Is it true that all of these points could be said for any goal-centered action, such as making paperclips? Or for any game? How is Go different that those other games and tasks with respect to these lessons and insights?
A good question. I think that Go provides more lessons and better lessons to an aspiring rationalist than do most other games. More lessons even than such worthwhile activities as paperclip manufacturing. The reason has to do with Go’s “richness”.
I pointed out one aspect of what I mean by “richness” in my comment mentioning “self-organized criticality”. Here I will point out one aspect of the game which I think leads to that “richness”.
In moving from conceptual high-level to conceptual low-level in your thinking about a game of go, you are forced to switch between binary objective thinking (I want to win!) and quantitative objective thinking (More! More! I want more!). You are forced to switch repeatedly.
For example, I win the game (by three points) because the balance of territory on the left side of the board is 14 points to the good, whereas the balance on the right is only 11 points to the bad. But part of the reason I (black) am 14 points ahead on the left is because that largish eyeless white group is dead, rather than alive. But the reason it is dead is that it has only two liberties, while my opposing black eyeless group has four.
I think you’re right that most goal-directed activity, especially formalized pursuits like abstract board games, encourages rational thinking. Nevertheless, I have gotten the feeling that go is particularly good in this regard, at least in my experience. I played chess for a long time, and have tried many other types of formal table and online games, and of them all, go seems to have the strongest tendency to show me how bad habits of thinking work against me.
I would love to see more articles like this one explicitly illustrating how other activities can be be approached as a means of rationality practice.
(Perhaps you have had experience gambling in the paper clip casino to increase your hoard, which has given you valuable practice in understanding probability?)
Is it true that all of these points could be said for any goal-centered action, such as making paperclips? Or for any game? How is Go different that those other games and tasks with respect to these lessons and insights?
A good question. I think that Go provides more lessons and better lessons to an aspiring rationalist than do most other games. More lessons even than such worthwhile activities as paperclip manufacturing. The reason has to do with Go’s “richness”.
I pointed out one aspect of what I mean by “richness” in my comment mentioning “self-organized criticality”. Here I will point out one aspect of the game which I think leads to that “richness”.
In moving from conceptual high-level to conceptual low-level in your thinking about a game of go, you are forced to switch between binary objective thinking (I want to win!) and quantitative objective thinking (More! More! I want more!). You are forced to switch repeatedly.
For example, I win the game (by three points) because the balance of territory on the left side of the board is 14 points to the good, whereas the balance on the right is only 11 points to the bad. But part of the reason I (black) am 14 points ahead on the left is because that largish eyeless white group is dead, rather than alive. But the reason it is dead is that it has only two liberties, while my opposing black eyeless group has four.
I think you’re right that most goal-directed activity, especially formalized pursuits like abstract board games, encourages rational thinking. Nevertheless, I have gotten the feeling that go is particularly good in this regard, at least in my experience. I played chess for a long time, and have tried many other types of formal table and online games, and of them all, go seems to have the strongest tendency to show me how bad habits of thinking work against me.
I would love to see more articles like this one explicitly illustrating how other activities can be be approached as a means of rationality practice.
(Perhaps you have had experience gambling in the paper clip casino to increase your hoard, which has given you valuable practice in understanding probability?)