

High Anxiety (raganwald on Go and learning new things) - tptacek
http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-10-20/high_anxiety.md#readme

======
enki
I've taught Go to over fifty people over the years - and i've seen this over
and over again: some people have shaking hands putting down the first stone in
their first game ever.

For some reason they assume they ought to be good from the beginning. Even in
their first game they try to be original. They're afraid to imitate moves they
saw someone else play. It feels like watching someone trying to learn a
language by not imitating the sounds they hear when others speak it.

But those that i saw who became really good, were always on the other end of
the spectrum. Those who jump right in and played /really/ bad without any
anxiety or pressure (no thinking at all and mostly just stubborn imitation of
moves they saw someone else play before) and fast (many many many games, often
not even to the end), almost always sticked to the game long enough to learn
to appreciate and enjoy it, and sometimes even managed to excel at it.

There's something magical about the fearlessness of just playing. Pure
curiosity, maybe even quite a bit of ambition, but especially the absolute
surrender to repeated and premeditated failure.

~~~
raganwald
This is the most provocative comment I've read on my post. Reading it, I find
myself thinking I will never be good because I have some sort of emotional
disability that gives me shaking hands compared to some other people that are
imbued with the magic gift of curiosity and fearlessness.

Logically, I consider the possibility that such things can be learned or
cultivated, and that perhaps I can one day be fearless and curious. But
emotionally, there is something pessimistic inside me that believes I will
always be this way.

It's quite a disturbing thing to contemplate.

~~~
enki
I don't think your problems with Go are at all a given. Playing repeatedly and
fast is a choice you can make out of pure logic.

Go is a language and should be tought like a language. You don't explain
phonetics to a child, but instead let it immitate sounds, scream and giggle.
Try explaining phonetics to a six-month-old child.

There's no reason why you couldn't just play a game, play fast without
thinking, and immediately start another one, maybe even before finishing the
first one. What you're doing that way is not looking for ways to win, but for
the responses you get for your actions. It's like babbling 'apdy' at your
father and getting back a 'daddy'. Thinking about how to use your vocal chords
isn't going to get you there, what you need is practice. It may not look like
you're learning, but well, you do.

View it as learning the sounds of a completely new language, and imagine
you're a baby trying to appreciate the noises someone else makes and then try
to immitate them. There's really nothing about you that prevents you from
doing this except a choice.

------
randrews
When I was eight years old, my father taught me to play Go. My father is
terrible at Go, probably the worst player I've ever played. So, I entered
college thinking I was fairly good.

I got completely, embarrassingly, destroyed in my first game. And the next
two.

After that, I read a book on it, probably the same one the author read (Learn
to Play Go by Janice Kim) and didn't really follow at all. Still getting
destroyed.

Then I did what the author didn't do: I played at least twenty games of Go a
day. I played a Windows program called Igowin, I played a really bad Palm app
while standing in lines or on the bus, I played GNU Go on my laptop.

At first I lost every time, then about half the time, then almost never, at
which point I played a human again.

And got destroyed, because I had learned tricks to beat the computer, rather
than actual good Go techniques.

I guess my point is that this taught me two things: when learning something,
there is no substitute for doing it twenty times a day; and that no matter how
much you think you have Go figured out, you probably don't.

------
jbr
I've been playing go on and off for over ten years now and _heartily_
recommend anyone remotely interested in learning to sign up for kgs
(<http://www.gokgs.com/>) and download the java client. There is a fantastic
community there, including a few beginner rooms. Often, people will stay after
and review the game with you, which is basically a free lesson. People are
consistently polite and respectful on kgs, which I can't say of other go
networks (igs, for example). Additionally, it's really easy to get a quick
match whenever you want with someone appropriately ranked, and it figures out
your rank as you play people.

If you're going to play in person, try to play smaller boards, like 9x9, so
you can get a sense of tactics and local patterns. Mark_h said it already in
this thread, but I'll repeat: lose your first fifty (or more) games as quickly
as possible. When you're first getting started, the goal is just to get a
handle on how play progresses, not to win. Getting comfortable losing makes it
easier to learn.

Web resources I can recommend: <http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/> and
<http://senseis.xmp.net/>

Please feel free to find me on kgs, username jrothstein. I'd love to help
share my love of the game with other hackers. Also feel free to contact me
(info in profile) with any questions about the game or for a review (I'll try
my best).

~~~
andrewljohnson
I'm blackthorn on kgs... we should play some time. I'm about 5k, though I
haven't played in a while.

People are polite on KGS because politeness and topicality are enforced by the
moderators.

