You do realize that we had a war in the 1860's that dealt with many of these same issues, right? And that it was pretty definitively decided that in reality you do not unilaterally get to decide to simply shed off the federal government, especially through violence?
It was "decided" in might-makes-right fashion. It was also "decided" that the people have a right to revolt, as in the American Revolution.
Personally, I'd like to see anyone who thinks that our current government is a tyranny worthy of armed revolt go live for a while in a country where there is real tyranny to get a little perspective.
I actually agree with this. There's still the right to vote. There's always going to be laws that you don't agree with. If everybody killed somebody over being angry at a law, it would be like living in one of those murderous hell-holes where only a brutal strongman can survive.
However, if the right to vote is lost and the state turns fascist, I fully support an armed revolution.
Maybe you sleep better at night thinking that at any moment you can rise up against the government, but practically speaking, all of your little pea shooters won't do crap against one well-equipped soldier who could vaporize you just by pressing a button.
It's not so simple, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan showed. Militarily, there is no contest. Yet when a percentage of the population refuses to be cowed and will attack you asymmetrically, you have a problem.
I wouldn't call Slashdot a "social networking" site, any more that I would call a newsgroup a social networking site. It's a discussion site driven by news. Sites like Facebook are driven much more by people people becoming friends with each other and sharing interests. The friend/foe stuff on Slashdot is much more minimal.
You definitely have a valid point the about the hypocrisy in the grandparent's statement.
Though this does raise the question of why Blockbuster, cable companies, ISPs et al still ask for it with impunity.
He didn't say it was illegal. He said that's the excuse he uses to the peons asking for it, since they don't know any better. It's not illegal for a private entity to ask for it. You can refuse it, but then they can refuse service if you don't provide it.
A private person, on the other hand, should have the right to keep things private from the public, for example the police file on him.
1. Julian Assange has made himself a very public person. 2. A blanket claim that police files are private is dubious. Criminal proceedings are generally a matter of public record.
War wouldn't disappear, but come on. When Israel/Iran - India/Pakistan start tossing nukes it will be religion.
Both World Wars weren't fought over religion. Hitler wasn't religious. Stalin wasn't religious. South Korea and North Korea don't fight over religion. The Cold War and threat of nuclear annihilation was not over religion. The United States invading Iraq was not over religion.
Sorry, mankind doesn't need religion to fight. I'm an atheist and despise all the evil done in the name of religion, but religion is not the fundamental problem.
Yes, the debate is quite old, but that doesn't mean it's meaningless or not worth having. Problems with the Japanese rules are downplayed by their proponents, which leads to misinformation and frustration among new players who are told how simple they are. There are also practical concerns in tournament play among amateurs, which is why the AGA and other associations moved away from them.
But the implication that Monte Carlo methods were new to Computer Go in the early 'noughties simply isn't true.
I never said Monte Carlo was new. I said "Go programs went through a great leap from 2006 to present, due to the technique of Monte Carlo Tree Search.". In your first post, you denied that Monte Carlo was the main component. After I refuted that, you now argue argue about the date.
Yes, absolutely, Monte Carlo has been around for a long time, but with very limited success. It was only starting in 2006 that it became wildly successful and took over the scene as the standard way to implement a bot. Before that it was simply a minor, but interesting area of research. This is all documented in the computer-go mailing list archives and refereed papers.
What is a 4D on KGS out in the real world?
Which real world? There are many ranking systems, and they all vary to some extent among each other. KGS is as real as any of them. 4d on KGS is quite a respectable rank. Also, the ranks on KGS have been fairly stable for some years now.
There's nothing controversial about this if you follow computer Go development. Before Monte Carlo, programs were stuck in a rut. They were improving, but very slowly. After Monte Carlo, they quickly went from something like 8k to 2k, and have now reached 4d on KGS. Every strong bot today uses Monte Carlo Tree Search as it's fundamental algorithm (as opposed to alpha-beta).
But all the reasonably effective engines used other algorithms in different parts of their gameplay.
