Another example to add to the post. A few years ago I was learning to play Go, and thus playing against superior players. In Go, typically what happens is one player will make a move that signals something, like “I can take this territory” or “I can attack this group of pieces successfully” and the other player needs to decide whether to directly oppose this move, or to accept it and play elsewhere instead.
So I asked myself—if I disagree with a superior player’s assessment of the situation (i.e. he makes a move I think I can punish), what should I do? Statistically I’m probably wrong about my assessment. But then I realized that if I accepted their move, I would never find out why they were right. If I opposed the move, and was quickly punished (my group was destroyed, or the player successfully defended their “too aggressive” move) I would get to find out why I was wrong immediately. So I began playing according to my instincts even though they would lose me more exchanges in the short term, since it was the direction of maximum learning.
Another example to add to the post. A few years ago I was learning to play Go, and thus playing against superior players. In Go, typically what happens is one player will make a move that signals something, like “I can take this territory” or “I can attack this group of pieces successfully” and the other player needs to decide whether to directly oppose this move, or to accept it and play elsewhere instead.
So I asked myself—if I disagree with a superior player’s assessment of the situation (i.e. he makes a move I think I can punish), what should I do? Statistically I’m probably wrong about my assessment. But then I realized that if I accepted their move, I would never find out why they were right. If I opposed the move, and was quickly punished (my group was destroyed, or the player successfully defended their “too aggressive” move) I would get to find out why I was wrong immediately. So I began playing according to my instincts even though they would lose me more exchanges in the short term, since it was the direction of maximum learning.