It is better to become aware of good timing instead of teaching a dubious order carelessly just because that was done elsewhere.

I wrote what I wrote not because I had seen it elsewhere, but rather because it's what I think. I made no claim of truth rather I expressed my opinion as a 5k go player with 5 years of experience. I did not teach carelessly, but rather expressed my opinion. While I am inclined to agree that connection could come before eyes in a list of basics, I don't agree that the concept of an eye should be replaced with the concept of life. I think that eyespace precedes life, and is more elemental and thus more basic. You expressed a differing opinion, and while I respect the fact that you are stronger and have more experience, your characterization of what I wrote sounds as if you are calling me a charlatan and I resent it.

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Patience, grasshopper.

<meta-discussion>

He...

did...

not...

teach...

a...

particular...

order.

</meta-discussion>

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be immersed

The rules would be what I consider "Rudiments",

Two basic strategies might be, greed and influence.

Basics: things which are obvious to me but aren't obvious to you.

By writing "the basics are", you have expressed your preference for limiting the scope to only three concepts. When doing so, it is of great importance to choose the three most appropriate ones.

You have also chosen to start above the rules. Liberties are part of the rules, but surely liberties are important and can also be extended to other types of liberties than those physical liberties occurring in the rules.

The concept of eye is an illusion, until one draws a very close connection to life. The type of "eye" used for independent life is unambiguous only if life is already given and eye can be derived from the possibility of creation the basic form of life, the two-eye-formation. Something similar can be said for sekis and for semeais. "eye" is derived from "life" and a "seki-eye" is derived from a seki - not vice versa (unless one wants to create confusion by being ambiguous). Therefore "life" comes before "eye".

"eyespace" is something else than "eye", and "potential for eyespace" is yet something else. During a game, potential precedes realisation, but if you want to talk about potential, then it would be better to talk about "to surround space" and call that third the preceding basic besides connection as the second.

No, I don't call you a charlatan or whatever. That I disagree with your post being "excellent" simply means that I think it is only "good" for the mentioned reasons.

If you do not want to express order, then do not use numbers to order your basics. Your opinion has the potential of being perceived as teaching advice by beginners. Therefore I think it is better worked out more carefully. What about the following?

All these basics are important already for early beginners:
- liberties
- connection
- surrounding space
- life
- eyes

I agree that as a list, yours is probably more accurate, and I would amend yours to begin with the rules. I personally am less interested in the list itself than in thinking about what such a list represents. What do we mean when we say "the basics?" Two things came to my mind that I felt worth expressing.

The first was that there are certain elements of go that exist as something like a primal form of the game. I wrote the three that occurred to me. Indeed life should be included in some way, as what's more primal than that? The second aspect was that these properties of the stones all involved their relationship to the surrounding area in a vital way. This struck me as particularly interesting, because for several reasons, I suspect that focusing on the stones and not the space, is natural to many of us, but at the same time hinders our progress.

I cannot back this up, and I'm not really interested in trying. As I said, this is purely my opinion, and was offered in a thread started not by a beginner, but rather by someone who has played go for many years. He asked for opinions, not advice. As such, it was neither careless, nor mimicry.

Your comments about eyes, eyespace, potential eyespace and life are interesting, and I'm sure you've thought about these things more than I have. What I was thinking about is seeing how eyes develop from potential eyespace, and this is perhaps not really so basic. I'm not sure. Life on the other hand is contingent on the stones having two eyes, and seeing the space that can become eyes is the first step to living. This I suspect is a skill one should acquire early, but I suppose that living, although it can be rather tricky, is indeed a more basic property of the stones.

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Patience, grasshopper.

The problem is not using numbers. The problem is assuming that he was ordering by a declared importance, and then criticizing it based on your assumption.

Even if a numbered list were to imply an ordering, there was no indication in the text as to what the ordering was. Was he ordering by his preference? Was he ordering them reverse-alphabetically? Was he ordering them by easiest to explain? Was he ordering them by the items that he thought of first?

