Sure. I think some cognitive-behavioral therapy approaches also stress changing your situation alongside your thought processes.
Could you clarify? I realize what you mean by the software/hardware divide, but I find it hard to think that most depressed people have corrupt hardware in the sense there’s something actually wrong with the physical substrate rather than how it’s working or wired itself (of course there is a connection in terms of susceptibility).
It’s commonly known that depression is often triggered (and maintained) by fundamentally irrational thoughts. Many thoughts associated with depression are simultaneously thoughts that are fundamentally irrational. Feelings of guilt, feelings of hopelessness, and feelings of worthlessness—many of those beliefs assume conceptions that do not correspond with the real world. And so a rational person may ostensibly be less prone to depression.
You sure about this? My psych classes taught about ‘depressive realism’, or “the proposition that people with depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality, specifically that they are less affected by positive illusions of illusory superiority, the illusion of control and optimism bias.” This was of course no consolation to me at the time.
I felt a bit out of place until I started reading MoR; what was all this cryonics/decision theory stuff?
A couple chapters in I thought, “THAT’S the kind of stuff I’m interested in talking about! Now I feel like I’m in the right place.”
“But building your life’s explanations around science isn’t a profession. It is, at its core, an emotional contract, an agreement to only derive comfort from rationality.”
-Robert Sapolsky, in a essay reply to “Does science make belief in God obsolete?”
Upvoted for that lovely poem, though Li Bai is more aligned with Daoism than Buddhism.
I’m nowhere near being a mathematician, though I do like what little math I’ve been exposed to. I’ve always wondered what this ‘beauty’ meant. Some things seem elegant, clever, insightful—maybe distantly extrapolate-able to sublime or majestic—but ‘beauty’ eludes me. It doesn’t help that mathematicians don’t seem to agree on this sense either.
Is finding some relation ‘remarkable’ or ‘intriguing’ or ‘mysterious’ sort of like the baby versions of mathematical beauty?
More details? I may try to replicate this.
I would try playing as much as possible on KGS, using 9x9s and 13x13s in the beginner room. Just try to get a feel for (and understand) common patterns. People are quite friendly and willing to do reviews.
Personally, I think 9x9s and Igowin are just boring, and don’t teach you much. So try to get past this. Lots of the fun in Go is trying to implement new ideas. 9x9s are generally too constrained for this.
My particular jumps in Go strength came after reading more new theory, trying to integrate it into my game for a while (and failing), and then frustratedly taking a break. I’d come back a few kyu stronger, and games would consolidate this into maybe another stone or two’s increase in strength.
This happened enough that I stopped feeling frustrated (rather just stuck) and proactively took breaks. Usually about a week would do it.
I’ve always wanted to be a Jernau Morat Gurgeh.
By the way, isn’t Go a good example of a game that is hard to improvise and do well in? Just a reminder that domain knowledge usually trumps all else.
This is perhaps a bit facetious, but I propose we try to contact Alice Taticchi (Miss World Italy 2009) and introduce her to LW. Reason? She cited she’d “bring without any doubt my rationality”, among other things, when asked what qualities she would bring to the competition.
Two quick comments:
The main aspect to understand for this article is that go is a game of territory.
This was interesting to me, because one of my ‘viewquakes’ for Go is that it’s NOT a game of territory. It’s more about the strength, flow, and structure of stones. I hit this around 8kyu while stuck. Territory is just a side-effect and the Japanese standard of measurement (it may be surprising to learn that there are several scoring methods, and they don’t significantly change the character of the game).
The other lesson I can think of is that Go taught me viscerally that the small differences matter immensely performance-wise (I tend to like the idea that, with a small set of principles you can derive whatever you need). Janice Kim writes that learning about good shape gives you about 80% of the strength of professional players, but I couldn’t even break the 10kyu barrier with just that. Or was it 15kyu? I don’t remember.
I agree. KGS is very friendly, and I certainly managed to make 15k before buying any books.
The computer is just for getting some very raw mechanics down. Do it a max of maybe 30 times and start playing humans! I’m about 2k now and I still suck at playing Igowin on 9x9.
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.
This vaguely reminds me of Paul Graham’s exhortation to students, “Stay upwind.” [link needed and will update later if I remember to]
It seems to me that learning trick moves and the dark arts strengthens your overall understanding and ability, relative to just learning the proper standard moves (honte) and reasoning.
Yes, both in Go and real life.
...ignore sunk costs?
Same advice in Sirlin’s Playing to Win
Do you mean the idea of “playing away”? eg. focusing on the global rather than the local situation?
I think this difference is just a misstatement. One thing pounded into me from Go was how a small difference in skill can produce a dominating effect. The handicap system shows the immense differences in ‘strength’ possible—no other game lets you give up first mover advantage AND several moves and still play on a fair level on a regular basis.
Playing Go feels to me like walking a tightrope, and I’m not even dan-level yet. I would characterize it as ‘small advantages escalate’, but the score only measures a relative difference in play quality. Thus it looks linear.
Small mistakes are unlikely to be crippling for two reasons. First, at a lower level, the other player doesn’t realize how to effectively punish it, so you can get away with your mistake. At a higher level, you don’t make blatant errors (too big of an error and you resign anyhow), so when you do make an error, you have enough skill to play flexibly and partially nullify the relative effect of your opponent’s punishing moves.
Sure. Unlike you guys, I’m not really a programmer at all.