On 02.02.2016 13:05, "Ingo Althöfer" wrote:
when a student starts studying Mathematics (s)he learns in the first two semesters that everything has to be defined waterproof. Later, in particular when (s)he comes near to doing own research, you have to make compromises - otherwise you will never make much progress.
When I studied maths and theoretical informatics at FU Berlin (and a bit at TU Berlin) (until quitting because of studying too much go, of course), during all semesters with every paper, lecture, homework or professor, everything had to be well-defined, assumptions complete and mandatory proofs accurate.
As a hobby go theory / go rules theory researcher, I can afford the luxury of choosing formality (see Cycle Law), semi-formality (see Ko) or informality (in informal texts) because I need not pass university degrees with the work. My luxury of laziness / convenience when I use semi-formal style (as typical in the theory parts of my go theory papers) indeed has the advantages of being understood more easily from the go player's (also my own) perspective and allowing my faster research progress. If I had had to use formal style for every text, I might have finished only half of the papers.
If we can believe Penrose (The Road to Reality) and Smolin (The Trouble with Physics), the world of mathematical physics is split into guesswork (string theory without valid mathematical foundation) and accurate maths. Progress might not be made because too many have lost themselves in the black hole of ambiguous string theory. Computer go theory seems to be similar to physics.
-- robert jasiek _______________________________________________ Computer-go mailing list Computer-go@computer-go.org http://computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
