[conanbatt]

Take it from someone that walked the path of becoming a professional Go player, being a professional and an amateur are completely different attitudes towards the game. Tic Tac Toe is solved, but can be fun to play when you are a kid. Amateur Go playing can still exist, but the goal of strength is more instilled in the path to pro-ship.

This really suggests that going the path of being the strongest is no longer sensical. Why would a human try to be the best calculator in the world, knowing it will never beat any calculator ever? Just to prove itself to other human caculator wannabes? Senseless.

This is a real paradigm shift and we still need to understand what to do. But obliviously ignore AlphaGo is akin should be unfathomable for a professional aspiring player.

As a professional, the first question to ask is what will AlphaGo bring to Go Theory. We still dont know how much stronger it is than Lee Sedol (or how far it is from "God"). Pushing it to its limits will show us insights we havent found yet and we will update ourselves as players to the most current theory.

The second step is answering the following question: Can human + AlphaGo beat Alpha Go? A human potentiated with AlphaGo's reading power can intuitively pick variations that would give it an edge? If so, we have found that Go still harbors a human secret that is jsut overly compensated by reading.

The last step would be, even if human participation gives negligible results, can human + Alpha Go create better games than Alpha Go?

[tbrake]

And yet in chess the Carlsens, Nakamuras, Caruanas, Svidlers etc of the world still compete while knowing they have no chance of beating StockFish running on a modern desktop.

The super GMs of the world - and basically all of the chess loving public with them - seem to have acknowledged it and moved on; why would such a transition be impossible in Go?

[conanbatt]

It might happen, but I hope it doesn't.

I cannot speak for Chess's mindset but as a Devoted Go Player, we are collectively trying to solve it, and so we have for centuries. We play Go to explore its universe and reach utmost understanding of the game(and a glimpse of ourselves). If we ever find(which eventually we shuold) the exact single pattern that is best for both players, and we solve the game, it becomes something different. Maybe it becomes something senseless, or something artful(I can explain the 'art' part if someone asks) but trying to be competitive is silly.

If I devoted my life to Go today, I would not aim at becoming better competing, I'd have to aim at a more effective way to solve the game. Competing was the only thing we had to figure out what was best, but now we can have a companion that will prevent us from faulty variations and logic, and give us instant validation. We can discover more fuseki with a focus group and AlphaGo in a month than in a decade of tournaments.

Competing for the sake of competing is a petty goal.

[nightcracker]

> Competing for the sake of competing is a petty goal.

This makes me much more angry than it probably should. Who are you to decide what is or what is not a petty goal? People will always do what they enjoy, and if they enjoy competition then that is what they will do. There is nothing wrong or petty about that.

[conanbatt]

Its a petty goal because the only thing you want to do is be better than the others. In the end, only 1 person is right, and the only consolation is that others are worse for you. Its also not representative of Go, you can be competitive in eating sausages. If your only reason to play Go is to compete, your contribution to the Go community is marginal

[chipsy]

With respect to Checkers (specifically, the 8x8 English Draughts variant), it's been a solved game as of last decade, and people still play in tournaments. I don't think it's that silly, since there are many techniques we've automated away, yet still practice by hand.

[keithpeter]

"[...]we are collectively trying to solve it, and so we have for centuries. We play Go to explore its universe and reach utmost understanding of the game(and a glimpse of ourselves)."

Is there a literature available in English that explores this attitude/practice? It sounds most interesting. You seem to derive significant meaning from the game and I'm interested in how groups of people find meaning in collective activities.

[conanbatt]

This is more of an insight you get about Go Life, not something we "All know and agree of". Hikaru No Go was a manga that talked a bit about the purpose of playing Go, about being connected with Go players since time immemorial, trying to get perfect play, and failing but getting better each generation.

This is a professional or go devotee mindset, not a typical amateur player that plays without the intent of changing Go Theory or making a legacy.

[Noos]

Why would you do so? The computer will advance much, much quicker than you will because it doesn't have to memorize or be inefficiently trained to be good at Go. It will be able to solve things better than you will, and one day the game will be solved and truly pointless.

[conanbatt]

We might get much quicker to the solution of Go Working with the computers as Go players and scientists, than only scientists.

[deanCommie]

Could you explain to me (someone with a very naive superficial understanding of Go) how Go relates to exploring and understanding the universe?

[yannyu]

Anything that Go has to go through as a result of AlphaGo, Chess has already gone through with Stockfish and its predecessors (such as Deep Blue, though I realize it's not exactly the same).

Is there a particular reason why a chess computer would be any more undefeatable than a Go computer? Even though Kasparov lost, Nakamura destroyed Rybka 10 years later. Now that we have a competitive Go AI, isn't it likely the game of Go will shift and be even more competitive since now more players can get world-class practice and suggestions on their own?

[conanbatt]

If I understand AlphaGo correctly, I don't think that any human in the future will be able to beat the AlphaGo today. AlphaGo didn't beat Lee Sedol because it played new and marvelous moves we need to understand.

It played better because it knew the exact consequences of the options it was presented, and could calculate it and make better decisions than human intuition. No human can develop that reading power, and its not reasonable to think a human in the future will have intuition that beats the calculation of AlphaGo.

Since reading, the core ability of Go can now be completely replaced by a computer, the question is what others decisions can a player make. Can he make strategic decisions better than AlphaGo? Can intuition still best AlphaGo calculating capacity?

Eventually, we can think that we will have computational power to actually solve Go, and if there is any sense at all to play Go after that, its about finding those beautiful games, from beginning to end, that provoke emotions and turn Go purely into art.

[bouvin]

Nakamura may have beaten Rybka, but even with Rybka at his side, he could not stand against a handicapped Stockfish (https://www.chess.com/news/stockfish-outlasts-nakamura-3634).

[c3534l]

Eventually everything we do will be done better by technology. Why should anyone do anything? I think the experience is worthwhile in and of itself and I look forward to what AI can teach us about the game.

[joesb]

Hardest heavy weight boxer is a lot weaker than machine. The fastest baseball pitcher cannot throw faster than a throwing machine.