Influence/ Discussion

Sub-page of Influence

Bill: One thing, I think, that needs to be done is to distinguish between at least two senses of influence. One meaning is as in influence function. Another is as in outside influence, which is a common translation of the Oriental terms. (For the translations I would normally prefer strength to influence, but there we are.) Simply giving those terms as synonyms for influence is inaccurate.

Bob McGuigan: When I first ran across the go term influence I thought of it in the same sense that the word is used in geo-politics, as in sphere of influence. It meant that if a place was in country X's sphere of influence any other countries interested in that place would have take country X into account and modify behavior accordingly. This is very similar to the meaning of "outside influence", I think. If group has outside influence if it limits the other color's actions in that area. I'm not familiar with influence functions but I imagine they are a way of, algoritmically, delineating reigions of influence of groups or maybe also quantifying the amount of influence a certain group has at each (nearby) intersection on the board. If an ideal one could be developed then the two concepts would be equivalent since a group would have outside influence if a non-trivial influence function could be defined for it. But I am curious as to whether "perfect" influence functions can, in practice, be defined. Seems that would require a lot more knowledge of go than we have at present.


This is a copy of the living page "Influence/ Discussion" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
[Welcome to Sensei's Library!]
StartingPoints
ReferenceSection
About