Not really. The heart is Monte Carlo Tree Search, like the heart of most chess programs is alpha-beta. The stronger programs add more Go knowledge to the search process, just like a chess engine might have knowledge about pawn structure, but it's still Monte Carlo.
In fact, IIRC one of the big bears of Computer Go (it may have been Nick Wedd - I'll try to remember to ask him next time he beats me at the board) built a pure MC Computer Go engine precisely to use as an opponent for computer Go engines.
It sounds like you're thinking of Don Dailey and CGOS. He runs a dumb Monte Carlo bot as a standard player, true, but it's intentionally dumb and not very advanced. Actually I think the benchmark players have been upgraded recently, because the old one was falling too far behind.
The interesting thing is that GnuGo (without Monte Carlo) was used as the benchmark player when people started coming out with Monte Carlo bots. Early programs would get something like 20% win rate against it. Monte Carlo programs now completely dominate it.
He's either a smart criminal (rarely does a murder get 10 years of freedom after killing someone before the conviction) or a victim.
He's either a dumb criminal, or a victim of a very smart and dedicated frame-up. Searching for evidence on how to kill somebody from your home computer, and then following through is very stupid. A smart criminal would have found an anonymous way to do it. He also told a coworker that he wanted to kill his wife.
I don't know why it took 10 years to get the conviction. Sometimes the law moves slow, or feels that they just don't have enough evidence, even if there is a lot of incriminating evidence.
The management of a company are ultimately investors, they can either reinvest profits into new products and grow the company, or pay out to shareholders if they figure they can't do better than the shareholders with that money.
One thing you can be sure of, they will reward themselves handsomely for as long as they're in charge, in both salary and stock options. The individual investor just hopes the company continues to do well, so that there's another investor down the line. What happens when the company fails, as most companies will, eventually? The last shareholders are left holding the bag.
They really pissed off a lot of their fan base by making everything run through Battle.net (no LAN, persistent online activation). People were also pissed about the game being split into three, with the story for only 1 race. I think the people who were cool with that generally like the game.
I once zapped a PC with static electricity through the little key lock in front. After that, it would eat keyboards. I ended up replacing the motherboard.
They're filled with whatever because I don't agree with the AGA or you and never have.
Then cut the passive/aggressive bullshit like "You already won, I said so."
The fact is I did win. You started out with ridiculous claims that nobody ever had problems at tournaments, that Japanese rules were easy to apply, and that after a few games (or a couple of hours on KGS) life and death issues at the end of games weren't a problem for beginners.
You've made incorrect arguments concerning Ing, made incorrect arguments concerning the history and application of Japanese rules, failed to understand that AGA and Japanese rules weren't somehow miraculously the same, and gave simplistic and wrong advice concerning what is dead and what isn't. Anybody who read just your statements alone would have been completely misinformed on a whole host of issues.
I backed up my claims, after being told I was naive or obstinate, with observations from KGS, data from my own personal games, and an official letter from the AGA. I pointed out how the Go associations for the United States, Britain, France, and New Zealand all moved away from Japanese rules for practical reasons.
So, "whatever" yourself. I'm done replying to you.
I'd take your replies a lot more serious if they weren't filled with "whatever", didn't look so sarcastic, and didn't make incorrect statements like those regarding Ing.
As I mentioned earlier, I do play on KGS. I care more than most because like Kim0 and many others, I had a bad experience trying to learn the Japanese rules.
I find plenty of value discussion on Slashdot all the time. It would be much worse off if dissenting opinions were simply deleted, especially at the whim of a site owner.
Ing had his own ruleset. As far as I know, he had nothing to do with AGA rules. AGA traditionally took money from the Nihon Ki-in, but they moved away from Japanese rules despite the funding, because Japanese rules have a complex and imprecise playout. All the Go associations that moved away from Japanese rules did so for practical purposes, as clearly stated in the Transmittal Letter I linked to and quoted from.