If anything, in the text he indicated that connections were important along with eyes, and not less important than them.

I enjoyed reading daal's post, and it would be a shame if he were turned off from making good posts in the future because of assumption-based criticism.

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be immersed

Well, it’s not that numbering it—and typing this in our traditional reading order: from top to bottom—would not propose where to begin and where to proceed, no?

But I actually agree and empathize with what I believe you mean … and I totally agree with this:

Yet I “liked” both daal’s and Robert’s posts. Why? Because I believe both were written with best intentions, i.e. willing to help others to become better Go players, and both posts contained (what I believe to be) good (=basic ) information, and I think I can see where Robert’s criticism points to (hint: not his books {you may disagree with me here, Robert }; and yes, I recommend his book “First Fundamentals”), and please note that his criticism is ad rem, not ad hominem.

Robert, I really really sympathize with you, but not always with the way you state things. Your content is something I always consider worth thinking about and discussing, but I can also understand how people can be p!ssed of by your form, or call it style of discussion or whatever.

To be honest—and please forgive me for talking this way here, out in the open, but I want this my opinion to be also read and understood by others here, since it always has ended up the same way before—I believe you’re a brillant thinker, extremely intelligent and gifted, AND I believe you may have a deficit in empathy, in … uhm … the art of social interaction. Between humans, that is; I assume that your cat loves you, if you have one.

There’s a thing called “rapport” in NLP and modern psychotherapy. This is, sort of, reassuring the counterpart that we are in common grounds, in peace, that we won’t eat them. You have sure heard the phrase “I’m OK, You’re OK” (actually the title of an IMHO very good psycho book by Thomas A. Harris, 1967, the foundation of Transactional Analysis). Once we have assured our counterpart that we respect them and don’t outright consider their thoughts to be bullsh!t, etc., etc., they will be much more open to our ideas.

Now, I also believe you may not be aware how many of your comments in this forum could be perceived as vitriolic, condescending, big-mouthed (etc., etc.)

Under normal circumstances I’d try to talk to you about such things in private, but on L19 there are no “normal circumstances” I mean: There is a large conflict already, and in my perception both “sides” show lack of empathy and readiness to view through the other’s eyes, if only for a moment. Therefore this is directed to both sides.

·•————————~————————•·
<sigh> This planet could be such a fine place if these we funny humans would learn to talk in positives instead of negatives and if they we would learn to avoid whatever is ambiguous and could be understood in a negative way by our counterpart. I can tell you, this is enough to learn for a lifetime—I’ve been trying to become a human since, uhm, begin of the 70s, and I’m still struggling with the basics, fundamentals, and essentials (in no particular order ).

Peace, Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

To begin or proceed with what? Like I said, numbering could be ordering by importance, easiest to understand, or anything else. i feel an assumption was made because disagreement was desired.

Still, regarding the rest of your post, I'm glad you're able to take a moderate stance on the matter

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be immersed

The purpose of [my] constructive criticism
- is not to turn off good posts
but
- is to motivate better than good posts, such where reader assumptions cannot lead to misinterpretation.

Likewise, the purpose of [your] criticism of assumption-based criticism
- is - I hope - not to turn off criticism
but
- is to motivate less misinterpretation due to assumptions.

Reconsider your assumptions.

Ok, Robert. Then tell me, what in daal's post made you feel that he felt that eyes were more important in the game of go than connections?

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be immersed

There's a thing called rapport in plain English, but it probably means the same.

Ah, no, not "more important" but "coming in order of understanding before". Anyway, with this change:

1) The use of a numbered list was suggestive.

2) In the context of discussion moving from "the basics in general" to, introduced by his post, "the basics lower than fundamentals" while restricting, what he declared to be "[all] the basics", he wanted to start from the bottom.

3) He started with, of the three, the most basic of the basics, the liberties, and spoke of "most basic".

4) For his second basic, he wrote "an extension on the idea of liberties". So he put his second basic on pile of the first basic. I.e., he created a functional order.