~~~
enntwo
Many of the techinical people I know play go, or atleast know of it. I'm not
sure if there is a direct correlation, but generally the stronger they are at
Go, the better of a programmer and learner they are in general.

If anyone here is interested in learning or playing, I am about 2d on KGS
(nickBlake) and would be willing to play or teach anyone.

------
seigenblues
This post makes me want to start a blog, just to answer some of these
questions.

Go is really hard to teach. I try to avoid it whenever possible. This isn't
trying to be a wiseass; i find this actually has some great effects. I've
found teaching go has to be a student-driven process to be successful; the
onus is on the student to generate questions, and, to go another step, the
student must seek & have the experiences that will generate the questions.
This almost always means playing go for yourself.

This implies that the student has already conquered a lot of (very real)
internal fears; the fear of performing incompetently, the fear of being
thought dumb. The fear of failure, basically. An interesting thing to run
across on a blog for entrepreneurs.

The saddest part about that article was that so many of those sentences are
"I" sentences; you write "I feel" this, "i think" that, "I am [x], i won't be
[y], i will never be [z]". Even the comments about your friend are defined in
terms of yourself. The problem is that probably no one else is as concerned
about your performance as you are.

This is something that could be incredibly liberating from the right
perspective. Who is judging you here? Not your friend, certainly! It's not a
reflection on your character unless you make it one -- and you don't have to
make it one.

Your conclusions at the end are _so close!_ "The courage to play incompetently
is a cure for fear of incompetence" this is true, but it's almost a tautology.
Perhaps a more useful formulation is this: "The courage to play incompetently
is a cure for incompetence." Maybe it is the only cure.

Relax, enjoy, & Dare To Suck -- your performance at something you've never
done is not and will not be used as a measurement of your worth as a person.
That gift of "curiousity & fearlessness" is not a personality trait; people
get nervous when they feel like they're being judged. You're not -- at least,
not by anyone but yourself.

See also: <http://senseis.xmp.net/?FearOfLosing> and the go proverb "lose your
first 100 games as quickly as you can"

relax & good luck

-seigenblues

P.S. I will happily answer any go questions. Send me a link to your game &
questions, (perhaps on eidogo.com), and i will try to answer to the best of my
ability (4d kgs).

~~~
raganwald
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I just want to point out that ""The
courage to play incompetently is a cure for fear of incompetence" is true, and
obviously a tautology. However, it is taken out of context. The full line
reads:

 _Competence is not a cure for the fear of incompetence. The courage to play
incompetently is a cure for fear of incompetence._ Put in contrast, I think it
has more value than standing alone.

~~~
seigenblues
quite true. I'm sorry for taking you out of context. It is indeed more
valuable that way.

I would ask the next question; which is the more important problem we are
trying to "cure" -- the lack of competence or the lack of courage? One can
lead to the other, but not vice-versa.

~~~
raganwald
Lack of courage. I really have no incentive to play Go competently except or
the fear of being mocked for not playing this game that my peers venerate as
being the domain of deep thinkers with fully functioning right brains.

So if I lose the fear, I'm good. It's then irrelevant whether I ever become
competent, except possibly that my playing at a certain level of skill would
make it interesting for my friends to play me.

But otherwise, it's just the fear that concerns me.

~~~
tungstenfurnace
Raganwald,

You are being so honest about your ego that there seems little doubt it is
starting to dissolve and you will regain the lightness of touch and mood that
betokens huge creative power.

------
scott_s
I see this often in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, where beginners not only have no idea
what they're doing, but they don't even realize how little they know. And
being incompetent in BJJ means you're going to spend many minutes with someone
literally on top of you. Some people are so overwhelmed by this experience
that they don't come back.

But, my experience has been the people who don't come back are those that
thought they would do well - the ones that figured "I'm a tough guy, I can
hang." When they do just as one would expect a beginner to do, their ego is
hurt so much they just don't want to go through it again. I think that for
some, being a "tough guy" is part of their identity, and being confronted with
the reality is so jarring they'd rather not even learn.

The ones who stick around are the ones who aren't upset about losing.

------
mark_h
There's actually a Go proverb (there are lots of these, and they're quite
good!) along the lines of "lose your first 50 games as quickly as possible".

