FBI and NYPD Officers Sent On Museum Field Trip

In an attempt to "refresh their sense of inquiry" FBI agents, and NYPD officers are being sent to a course at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Art of Perception hopes to improve an officers' ability to accurately describe what they see during an investigation by studying art. From the article: "Amy Herman, the course leader, said: 'We're getting them off the streets and out of the precincts, and it refreshes their sense of inquiry. They're thinking, "Oh, how am I doing my job," and it forces them to think about how they communicate, and how they see the world around them.' Ms Herman, an art historian, originally developed the course for medical students, but successfully pitched it as a training course to the New York Police Academy."

Comments

ze inspecter

[rossdee]

Did they catch any art thieves?

Re:Meditation

[bluefoxlucid]

Nobody plays Go (or Chess; but Go is a superior game)

I have to ask: why is Go superior to Chess? Easier to pick up? More possible permutations? It was created in China as opposed to Chess which is a Western game?

I don't see how any of these reasons make Go inherently superior to Chess. Hell, even Checkers is a pretty damn good game and there are a million other good ones out there.

Let's say that "superiority" is a fuzzy term first. No matter my arguments, someone will come with a completely different list of valuable aspects of a game and claim that X is superior to Y because these aspects are more important.

Checkers is a simpler game than Chess, but in the same vein. I would call Chess superior, because Checkers allows for isometric thinking (i.e. breadth, but very little depth... look at the field and play). Checkers is also quite shallow: pieces move around and do not really guard other pieces to any great strategic extent (they do, but not to the extent of Chess or Go), so moves are usually pretty isolated and play is rather basic. All pieces being identical initially, and then in two classes, Checkers allows a huge amount of flexibility on a strategically simple game.

When we talk about Chess in relation to Checkers, moving a pawn to a position is in no way similar to moving a knight, bishop, rook, or queen to that position. Getting any piece there is different. Their strategic meaning is completely different. Having a bunch of pieces in one area can be a weakness if they can't function as an efficient military unit; you have to have a proper strategy. This makes Chess superior to Checkers.

Now, let's compare Chess and Checkers to Backgammon, let's say. Chess and Checkers being in the same vein, we'll take just Chess. Backgammon is man versus luck: you roll dice and see what happens. Chess on the other hand sets up two opposing armies with strategic configuration, pitting a man with a concrete goal (unconditional capture of the king) against another man by strategy. Thus, Chess represents the struggle of Man versus Man: a man's tactical cunning against his opponent will produce victory.

In Go, you start with an empty board. Immediately playing against your opponent will win you ... nothing. The brief study of Joseki helps ensure that such petty plays as to immediately confront lone stones comes out balanced; the farther reaching study of Go teaches the foundations of this, so that altering the Joseki only puts you at a loss since your opponent responds with devastating play that shifts the balance to his favor. Thus the opening is about playing your influence, spreading out enough to gain territorial control but not so much as to lose strength in the later play of the game as your opponent isolates your dispersed stones from one another while approaching them with his own.

The play of Go further continues with understandings of not just small patterns here and there; but of the intrinsic connections that form between stones. Go follows the concept of "Life and Death," and shapes begin to form which can become alive or be killed by cunning play. At the same time, seemingly distant stones may provide a clear path to escape death and to connect shape: stones may be impossible to divide from each other despite the board being so open. Play can thus establish strong territorial control, but only by seeing many, many possibilities and at the same time few or none. Rather than playing small areas and connecting, you play small areas and at the same time consider the larger, far reaching impact of each individual stone to the whole of the playing field.

Thus improvement of the game of Go is considered to come from improvement of the self. You have no direct goal against your opponent; your goal is to maintain control of territory, by influence. Your influence includes securing large and small areas of the board, and encroaching deeply into opponent territory maybe