Jonii comments on Rationality Lessons in the Game of Go - Less Wrong

40 Post author: GreenRoot 21 August 2010 02:33PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (145)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Jonii 22 August 2010 02:47:48PM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment deleted 22 August 2010 06:52:11PM [-]
Comment author: Perplexed 22 August 2010 07:08:43PM 5 points [-]

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.