I never said nobody could play under Japanese rules. I just said there were problems with them, as opposed to how simple and problem-free you were painting them. Beginners struggle with them, and for a very small percentage of games, even experienced players can run into trouble. They are hard to define precisely, and you can't blame Ing for that. Even the Nihon Ki-in tried and came up short. It's just the nature of the rules.
As for the pass stone, you don't really need to know why it's used. All you really need to know is that AGA rules are Chinese/area-scoring rules, where dame is worth 1 point. The pass stone is used as a trick to let you count using the Japanese method, but AGA rules are just Chinese rules in disguise, and you could forgo the pass stone if you counted using the Chinese method instead.
It's not bullshit, the rules are fine. You don't understand them yet or you're being intentionally obstinate.
I've already explained a couple of times why your explanation is bullshit, yet you completely ignore all the details. You are the one being obstinate.
The game is fine and it's survived thousands of years, hundreds with the rules they use now and few have problems with it.
Maybe you can explain why the Go associations for the United States, Britain, New Zealand, and France all moved away from Japanese rules. If you want the answer, look here:
See the section under "Transmittal letter". In particular:
"the American Go Association has for several years been working toward a "simplified" set of rules for use among amateurs--a set of rules at once simple enough to be understood by beginners, clear and comprehensive enough to guide tournament play among amateurs--when the tournament director (and the strongest players present) may not even be of dan level"
"For amateur players in the West, where professionals are few and far between, and entire cities and regions may lack even dan-level amateur players, however, such rules present difficulties. We believe that our "simplified" rules are more appropriate for use with amateurs, especially where no very strong players are available as arbiters or referees."
"The status of disputed groups is to be settled by playing out the full-board situation.
Playing out the situation allows players of varying levels to resolve complex life-and-death situations according to their abilities, without depending on outside authorities or exhaustive analysis, and hence is most suitable for amateur play. While the new Nihon Ki-in rules are carefully crafted to resolve most of the difficult cases which used to require exccptional handling, and are probably very appropriate for professional play, they depend on a high level of sophistication in analyzing each position based on rules which are slightly different from normal play (due to the special handling of kos). In principle, resolving such end-of-game disputes requires the players--or some competent authority in attendance--to have the capacity to resolve life-and-death problems of arbitrary complexity! Rather than attempt to resolve each local situation "in principle" in the ideal fashion through extensive analysis, playing the position out achieves a fair result (it is based on the relative reading strengths of the players themselves) in potentially bounded time without the need to appeal to outside authorities or make use of special rules."
There is no appeal to authority. The rules are very clearly defined.
No, they aren't, and that is why there is a very long history of failed attempts at formalizing them. They work well enough among experienced players.
At tournaments, there are sometimes 200 people none of which would ever disagree about what is dead and what is not.
Disagreements are rare, but not the zero concurrence you indicate here.
The problem is (and I can agree that this is a problem, but only for the first few games at most), that Japanese rules require that you understand alive and dead.
Many people give up on the game because they don't understand the Japanese Catch-22 logic. Beyond that, disputes still occasionally occur beyond the first few games, which results in players usually verbally disputing the position, and then appealing to authority to resolve it if that doesn't work. I play on KGS. I've seen this happen many times.
In games with beginners, I explain that you need two eyes and then encourage them to try to live or kill my shape. It's all quite clear after the first few times. And there's no ambiguity at all; no matter how hard you try to create some, there simply isn't any.
Bullshit. I've already explained that your "two eyes" is simplistic and wrong. It doesn't work for seki. Let's also hear how that explanation works for bent-4 in the corner. Even 20-kyu players, who have played dozens of games, have trouble with certain life and death situations. I can even show you examples from players near 10-kyu, or even dan players, all from games that I have personally played. These are not common situations, but they DO happen now and then. I estimated it at a 1% occurrence of my games.
The only practical difference is that in the Japanese rules the attempt will change the score
Only beginners see this as a problem because they don't understand life and death yet.
Which is entirely the point. What is alive or dead should be determined by the skill of the players and simple rules, not appeal to authority.
If they try to leave the stone there, we point out that it doesn't have two eyes, so it's dead.
