On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 03:27 -0600, Matt Gokey wrote: > Learning these skills while thinking about a particular game's next > move > is not generally practical and even if possible would presumably > require > enormous extra time. Yet without this ability you are left with a > massively rapid expanding game tree to search. Finally this is why I > think it may be the case that doubling human thinking time for Go > might > not produce linear improvements.
You are still missing the point. What you are describing looks great on paper, but that's now how the extra time works. Even if you are given 10X more time, the benefit will come from not from suddenly being able to grasp master level concepts, but from repairing the little mundane problems that are just within your reach. And it will only effect a small number of moves. Most of the moves will be exactly as you say, confusing, and you will not be able to improve them (and I think this is the partly the source of what I consider the misconception some of us are having.) The other source of the misconception you also touched on. You mentioned "enormous extra time", which is correct. It DOES INDEED require enormous extra time, even in computer chess to make anything more than a modest improvement. The reason you just can't imagine that "a lot" of extra time will help you play a better move is because most of the time it won't! Your intuition is correct but your conclusion is incorrect. The improvement will come only from little mundane improvements of a very small number of moves - but that is enough to make your level of play go up a bit. Please note that for weak players, a LOT of moves need to be improved, and for strong players only a few need to be improved. But the way this works is that the stronger you get, the more impact improving just a few moves makes because your opponent is more likely to take advantage of your mistakes. Someone once did a computer chess experiment with really long and deep searches and they studied how often computers "changed their minds" when making moves. As it turns out, the rate of change (per ply or per doubling) tapers off as you go deeper and deeper. And yet the strength improvement is almost the same for each doubling. The computers follow your cognitive intuition that you posted about, they can think for an enormous amount of time and still not improve on the move. Improvement isn't about making ALL the moves better, only a few. It's almost always possible, given more time, to find some improvements in a few of your moves and this is what makes you play better. Since it takes geometrically increasing amounts of time to make the same strength jump, there is no chance you will play enormously better given any practical amount of time, which probably matches both your intuition on this, and the actual facts. - Don _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
