Comments on: On top of old crikey

By: snikolenko

snikolenko — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:47:02 +0000

True in a sense, though, of course, Go professionals do have explicit reasons for their moves and do support their decisions with specific analysis (at least, judging by their post-game analysis, where they often write something like “so taking all of the above ten pages into account, I chose move X”). The aesthetics have to do with final position evaluation in one’s analysis, but to have a “final” position to evaluate one usually has to consider specific sequences. Btw, it’s easier for humans to search through moves in Go (as compared to chess or reversi), so professionals do count deeply.

By: J C Lawrence

J C Lawrence — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:23:33 +0000

A friend described the determination of moves in Go at the higher levels as competitive aesthetics. The core concept was that some moves were simply prettier or more attractive than others, a determination produced by the neural network that the Go players had been training in their study of the game. Oh, of course in many cases they could retroactively support why a given move was more aesthetic with direct ply analysis, but that was post-facto to the aesthetic decision.

I rather like this view.

By: snikolenko

snikolenko — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 06:25:17 +0000

You have described Go exactly. In a game of Go, it is not uncommon to have a dozen of very reasonable choices for a turn. Each has very deep and long-lasting implications (since every stone may define the structure) that are impossible to forecast except in a very general sense. And yes, as the game enters the end phase, all decisions become explicitly calculable (although very far from trivial even at that point).