A simplistic and incorrect rule. First, you have to precisely define what an eye is. What you really mean is that two eyes *can* be made, which depends on skillful play. Second, seki doesn't conform to that rule.
It is most certainly well defined.
If you consider hypothetically perfect play, then maybe it's well defined, but now you're getting into Robert Jasiek territory. Japanese rules require Go skill, to acquire Go skill you have to understand the rules so you can play, resulting in the absurd Catch-22 situation.
Now compare all of the above to Chinese-style rules. What is alive or dead? Just play and find out.
If that stone is unable to kill anything, or make shape, and I pass, then I have just gained a point, as White.
The problem, though, is that to prove that the stone is dead, it would take 4 stones to kill it, which would end up losing points. You can tell a beginner that it is "dead" and can be removed without play, but then you just leave the beginner confused about how grossly unfair and arbitrary the rules are.
Japanese rules don't define an easy procedure to continue play without changing the score. Chinese-style rules do.
In practice the problem you see (ambiguities in the endgame) are only really an issue for computer Go.
Wrong. New players frequently have a hard time understanding Japanese rules. This is why people like Kim0 exist. On their own, the Japanese rules logically don't make sense. You have to know how to play to end the game, and you have to know how to end the game before you can learn how to play.
Instead, new players should be referred to Chinese-style rules. The Japanese rules are fine for experienced players.
Perhaps a good analogy is poetry
No, that's a terrible analogy. There are no rules to poetry, and there is no winner and loser. You're just adding confusion.
The rule is that game is over when both players agree that it is over: if there is a disagreement, the game is played on.
That's the problem with Japanese rules. It is not easy to "play on" and determine the score. It is trivial with Chinese-style rules.
Go is a truly fascinating game, and also a very human one (computers will play it well one day, but probably about the same time that they get good at writing poems, playing tricks, or asking why).
Computers already play the game well. They have reached dan status.
In fact, if you include stone passing (see AGA Rules) then Chinese and Japanese rules work out the same.
As if by magic? You're confused. The AGA rules are just Chinese rules in disguise. They let you mechanically count the board as you would with Japanese rules, but the winner would be determined as if played under Chinese rules, not Japanese rules. Dame is worth 1 point and needs to be strategically considered.
I've also played many new players, presumably like yourself, that can't tell when a game should end. That's normal when you're starting out. What we do with those new players is keep playing until they feel like stopping and sometimes comment on why their plans don't work or why they're losing points. You see, if you keep playing in Japanese rules, you will lose points.
A smart and logical student will plunk a stone done in the middle of his opponent's territory and point out that it takes 4 stones for their opponent to kill the stone, thus causing the opponent to lose points. The student is then berated and made to feel ashamed for being "stubborn" for trying to apply logic.
Under Chinese rules, you simply keep playing until you get really bored, so you only need to point out that the score isn't changing and isn't likely to change. Problem solved.
Yes, Chinese rules actually make sense when you try to play the game out. That's why new players should learn them first.
There seems to exist a consensus that some positions are better than others, but how do you know it unless you play it to the end?
Exactly true, and the Japanese rules only make sense by referring to rules where you can play the game out. The history of Go rules are murky (the game is thousands of years old), but I firmly believe that Japanese rules were derived as a shortcut from simpler rules were it was easy to play things out. If you learn Chinese-style rules first, you can gain this insight as to how the Japanese rules make sense.
In practice, Chinese-style rules and Japanese-style rules are equivalent to within 1 point. Most games are decided by more than 1 point, and the game is played virtually the same.
Perhaps that's because go isn't really that well understood by humans either.
In practice, greater than 99% of games end without any such mystery when played by strong players. Players new to the game do not have this experience, so they should start with Chinese-style rules to avoid the mysterious nature of the endgame.
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize that we had a war in the 1860's that dealt with many of these same issues, right? And that it was pretty definitively decided that in reality you do not unilaterally get to decide to simply shed off the federal government, especially through violence?
It was "decided" in might-makes-right fashion. It was also "decided" that the people have a right to revolt, as in the American Revolution.
