I would also add something about “guessing the teacher’s password”.
If you do things you saw a stronger player do, but don’t understand them, you will sooner or later be punished—either because you applied the move in a situation where it doesn’t work; or because you don’t know how to continue.
Yes, this is true, but it’s also true that some kinds of imitation can take you far even if you don’t understand them. Personally, I try to play with good shape, I have seen it pay off, but I don’t understand most of ways that this helps me. A good parallel in rationality might be learning self doubt. This can help, even if one doesn’t know the myriad ways people have of fooling themselves which it is intended to thwart.
This phenomenon is extremely frustrating to me, but I don’t pretend to not take advantage of it.
Part of the reason to play shape is that it’s generally recognized as efficient structure; another is that it closes down options—you prune the search tree towards well-understood structures and don’t have to worry or expend as much mental energy reading.
I don’t know anything about Go. But the fact that following it helps you reminds me of In praise of fake frameworks: while “good shape” isn’t fully accurate at calculating the best move, it’s more “computationally useful” for most situations (similar to calculating physics with Newton’s laws vs general relativity and quantum mechanics). (The author also mentions “ki”, which makes no sense from a physics perspective, to get better at aikido.)
I think it’s just important to remember that the “model” is only a map for the “reality” (the rules of the game).
There is, in fact, a go proverb for this: “Learn joseki, lose two stones” (in rank, temporarily). Meaning that people who memorize joseki without understanding the reasons for the moves will be flummoxed by people who don’t follow the expected pattern, since it’s hard to punish a mistake if you don’t know why it’s a mistake.
I would also add something about “guessing the teacher’s password”.
If you do things you saw a stronger player do, but don’t understand them, you will sooner or later be punished—either because you applied the move in a situation where it doesn’t work; or because you don’t know how to continue.
Yes, this is true, but it’s also true that some kinds of imitation can take you far even if you don’t understand them. Personally, I try to play with good shape, I have seen it pay off, but I don’t understand most of ways that this helps me. A good parallel in rationality might be learning self doubt. This can help, even if one doesn’t know the myriad ways people have of fooling themselves which it is intended to thwart.
This phenomenon is extremely frustrating to me, but I don’t pretend to not take advantage of it.
Part of the reason to play shape is that it’s generally recognized as efficient structure; another is that it closes down options—you prune the search tree towards well-understood structures and don’t have to worry or expend as much mental energy reading.
I don’t know anything about Go. But the fact that following it helps you reminds me of In praise of fake frameworks: while “good shape” isn’t fully accurate at calculating the best move, it’s more “computationally useful” for most situations (similar to calculating physics with Newton’s laws vs general relativity and quantum mechanics). (The author also mentions “ki”, which makes no sense from a physics perspective, to get better at aikido.)
I think it’s just important to remember that the “model” is only a map for the “reality” (the rules of the game).
There is, in fact, a go proverb for this: “Learn joseki, lose two stones” (in rank, temporarily). Meaning that people who memorize joseki without understanding the reasons for the moves will be flummoxed by people who don’t follow the expected pattern, since it’s hard to punish a mistake if you don’t know why it’s a mistake.