As some commenters have mentioned, we should be able to derive lessons of rationality from any game (such as Backgammon or Chess), not just Go. After all, rationalists should win, so whatever helps us be rational will help as win, at games as at life.
However, just because being rational helps with the game, that doesn’t mean that students of the game will learn this. (After all, being rational helps with real life, yet many students of real life miss these lessons entirely!) Each game (at least each that has long been widely played) has its own literature and tradition of strategy with maxims and advice, and this is what students will learn.
Now, Go is so simple in principle that one quickly gets past advice which is specific to the game and into advice that applies more widely. So we actually have literature, written by specialists in a game rather than in rationality, that stresses (for example) the importance of accurate beliefs. And so players actually learn this lesson.
(To see if Go is really special in this regard, we’d have to actually check the literature of other games. Don’t trust my just-so story about how Go’s rules are simple, etc; that’s unsupported twaddle.)
(After all, being rational helps with real life, yet many students of real life miss these lessons entirely!)
I like this point. Actually it is more common in life to learn the value of being hypocritical, instead of being rational. E.g. most people act as if there was no afterlife, which is rational, but maintain that there is an afterlife, which is not. What games, or real-life situations, punish hypocrisy and not just irrationality?
However, just because being rational helps with the game, that doesn’t mean that students of the game will learn this. (After all, being rational helps with real life, yet many students of real life miss these lessons entirely!) Each game (at least each that has long been widely played) has its own literature and tradition of strategy with maxims and advice, and this is what students will learn.
Right on—I hear a lot of twaddle about the benefits of martial arts practice, especially in their marketing or articles, but rarely do students actually accrue those benefits if they aren’t specifically trying to. This probably generalizes.
This reminds me of a recent correlational study discussed on the dual n-back mailing list, about comparing Go experts with non-experts. (Have to scroll down.)
The Go experts had, if anything, lower IQs; the spatial mechanisms that the Go experts seem to be drawing upon for their performance don’t seem to generalize. Like chess, Go may stress WM and IQ early on, but eventually domain-specific stuff comes to dominate.
You however have to know that a lot of go experts also usually spent less time on other task that can improve mental skills.
Korean go professionals for example don’t have a normal school education but instead spend that time of their life with learning go.
Yes, but while schooling gives an IQ boost, it isn’t that much of one. At least, I vaguely remember the one study I’ve heard of which shows causality only showing a few points. That might offset the observed decrease, but given that I naively expected the Go experts to have average IQs 20 points higher or so, is still a deeply counterintuitive result.
As some commenters have mentioned, we should be able to derive lessons of rationality from any game (such as Backgammon or Chess), not just Go. After all, rationalists should win, so whatever helps us be rational will help as win, at games as at life.
However, just because being rational helps with the game, that doesn’t mean that students of the game will learn this. (After all, being rational helps with real life, yet many students of real life miss these lessons entirely!) Each game (at least each that has long been widely played) has its own literature and tradition of strategy with maxims and advice, and this is what students will learn.
Now, Go is so simple in principle that one quickly gets past advice which is specific to the game and into advice that applies more widely. So we actually have literature, written by specialists in a game rather than in rationality, that stresses (for example) the importance of accurate beliefs. And so players actually learn this lesson.
(To see if Go is really special in this regard, we’d have to actually check the literature of other games. Don’t trust my just-so story about how Go’s rules are simple, etc; that’s unsupported twaddle.)
I like this point. Actually it is more common in life to learn the value of being hypocritical, instead of being rational. E.g. most people act as if there was no afterlife, which is rational, but maintain that there is an afterlife, which is not. What games, or real-life situations, punish hypocrisy and not just irrationality?
Approximate quote from Taleb: “Nature doesn’t tell you how many slots there are in the roulette wheel”.
Right on—I hear a lot of twaddle about the benefits of martial arts practice, especially in their marketing or articles, but rarely do students actually accrue those benefits if they aren’t specifically trying to. This probably generalizes.
This reminds me of a recent correlational study discussed on the dual n-back mailing list, about comparing Go experts with non-experts. (Have to scroll down.)
The Go experts had, if anything, lower IQs; the spatial mechanisms that the Go experts seem to be drawing upon for their performance don’t seem to generalize. Like chess, Go may stress WM and IQ early on, but eventually domain-specific stuff comes to dominate.
You however have to know that a lot of go experts also usually spent less time on other task that can improve mental skills. Korean go professionals for example don’t have a normal school education but instead spend that time of their life with learning go.
Yes, but while schooling gives an IQ boost, it isn’t that much of one. At least, I vaguely remember the one study I’ve heard of which shows causality only showing a few points. That might offset the observed decrease, but given that I naively expected the Go experts to have average IQs 20 points higher or so, is still a deeply counterintuitive result.