This was already too convincing for me, so I did not pay close attention that he did not describe his third basic on pile of his second basic but wrote "along with".

Just for the record, I was a bit ticked off by Robert's description of my post, but he's explained what he meant and so did I, what's the big deal? Is go really so uninteresting?

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Patience, grasshopper.

Uhm, Robert, are you aware that Kirby wrote “if he were turned off”, i.e. he was talking about daal, a person, not about their post, a thing. This is not about things, this is about people.

This may point exactly to what I wrote before. Let’s gain some awareness about what our words can do in others. People can understand us totally wrong because we 1) are are not accurate in our expressions (i.e. often ambiguous) and 2) because we tend to misunderstand wherever we can. And if we do, we most always tend to understand the worst possible meaning. E.g., I always need to remember that the characters I read on my screen are a text from a human expressing themselves, it’s not “just a post”. (And I for one tend to write from the bottom of my heart, and I know it can lead some to think, “what a BS”. Sometimes later I think so myself.)

So, what Kirby is expressing here (my interpretation, certainly) is his fear that daal could somehow feel p!ssed and be turned off from making good posts.

And IMNSHO there is no necessity to justify your post by declaring what the purpose of your criticism was NOT. I believe, and I suppose many people here do, that you write with best intentions. That’s not what this discussion is about. This is meta. And it’s not about what, it’s about how.


Great!

But! Isn’t it better to motivate by first telling “the kid” how well it performs? That it is good already? Anybody should surely appreciate respectful amendments and corrections if explained with sympathy and support, not contempt and patronizing. The first is what humans need to feel accepted and which “opens” them, the latter are for sure not your intention, but I swear, my perception is that many of your opponents in the discussions here read such in many of your posts. Some vitriol, some »von oben herab«/condescending, some “I’m/mine’s the greatest”. Again, I assure you that I believe this is not your intention, that you’d never want to be understood like this. But please consider that people 1) are inaccurate in their expressions and 2) people misunderstand each other (un)happily in the worst possible way. And if we’re not a bot, we’re “people”, so we are inaccurate in our expressions and so we also misunderstand. We may be more accurate than others, and/or we may understand better, but we cannot claim objectivity in our expression and our understanding. Well, we can, but this will lead to isolation and ceasing of meaningful communication with the outer world, which consists of … people who all believe they have the key to objectivity (I, for example, grok fundamental truths about how the universe and everything works )
________

OK, I see that meanwhile daal has replied also; well, I’ll post this nevertheless, hoping it is not too basic or brillant for at least a few to understand
And sorry for the threadjacking @ xed_over
________

K thx bye Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Sure; and, to calm down matters in my reply to Kirby, I have used a factual rather than a personal style. Now you misinterpret me as not calming down matters? What about your social competence? O o. It is possible to write one sentence here without misunderstanding?:)



Disucssion should proceed rather than state the obvious. I am a child of usenet discussion, where the factual, anti-kid style is frequent.

So my point is, Robert, that in this situation, you criticized a point that we don't even know that daal was trying to make. In daal's next post, he indicated that he felt resentment.

If you truly desire a constructive approach, is it possible that it might be better to simply respond to the original post directly, and indicate what you personally feel constitute "the basics"?

This way, the following can be accomplished:
1.) People can respect daal's contribution for what it was.
2.) daal does not feel resentment.
3.) People can still read your view on things, and evaluate it in its own right.
4.) You have the opportunity to comprehensively respond to the question at hand.
5.) You add to your reputation as one knowledgeable of fundamentals.

In criticizing that which may not have even being intended in daal's text, not all of these benefits are realized.

In other words, the "constructive" part of your "constructive criticism" can be utilized in isolation for what appears to be a greater beneficial effect.

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be immersed

What can I say, daal? It's Friday, and I'm burnt out from a week of work. I suppose I should try to do something more productive with my time. I guess this is why I suck at go...

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be immersed