I find the concept of “aji” especially fascinating when it comes to Go. The word means roughly translated means something like “taste”, and as a go concept it refers to set of possible moves and continuations that can dramatically alter the local situation. For example, if there is a weakness in the opponent formation somewhere on the board because of the mistake opponent just made, but the opponent is able to somehow defend it under direct attack, I would most likely play away from this weakness for now, and try to steer the game so that the aji surrounding that weakness could be used as much as possible.
If the weakness was a possibility of a cut, which would totally work if you could get move A, an influential move that looks at the center of the board and works fine for you, instead of reaping the benefits straight away(playing A so now you got a nice influential move while opponent has to protect), you’d most likely want to go and start a running fight elsewhere on the board, and try to steer the fight so that A becomes a crucial move in it, so then opponent would face a choice, protect the original weakness, the possibility of a cut, or protect this new running group.
Leaving aji open and trying to get as much out of it as possible is, for me, the core of the game, but unfortunately I can’t see any equivalent in rationality directly. Anyone else, any ideas?
You can think of “don’t play aji-keshi” as saying “leave actions which will close down your future options as late as possible”, which I think can be a useful lesson for real life (though of course the tricky part is working out how late ‘as possible’ is).
Go teaches that sort of intuitions that are useful but really vague compared to LW-type of stuff. Overall you can get really strong at go if you simply decide to avoid emotional mistakes typical to zero sum game, actual reading and position analysis and planning is of much less importance.
The last part of the sentence I doubt. When I once played Go regularly, I plateaued at 15k (KGS, years ago), simply because I was too lazy to read. Beyond simple improved experience in opening and life-and-death, reading situations out is one of the most important skills to improve. In Korea schools usually heavily concentrate on reading (in the sense that compared to typical Japanese and Chinese schools they do not force “good shape” that much on pupils, but reading out the situation). This has lead to a quite aggressive style of Korean play, even at amateur level—they play out of “shape” and “intuition”, and than beat you with comparatively enormous self-discipline and speed in reading.
Which may point to another lesson. More than once, after making a move, I have had my opponent say with a frown, “I was afraid you would play there. Now I have to read[1]. This may take a while. Why don’t you take a smoke break, or buy coffee, or something.” An important skill in Go is to recognize when intuition becomes insufficient, and careful analysis essential.
[1] “Read” is Go jargon for careful analysis—what the computer geeks might call exhaustive tree search.
Suppose you’re a college freshman deciding whether to
major in math or economics. Well, math will give you more
options: you can go into almost any field from math. If
you major in math it will be easy to get into grad school
in economics, but if you major in economics it will be
hard to get into grad school in math.
Flying a glider is a good metaphor here. Because a glider
doesn’t have an engine, you can’t fly into the wind
without losing a lot of altitude. If you let yourself get
far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow
uncomfortably. As a rule you want to stay upwind. So I
propose that as a replacement for “don’t give up on your
dreams.” Stay upwind.
I find the concept of “aji” especially fascinating when it comes to Go. The word means roughly translated means something like “taste”, and as a go concept it refers to set of possible moves and continuations that can dramatically alter the local situation. For example, if there is a weakness in the opponent formation somewhere on the board because of the mistake opponent just made, but the opponent is able to somehow defend it under direct attack, I would most likely play away from this weakness for now, and try to steer the game so that the aji surrounding that weakness could be used as much as possible.
If the weakness was a possibility of a cut, which would totally work if you could get move A, an influential move that looks at the center of the board and works fine for you, instead of reaping the benefits straight away(playing A so now you got a nice influential move while opponent has to protect), you’d most likely want to go and start a running fight elsewhere on the board, and try to steer the fight so that A becomes a crucial move in it, so then opponent would face a choice, protect the original weakness, the possibility of a cut, or protect this new running group.
Leaving aji open and trying to get as much out of it as possible is, for me, the core of the game, but unfortunately I can’t see any equivalent in rationality directly. Anyone else, any ideas?
You can think of “don’t play aji-keshi” as saying “leave actions which will close down your future options as late as possible”, which I think can be a useful lesson for real life (though of course the tricky part is working out how late ‘as possible’ is).
Go teaches that sort of intuitions that are useful but really vague compared to LW-type of stuff. Overall you can get really strong at go if you simply decide to avoid emotional mistakes typical to zero sum game, actual reading and position analysis and planning is of much less importance.
The last part of the sentence I doubt. When I once played Go regularly, I plateaued at 15k (KGS, years ago), simply because I was too lazy to read. Beyond simple improved experience in opening and life-and-death, reading situations out is one of the most important skills to improve. In Korea schools usually heavily concentrate on reading (in the sense that compared to typical Japanese and Chinese schools they do not force “good shape” that much on pupils, but reading out the situation). This has lead to a quite aggressive style of Korean play, even at amateur level—they play out of “shape” and “intuition”, and than beat you with comparatively enormous self-discipline and speed in reading.
Which may point to another lesson. More than once, after making a move, I have had my opponent say with a frown, “I was afraid you would play there. Now I have to read[1]. This may take a while. Why don’t you take a smoke break, or buy coffee, or something.” An important skill in Go is to recognize when intuition becomes insufficient, and careful analysis essential.
[1] “Read” is Go jargon for careful analysis—what the computer geeks might call exhaustive tree search.
This vaguely reminds me of Paul Graham’s exhortation to students, “Stay upwind.” [link needed and will update later if I remember to]
“What You’ll Wish You’d Known” (advice to high schoolers):