Personally, I'd like to see anyone who thinks that our current government is a tyranny worthy of armed revolt go live for a while in a country where there is real tyranny to get a little perspective.
I actually agree with this. There's still the right to vote. There's always going to be laws that you don't agree with. If everybody killed somebody over being angry at a law, it would be like living in one of those murderous hell-holes where only a brutal strongman can survive.
However, if the right to vote is lost and the state turns fascist, I fully support an armed revolution.
Maybe you sleep better at night thinking that at any moment you can rise up against the government, but practically speaking, all of your little pea shooters won't do crap against one well-equipped soldier who could vaporize you just by pressing a button.
It's not so simple, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan showed. Militarily, there is no contest. Yet when a percentage of the population refuses to be cowed and will attack you asymmetrically, you have a problem.
I wouldn't call Slashdot a "social networking" site, any more that I would call a newsgroup a social networking site. It's a discussion site driven by news. Sites like Facebook are driven much more by people people becoming friends with each other and sharing interests. The friend/foe stuff on Slashdot is much more minimal.
You definitely have a valid point the about the hypocrisy in the grandparent's statement.
It's illegal? Good!
Though this does raise the question of why Blockbuster, cable companies, ISPs et al still ask for it with impunity.
He didn't say it was illegal. He said that's the excuse he uses to the peons asking for it, since they don't know any better. It's not illegal for a private entity to ask for it. You can refuse it, but then they can refuse service if you don't provide it.
Details here: http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/78/~/legal-requirements-to-provide-your-social-security-number
Yes, praise Zeus!
A private person, on the other hand, should have the right to keep things private from the public, for example the police file on him.
1. Julian Assange has made himself a very public person. 2. A blanket claim that police files are private is dubious. Criminal proceedings are generally a matter of public record.
War wouldn't disappear, but come on. When Israel/Iran - India/Pakistan start tossing nukes it will be religion.
Both World Wars weren't fought over religion. Hitler wasn't religious. Stalin wasn't religious. South Korea and North Korea don't fight over religion. The Cold War and threat of nuclear annihilation was not over religion. The United States invading Iraq was not over religion.
Sorry, mankind doesn't need religion to fight. I'm an atheist and despise all the evil done in the name of religion, but religion is not the fundamental problem.
RULES FIGHT !
Yes, the debate is quite old, but that doesn't mean it's meaningless or not worth having. Problems with the Japanese rules are downplayed by their proponents, which leads to misinformation and frustration among new players who are told how simple they are. There are also practical concerns in tournament play among amateurs, which is why the AGA and other associations moved away from them.
But the implication that Monte Carlo methods were new to Computer Go in the early 'noughties simply isn't true.
I never said Monte Carlo was new. I said "Go programs went through a great leap from 2006 to present, due to the technique of Monte Carlo Tree Search.". In your first post, you denied that Monte Carlo was the main component. After I refuted that, you now argue argue about the date.
Yes, absolutely, Monte Carlo has been around for a long time, but with very limited success. It was only starting in 2006 that it became wildly successful and took over the scene as the standard way to implement a bot. Before that it was simply a minor, but interesting area of research. This is all documented in the computer-go mailing list archives and refereed papers.
What is a 4D on KGS out in the real world?
Which real world? There are many ranking systems, and they all vary to some extent among each other. KGS is as real as any of them. 4d on KGS is quite a respectable rank. Also, the ranks on KGS have been fairly stable for some years now.
due to the technique of Monte Carlo Tree Search.
This, however, is much more controversial.
There's nothing controversial about this if you follow computer Go development. Before Monte Carlo, programs were stuck in a rut. They were improving, but very slowly. After Monte Carlo, they quickly went from something like 8k to 2k, and have now reached 4d on KGS. Every strong bot today uses Monte Carlo Tree Search as it's fundamental algorithm (as opposed to alpha-beta).
But all the reasonably effective engines used other algorithms in different parts of their gameplay.