Having said that, I struggled to do this (even against a computer I hated to
lose, which impeded my progress for ages).

------
ananthrk
I don't know much about the Go game, but this is such a beautifully written
article about the general anxiety one encounters while learning new things. I
have this exact feeling in my effort to learn programming (despite working as
a programmer for 10 years now). Every time I encounter a new concept (possibly
very basic), I criticize myself for working as a programmer without knowing
such things.

------
lhorie
One interesting tidbit about Go is that it's one of a very few games where
humans are still better than the computer.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go>

------
Locke
I've learned many abstract strategy games. I play some fairly well, others not
so much so.

When I approach a new game, I assume it will take many hundreds (or
thousands!) of plays to become truly good at it. I assume that I will play
poorly for my first N games -- so, it's best to get them out of the way as
quickly as possible. I try to think in terms of, "did I learn something from
that loss?" -- if the answer is yes, it was still a worthwhile experience.

I think this is a good lesson for learning anything new. I think my first N
programs were extremely poorly written. There was so much that I didn't know
when I was starting out with programming! Now, 10+ years later I feel like I
have a pretty good handle on things, but there are still areas of programming
that I would like to know better.

I expect I'd see the same pattern learning anything new. If I were interested
in drawing I'd expect the first hundred or more pictures to be lousy. If I
wanted to become a writer, I'd expect the first hundred stories to be boring
or full of misspellings and poor grammar.

For me, the question is: Does this knowledge make it easier or more difficult
to start a new pursuit?

~~~
maxklein
You are so great!

~~~
Locke
Sorry, I meant to give the opposite impression. Everyone sucks when starting
out with something new. Maybe acknowledging that can help with "first move"
anxiety.

Either I didn't express that very well, or it's just not that insightful.

------
radu_floricica
With go there are three very different stages of learning (has something to do
with the fact that there are different sized boards). First you learn the
rules - how to place the pieces, when is a group alive etc. Then you learn
tactics: how are pieces 2-3 spaces apart linked, common patterns, counting
etc. Finally you can make use of the 19x19 board and learn strategy - like how
it's better to control corners rather then edges and edges rather then the
center.

At each step you will get totaled by people who are ahead of you because each
step gives you a completely new way of seeing the game. And you can't cheat
and "learn ahead": strategy without tactics is useless.

Also, if you hate losing, for the love of god never play online. Sometimes it
looks like half the population of Korea is online playing the other half, and
when they classify themselves as "beginners" it usually means they can beat
you while watching TV.

------
jongraehl
Rather than merely resolving to overcome the fear, I'd make myself imagine
what's supposed to be so bad about the thing I'm afraid of (not being
top-.001% gifted? being destroyed by an expert? that both occur in view of
others?), and reassure myself that the feared outcome is not actually so
terrible.

However, making a public resolution is also a good approach.

~~~
jongraehl
If you don't like what I said, tell me why.

~~~
derefr
The word "platitude" springs to mind, as well as the phrase "it's easier said
than done." Everyone knows the basic processes of cognitive behavioral
therapy; it's _applying_ them when you're _actually feeling anxiety_ that's
hard.

~~~
csbrooks
>Everyone knows the basic processes of cognitive behavioral therapy

(cough) Um, yeah, of course. Of course we do. (cough) [darts off to wikipedia]

------
sdh
I think the quote should be "lose your first 50 games as quickly and
thoughtfully as possible."

Ideally, you are losing to progressively better opponents. This gives you the
opportunity to ask for help and learn better technique as you are losing.
Online Go is great because you can record your games and get others to
critique them.

I love Go. I love that there are implied threats, feints, and sacrifices. I
love that seemingly random moves can be so critical in later stages. Go is a
game of experience. You really have to enjoy the process of unraveling the
mystery of the game and not worry so much about winning.

------
mark_l_watson
My older brother taught me to play when I was 8 years old (a long time ago!) -
now I can give him a 9 stone handicap :-)

Once, in the late 70s, I got to play the womens world champion when she was in
San Diego - awesome experience.

Go is a beautiful game, but not for everyone.

------
BearOfNH
When I was an undergraduate living in a dorm, I and several friends all
learned Go together. _Nobody_ knew what they were doing, and so no one was
particularly nervous. Even keeping score was an exercise in passing around
examples from the instruction book.

Not the most efficient way to learn, but among the least stressful -- if
you're patient enough with one another.

