, but it requires very great amounts of time and effort to find and state clearly terms, principles etc. that previously have been known only ambiguously. Therefore, clarity is extraordinarily superior to ambiguity.

Unfortunately your readers say, "No, I want to stay in MY world",

Apparently you are not aware that there different types of readers and that by far most of them appreciate explicitness and clarity.

concepts will often have meanings quite different from yours.

Instead of using words like pignaqupels, I prefer to use words of common language wherever possible. This has the side effect that a word can have two (or more) meanings: 1) the common language meaning, 2) the go term meaning. Of course, there often are differences of meaning between both uses of a word.

More specifically concerning concepts, I speak of concepts mostly when addressing strategic concepts. Since I discuss (almost) all strategic concepts, of course, multiple meanings can occur regularly in the conflict between common language meaning versus go term meaning. Additionally, it sometimes occurs that I am at forefront of clarifying or else attempting to clarify strategic concepts. Necessarily, this can lead to a variety of meanings, where my definition or suggested definition disagrees to some extent to a variety of informal meanings floating around. Example: efficiency. For a few strategic concepts, my descriptions go beyond clarification and are about invention. Example: territory efficiency, which expresses as a value how efficiently territory has been constructed.

What you need to do, as an author, a conversationalist or an L19 poster, is rather to establish an interface with the other people, and this involves quite a bit of give and take, and fuzziness. [...]

Mainly it requires only one thing: the courage to pose questions. As you may know, I am one of the writers actively explaining everything within reasonable amounts of available time and scope. What you ask of me you could ask of all other writers, and then compare: which author explains how much in public?

Instead, commentators use a multitude of fuzzy phrases (White exploits the Black colour complex, Black is weak on the white squares, White's pawns are on the wrong colour squares, Black has a weak-coloured Bishop and so on ad infinitum).

It is the precise theory that lets even the fuzzy comments make much sense. I wish the fuzzy go comments were, on average, even half as clear as your fuzzy chess comment example.

leucopenia

I do not use such absurd words. Have a look into my books' indexes and notice the great fraction of known phrases!

It is more efficient to create interfaces

Indeed. Therefore I avoid arcane Asian go terms, use a great fraction of known phrases, explain and exemplify everything etc.

PS If you accept hataraki

No. I do not use arcane Asian words. They are a difficult interface for me and my pupils and would be the same for my readers.

A brief eye-swivel over my lists of technical terms suggests that Japanese has about 3,000

And how few of them are actually useful? I have kept using only dozens of the hundreds I knew as a kyu. Using only meaningful and powerful terms in a familiar language eases strategic planning.

Robert,

Is this your way of communication? Analyzing and commenting to every single word, phrase given to you?

Language is a way of expressing one's thought, which not always perfect.

Anyone can speak or write with mistakes, but this does not always mean that the speaker or writer has a thought with mistakes.

You should always be careful before you say someone is wrong.

Also, before arguing about something, please check out whether it is a main point or not.

HermanHiddema wrote:

One must imagine it... because it isn't true.

It seems that the existentialists were pretty daft

lovelove wrote:Is this your way of communication? Analyzing and commenting to every single word, phrase given to you? [...] before arguing about something, please check out whether it is a main point or not.

Questioning the integrity and relevance of all my work or suggesting to replace precision by ambiguity are main points of the utmost importance. I do not let frontal attacks on the quality of my ideas or the didactics of my books uncommented but defend both as powerfully as the importance demands. This can require commenting on lots of words or phrases, so that the competing qualities of opinions can be compared well.

In addition, there is also a lot of interesting discussion about efficiency and sente in this thread, which I enjoy to participate in.

RobertJasiek wrote:

lovelove wrote:Is this your way of communication? Analyzing and commenting to every single word, phrase given to you? [...] before arguing about something, please check out whether it is a main point or not.

Questioning the integrity and relevance of all my work or suggesting to replace precision by ambiguity are main points of the utmost importance. I do not let frontal attacks on the quality of my ideas or the didactics of my books uncommented but defend both as powerfully as the importance demands. This can require commenting on lots of words or phrases, so that the competing qualities of opinions can be compared well.

In addition, there is also a lot of interesting discussion about efficiency and sente in this thread, which I enjoy to participate in.

Perhaps you could apologize for your suggested definition of efficiency and subsequent defence that was widely rejected, so that we can continue a civil discussion?

RobertJasiek wrote:

lovelove wrote:Is this your way of communication? Analyzing and commenting to every single word, phrase given to you? [...] before arguing about something, please check out whether it is a main point or not.

Questioning the integrity and relevance of all my work or suggesting to replace precision by ambiguity are main points of the utmost importance. I do not let frontal attacks on the quality of my ideas or the didactics of my books uncommented but defend both as powerfully as the importance demands. This can require commenting on lots of words or phrases, so that the competing qualities of opinions can be compared well.

In addition, there is also a lot of interesting discussion about efficiency and sente in this thread, which I enjoy to participate in.

I see... So you're already in the position of defending everything you say. I think this says enough...

BTW, Robert, to me what you've outlined as your approach seems to be very close, if not exactly, to that of the logical positivists in the early-mid part of the 20th century. The programme was broad, but one characteristic was the belief that conceptual confusion was caused by an improper use of language; and that if we could simply become clear in our ideas & thought (by eliminating linguistic confusion), then we could uncover the facts of nature. Needless to say, after a little over 30-years years of intense research by thousands of people the programme was eventually abandoned as a failure.

Also related is the incommensurability of languages. You can read later works of Donald Davidson to save time.

Lastly, you may find these books interesting (although they are fairly technical), Vagueness & Knowledge and its Limits by Timothy Williamson.

P.S. I would avoid Wikipedia for most philosophy reading.


If I'm going to be there for eternity, then I might as well set some goals

For completeness:

EdLee wrote:For completeness: ....

Some people always pick the easy lazy way

logan wrote:BTW, Robert, to me what you've outlined as your approach seems to be very close, if not exactly, to that of the logical positivists in the early-mid part of the 20th century. The programme was broad, but one characteristic was the belief that conceptual confusion was caused by an improper use of language; and that if we could simply become clear in our ideas & thought (by eliminating linguistic confusion), then we could uncover the facts of nature. Needless to say, after a little over 30-years years of intense research by thousands of people the programme was eventually abandoned as a failure.

This is painting with a rather broad brush. What died with the positivists was not the idea that formal systems and explicit definitions could be a powerful tool for producing clear thought.

I think there's too much "distance" (so to speak) between the mathematical foundations of the game and the kinds of definitions humans can process for Robert's approach of providing exceptionless generalizations to be fruitful. But the proof will be whether or not he produces definitions that expand our understanding of the game. We can't judge it beforehand.

I haven't been convinced of that from his posts on the forum, but I can't say for sure.