Not really. The heart is Monte Carlo Tree Search, like the heart of most chess programs is alpha-beta. The stronger programs add more Go knowledge to the search process, just like a chess engine might have knowledge about pawn structure, but it's still Monte Carlo.
In fact, IIRC one of the big bears of Computer Go (it may have been Nick Wedd - I'll try to remember to ask him next time he beats me at the board) built a pure MC Computer Go engine precisely to use as an opponent for computer Go engines.
It sounds like you're thinking of Don Dailey and CGOS. He runs a dumb Monte Carlo bot as a standard player, true, but it's intentionally dumb and not very advanced. Actually I think the benchmark players have been upgraded recently, because the old one was falling too far behind.
The interesting thing is that GnuGo (without Monte Carlo) was used as the benchmark player when people started coming out with Monte Carlo bots. Early programs would get something like 20% win rate against it. Monte Carlo programs now completely dominate it.
He's either a smart criminal (rarely does a murder get 10 years of freedom after killing someone before the conviction) or a victim.
He's either a dumb criminal, or a victim of a very smart and dedicated frame-up. Searching for evidence on how to kill somebody from your home computer, and then following through is very stupid. A smart criminal would have found an anonymous way to do it. He also told a coworker that he wanted to kill his wife.
I don't know why it took 10 years to get the conviction. Sometimes the law moves slow, or feels that they just don't have enough evidence, even if there is a lot of incriminating evidence.
The management of a company are ultimately investors, they can either reinvest profits into new products and grow the company, or pay out to shareholders if they figure they can't do better than the shareholders with that money.
One thing you can be sure of, they will reward themselves handsomely for as long as they're in charge, in both salary and stock options. The individual investor just hopes the company continues to do well, so that there's another investor down the line. What happens when the company fails, as most companies will, eventually? The last shareholders are left holding the bag.
Starcraft 2 has only a 3 star rating on Amazon.
Looking at the reviews, their isn't much middle ground:
5 star: (537)
4 star: (133)
3 star: (78)
2 star: (106)
1 star: (410)
They really pissed off a lot of their fan base by making everything run through Battle.net (no LAN, persistent online activation). People were also pissed about the game being split into three, with the story for only 1 race. I think the people who were cool with that generally like the game.
I once zapped a PC with static electricity through the little key lock in front. After that, it would eat keyboards. I ended up replacing the motherboard.
They're filled with whatever because I don't agree with the AGA or you and never have.
Then cut the passive/aggressive bullshit like "You already won, I said so."
The fact is I did win. You started out with ridiculous claims that nobody ever had problems at tournaments, that Japanese rules were easy to apply, and that after a few games (or a couple of hours on KGS) life and death issues at the end of games weren't a problem for beginners.
You've made incorrect arguments concerning Ing, made incorrect arguments concerning the history and application of Japanese rules, failed to understand that AGA and Japanese rules weren't somehow miraculously the same, and gave simplistic and wrong advice concerning what is dead and what isn't. Anybody who read just your statements alone would have been completely misinformed on a whole host of issues.
I backed up my claims, after being told I was naive or obstinate, with observations from KGS, data from my own personal games, and an official letter from the AGA. I pointed out how the Go associations for the United States, Britain, France, and New Zealand all moved away from Japanese rules for practical reasons.
So, "whatever" yourself. I'm done replying to you.
I'd take your replies a lot more serious if they weren't filled with "whatever", didn't look so sarcastic, and didn't make incorrect statements like those regarding Ing.
As I mentioned earlier, I do play on KGS. I care more than most because like Kim0 and many others, I had a bad experience trying to learn the Japanese rules.
I find plenty of value discussion on Slashdot all the time. It would be much worse off if dissenting opinions were simply deleted, especially at the whim of a site owner.
Ing had his own ruleset. As far as I know, he had nothing to do with AGA rules. AGA traditionally took money from the Nihon Ki-in, but they moved away from Japanese rules despite the funding, because Japanese rules have a complex and imprecise playout. All the Go associations that moved away from Japanese rules did so for practical purposes, as clearly stated in the Transmittal Letter I linked to and quoted from.
