Cargo Cult Go

   

The cargo cults of Melanesia are classic examples of bogus reasoning based on the all too common fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc. Residents of several Pacific islands observed that military forces during World War II built landing strips which were shortly followed by aircraft delivering cargo. They later built their own torch illuminated airstrips, mock antennas and a control tower complete with a guy wearing wooden headphones. A whole religion emerged based on the belief that these recreations would eventually bring back foreigners' planes brimming with cargo.

Richard Feynman coined the term [ext] cargo cult science to describe pseudosciences which attempt to superficially copy some of the trappings of true science without groking their meaning and without any understanding of the scientific method.

I've shamelessly copied the term to refer to a kind of go played by many novices (including, on occasion, myself) where the player copies moves they've seen elsewhere without understanding their meaning.[1] The fact that the moves work for strong players[2] and not for themselves can be quite mystifying. Some examples of cargo cult go include:

  • Memorizing joseki without understanding the reasons for the moves
  • Playing tesuji when they don't work, or the result isn't meaningful
  • Fighting a meaningless ko
  • Playing a ladder incorrectly because it wasn't really read out properly
  • Playing any move without even considering the whole board situation
  • Using the wrong joseki for a given situation
  • Excessive use of Japanese jargon (when speaking about the game in a language other than Japanese)

Author: Fwiffo


[1]tderz: Consider this:
Children learn (languages a.o.) just by copying.

[2] How did strong players become strong?
Go Seigen a.o. became a very strong amateur prodigy child with it (before turning professional).
According to some sources - perhaps on MSO by John F. - he largely replayed professional games until he got his digit finger bend backwards (from holding the magazines & books).
Did Go understand all at first? Most probably not.

On some other places on Senseis it has been advocated to play moves of which one is convinced that they are good (they resemble professional one's) even if one does not fully understand them (i.e. see all sequences why they are good).

I find copying is a natural way of learning.
This differs from those island inhabitants above - they did what they could (they could not copy the airplanes and fly to the industrialized countries).

Making mistakes - as you give some Go examples above - is an essential part of learning.
You learn in an iterative process, approach optimum results and what has been learned sticks much better.

The difference, distinction between copying with understanding and copying without understanding cannot fully be seen from the outside. The ladder, the ko, the joseki - perhaps it was well understood, yet 1 error? (not a wrong concept?) everything.


Strong players make less mistakes, yet they were weaker before.
I am convinced a certain deal of good copying - daring new concepts, while not fully mastering them - improved them.

DJ: All my experience (FWIW) with Japan and China is that in every Art (including martial ones) the Sensei (Sifu) doesn't say much when teaching. He/she just performs his/her Art. The insei has to watch carefully and try to replay at his/her best.
Try and try and try and repeat and repeat until everything goes together...

kokiri: i guess it comes down to a question of intent/attitude. One of my maths teachers, a long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, had a poster that said something along the lines of it's not cheating to look up the answer in the back and try to understand why, it's not cheating to ask your mate, and work out how he got the answer - cheating is when to tell yourself you understand, but really you don't. その通り。 Although, i think its fair to ask, why do we weak amateurs open games in the corners in the vast majority of the time? Is it blind copying, or is it cos we don't want to embarass ourselves?


This is a copy of the living page "Cargo Cult Go" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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