Question:
There are some posts about this back in the archives here, but I
wanted to put in my two cents...
In the teaching of language, research has shown that there are two
types of learners: those who learn best by learning principles and
applying them, and "data-gatherers", who prefer to accumulate large
masses of information and induce a subconscious recognition of
principle. Apparently, people are one or the other predominantly, and
it is not known which method or approach is better.
I know, it has been said that language aquisition is not comparable to
learning Go, and I won't bother arguing that (though it could be
argued). Rather, I mention it only to make it fresh to everyone's
minds what I am referring to.
This is my opinion/theory: as men, we have a limited mental capacity
(nothing new there :), and so we use our remarkable abstractive
ability to form general rules, or "principles", with which we make
life and it's complex mental challenges quite a bit easier for
ourselves. In chess this is effective; we can limit ourselves to only
a few core principles, and do ok.
In Go, however, things are quite different. This game is so hideously,
beautifully complex that even our principles number to many for the
human mind to grasp, unless we made them so broad that they became
useless to us (e.g., "ok, just remember connectivity and positional
balance!") I read in postings from a while back one fellow challenged
another to analyze moves in terms of principles, and the fellow who
took up the challenge completely mired himself...listing 3 or 4
paragraphs of principles to justify the move. Of course, that process
wouldn't work in real life, due to time and reality restaints. ;)
I would postulate that, due to the complexity of Go, we are mistaken
in the formal organization of our knowledge into principles and
categories, and do far better to develop our intuition and our reading
through study and practice.
As for something to back this up, we have the fact that those who are
best at the game, namely, Asians, have always learned (or at least
until very recently, historically speaking) learn without books on
principles on theory, but by study of pro games and development of
their own calculation and positional judgement. In other words, they
are "data-gatherers", who subconsciously induce and apply the
principles of Go in their own games. I remember someone saying in one
of the posts I read that "the pros are notoriously vague in their
explanations of their lines of play", and that they "are vague in
their critique of amatuer games." This would bear out my line of
thinking.
Answer:
Without entering into a detailed commentary, I would think that "having too
many principles" is already a progress from "having too many possible
moves". You can hierarchise principles (sente-> forcing moves->probing
moves) , categorize them ("shapes good for attack, don't attack by contact,
leaning attacks,...") and forget principles when they become "intuitive" (I
dont need rules for ladders any longer; I have trained myself ro read them
instantly), which leaves room for more advanced principles (like , say, the
rule which says to take immediately the stone, even if the ladder works).
Anyway, it depends a lot of the level of play: weak players need as much
principles as they can get their hands on, professionnals know already all
about fundamentals, and need breakthroughs, which as a rule ,are not easily
explained in term of principle (like Kitani-style moves in the 60's, or
Takemiya cosmic Go: there must be principles at the heart of those styles,
but what are they?) Another big problem is that theoretical high-level
concepts are very hard to break down from the intuitive level to one
understandable even from strong amateurs: I still don't really understand
"amashi", say, which means I can sometimes recognize it (at least when it is
pointed to me ;-)), but would be unable to explain it to any weaker
player...
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