I never said nobody could play under Japanese rules. I just said there were problems with them, as opposed to how simple and problem-free you were painting them. Beginners struggle with them, and for a very small percentage of games, even experienced players can run into trouble. They are hard to define precisely, and you can't blame Ing for that. Even the Nihon Ki-in tried and came up short. It's just the nature of the rules.
As for the pass stone, you don't really need to know why it's used. All you really need to know is that AGA rules are Chinese/area-scoring rules, where dame is worth 1 point. The pass stone is used as a trick to let you count using the Japanese method, but AGA rules are just Chinese rules in disguise, and you could forgo the pass stone if you counted using the Chinese method instead.
It's not bullshit, the rules are fine. You don't understand them yet or you're being intentionally obstinate.
I've already explained a couple of times why your explanation is bullshit, yet you completely ignore all the details. You are the one being obstinate.
The game is fine and it's survived thousands of years, hundreds with the rules they use now and few have problems with it.
Maybe you can explain why the Go associations for the United States, Britain, New Zealand, and France all moved away from Japanese rules. If you want the answer, look here:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wjh/go/rules/AGA.commentary.html
See the section under "Transmittal letter". In particular:
"the American Go Association has for several years been working toward a "simplified" set of rules for use among amateurs--a set of rules at once simple enough to be understood by beginners, clear and comprehensive enough to guide tournament play among amateurs--when the tournament director (and the strongest players present) may not even be of dan level"
"For amateur players in the West, where professionals are few and far between, and entire cities and regions may lack even dan-level amateur players, however, such rules present difficulties. We believe that our "simplified" rules are more appropriate for use with amateurs, especially where no very strong players are available as arbiters or referees."
"The status of disputed groups is to be settled by playing out the full-board situation.
Playing out the situation allows players of varying levels to resolve complex life-and-death situations according to their abilities, without depending on outside authorities or exhaustive analysis, and hence is most suitable for amateur play. While the new Nihon Ki-in rules are carefully crafted to resolve most of the difficult cases which used to require exccptional handling, and are probably very appropriate for professional play, they depend on a high level of sophistication in analyzing each position based on rules which are slightly different from normal play (due to the special handling of kos). In principle, resolving such end-of-game disputes requires the players--or some competent authority in attendance--to have the capacity to resolve life-and-death problems of arbitrary complexity! Rather than attempt to resolve each local situation "in principle" in the ideal fashion through extensive analysis, playing the position out achieves a fair result (it is based on the relative reading strengths of the players themselves) in potentially bounded time without the need to appeal to outside authorities or make use of special rules."
There is no appeal to authority. The rules are very clearly defined.
No, they aren't, and that is why there is a very long history of failed attempts at formalizing them. They work well enough among experienced players.
At tournaments, there are sometimes 200 people none of which would ever disagree about what is dead and what is not.
Disagreements are rare, but not the zero concurrence you indicate here.
The problem is (and I can agree that this is a problem, but only for the first few games at most), that Japanese rules require that you understand alive and dead.
Many people give up on the game because they don't understand the Japanese Catch-22 logic. Beyond that, disputes still occasionally occur beyond the first few games, which results in players usually verbally disputing the position, and then appealing to authority to resolve it if that doesn't work. I play on KGS. I've seen this happen many times.
In games with beginners, I explain that you need two eyes and then encourage them to try to live or kill my shape. It's all quite clear after the first few times. And there's no ambiguity at all; no matter how hard you try to create some, there simply isn't any.
Bullshit. I've already explained that your "two eyes" is simplistic and wrong. It doesn't work for seki. Let's also hear how that explanation works for bent-4 in the corner. Even 20-kyu players, who have played dozens of games, have trouble with certain life and death situations. I can even show you examples from players near 10-kyu, or even dan players, all from games that I have personally played. These are not common situations, but they DO happen now and then. I estimated it at a 1% occurrence of my games.
The only practical difference is that in the Japanese rules the attempt will change the score
Which means that they are not practical to apply.
Only beginners see this as a problem because they don't understand life and death yet.
Which is entirely the point. What is alive or dead should be determined by the skill of the players and simple rules, not appeal to authority.
If they try to leave the stone there, we point out that it doesn't have two eyes, so it's dead.
A simplistic and incorrect rule. First, you have to precisely define what an eye is. What you really mean is that two eyes *can* be made, which depends on skillful play. Second, seki doesn't conform to that rule.
It is most certainly well defined.
If you consider hypothetically perfect play, then maybe it's well defined, but now you're getting into Robert Jasiek territory. Japanese rules require Go skill, to acquire Go skill you have to understand the rules so you can play, resulting in the absurd Catch-22 situation.
Now compare all of the above to Chinese-style rules. What is alive or dead? Just play and find out.
If that stone is unable to kill anything, or make shape, and I pass, then I have just gained a point, as White.
The problem, though, is that to prove that the stone is dead, it would take 4 stones to kill it, which would end up losing points. You can tell a beginner that it is "dead" and can be removed without play, but then you just leave the beginner confused about how grossly unfair and arbitrary the rules are.
Japanese rules don't define an easy procedure to continue play without changing the score. Chinese-style rules do.
In practice the problem you see (ambiguities in the endgame) are only really an issue for computer Go.
Wrong. New players frequently have a hard time understanding Japanese rules. This is why people like Kim0 exist. On their own, the Japanese rules logically don't make sense. You have to know how to play to end the game, and you have to know how to end the game before you can learn how to play.
Instead, new players should be referred to Chinese-style rules. The Japanese rules are fine for experienced players.
Perhaps a good analogy is poetry
No, that's a terrible analogy. There are no rules to poetry, and there is no winner and loser. You're just adding confusion.
The rule is that game is over when both players agree that it is over: if there is a disagreement, the game is played on.
That's the problem with Japanese rules. It is not easy to "play on" and determine the score. It is trivial with Chinese-style rules.
Go is a truly fascinating game, and also a very human one (computers will play it well one day, but probably about the same time that they get good at writing poems, playing tricks, or asking why).
Computers already play the game well. They have reached dan status.
In fact, if you include stone passing (see AGA Rules) then Chinese and Japanese rules work out the same.
As if by magic? You're confused. The AGA rules are just Chinese rules in disguise. They let you mechanically count the board as you would with Japanese rules, but the winner would be determined as if played under Chinese rules, not Japanese rules. Dame is worth 1 point and needs to be strategically considered.
I've also played many new players, presumably like yourself, that can't tell when a game should end. That's normal when you're starting out. What we do with those new players is keep playing until they feel like stopping and sometimes comment on why their plans don't work or why they're losing points. You see, if you keep playing in Japanese rules, you will lose points.
A smart and logical student will plunk a stone done in the middle of his opponent's territory and point out that it takes 4 stones for their opponent to kill the stone, thus causing the opponent to lose points. The student is then berated and made to feel ashamed for being "stubborn" for trying to apply logic.
Under Chinese rules, you simply keep playing until you get really bored, so you only need to point out that the score isn't changing and isn't likely to change. Problem solved.
Yes, Chinese rules actually make sense when you try to play the game out. That's why new players should learn them first.
There seems to exist a consensus that some positions are better than others, but how do you know it unless you play it to the end?
Exactly true, and the Japanese rules only make sense by referring to rules where you can play the game out. The history of Go rules are murky (the game is thousands of years old), but I firmly believe that Japanese rules were derived as a shortcut from simpler rules were it was easy to play things out. If you learn Chinese-style rules first, you can gain this insight as to how the Japanese rules make sense.
In practice, Chinese-style rules and Japanese-style rules are equivalent to within 1 point. Most games are decided by more than 1 point, and the game is played virtually the same.
Perhaps that's because go isn't really that well understood by humans either.
In practice, greater than 99% of games end without any such mystery when played by strong players. Players new to the game do not have this experience, so they should start with Chinese-style rules to avoid the mysterious nature of the endgame.