Author Archives: itlandm

Thinking is overrated

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Perhaps you can figure it all out on your own, from the basics – if you live for several centuries.

Thinking for yourself is a lot more effective if you first have absorbed the foundation for higher thinking from the great lights of history.

I seem to know an unusually large number of people who say: “Don’t follow traditions, especially not religion. Think for yourself.” I don’t agree with this, even though I have a “gift” to make others think. And I myself have thought a lot too, over the course of the decades. But what I have found is that thinking (much) is not for everyone. Even when it works, it is rarely the best course of action. There are faster, easier and more fruitful ways to accomplish one’s life goals.

Confucius thought that there were three ways to wisdom: Reflection, which was the noblest. Imitation, which was the easiest. And experience, which was the bitterest.

Obviously we would be in a pinch if no one ever took the path of reflection. We would not have all these great quotes, for instance. ^_^ But in this age where we have gathered the wisdom of the ages and of the various civilizations, there is already quite a supply of this. So the path of imitation is wide open. By reading good books, for instance, we can easily receive what others have struggled hard to bring forth. There may not be a lot of wise people around in your family, workplace or neighborhood who you can imitate, although it would be nice if you could find one. But we have the memory of others through the ages, who set a high standard indeed.

If you are single and have more time than you know how to use, and have a brilliant mind, and your passions are limited and known to you, then by all means add to the pool of those who arrive at wisdom by reflection. After all, each perspective is a bit different, and none can see it and tell it just the way you do.

But if you are not such a person, it may be better to learn from others, and think only when necessary, or when you particularly enjoy it.

***

There are of course situations when we need to think for a bit. We may be working in a problem-solving job, for instance. Or we may find ourselves in a new situation with no recourse to handbooks. So it is not a bad thing to be able to think. But it is a waste of our life to invent the wheel over and over again.

If you hire someone, you don’t just take a random person from the street, give them tools, and say: “Think for yourself.”  You hire someone who has studied the experience of others and trained under the supervision of others and can by now do a wide range of tasks without having to think about them.

The game of Go has only 5 simple rules, and you can make your work from there with pure logic. But the great Go players – and there are actually professionals doing this for a living in Asia – they have all studied the games of those who were already masters, and absorbed for themselves what others have found by hard thinking or good luck. It has taken thousands of years from the game was invented till it reached its current level of mastery. Even if you learn it as a child and live for a hundred years, you have little chance to catch up to that with just your own thinking.

Why then do you think that in the matters of your soul, of your lasting happiness and the progress of society, you will succeed by throwing away in your youth the experience of thousands of years, and the wisdom of the greatest lights of human history?

It is true that we see many religious people who are stupid and malicious. But from who have they learned? Have they learned from the wisdom of Solomon or Jesus Christ? No, they have they failed to do so, and simply imitated the equally backwards relatives and neighbors around them. Repeated studies show that benevolent atheists are more familiar with Christian scriptures than the petty-minded religious person. When religion degrades to a form of ethnicity, as it has done in much of the western world, it becomes a label rather than a vehicle for transmitting a higher form of thinking.

By all means, think. But first thing about when it is useful to think, and when it is useful to first gather the necessary basis or foundation for higher thinking. To be born into a civilization is a privilege. Throw it not away lightly, thinking that you are the greatest thinker who has ever lived. Chances are billions to one that you are wrong.

 

Attachment and perdition

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What we tend to forget is that in the end we stand as naked souls before the overwhelming Light, and there is nothing else. And not only at the end of time, but fundamentally even now, all that we rely on here on Earth is just the overflowing Light coagulating for a brief time into the forms we find comfortingly familiar.

Those who are unfamiliar with religion, often perceive it as needlessly ascetic. It is as if religious people want everyone to suffer in this life, is the impression. Is it really necessary to suffer as much as possible in this life in order to have joy in the next? Is it so that the sum of suffering in one world equals the sum of joy in the other, in some kind of karmic equation?

That is not how it works, I would say. The best explanation of how I see it is actually by Johan Oscar Smith, a Christian here in Norway, who wrote this about a century ago. (Translation by me, although I believe it is possible to buy Johan Oscar Smith’s writings in English from Brunstad Christian Church.)

“The enemies of our inner life are the forces that will distract the mind by leading the attention outward. These enemies are therefore desires of all kinds, which seek to split the concentrated mind to make it attach to outward things, things that will perish. And just in this lies perdition, that what the heart relied on ceases to exist, whereas itself as eternal being is left with the emptiness, which ought to have been filled by God himself. For this reason it is now very important for God to get the mind away from everything outward, that which shall cease to exist, and turned inward toward the source of life, that which shall continue as the soul continues, so that joy and inexpressible delight can fill us beyond the era of mortality and into the unknown eternities.”

OK, lots of commas there, but I hope you see what he says. The reason why religion begs us to not get attached to outward things is that they are perishable, whereas we are not. That is a leap of faith indeed, for our bodies are more perishable than some of the things people attach to, such as houses or gold. So the basic question of religion is whether we have eternal life, at least potentially. If we don’t, then religion does not matter all that much. And neither does anything else, for everything is fleeting, everything is subject to change and eventually destruction. If this is so, the human awareness is a cruel joke played on us by chance, and animals are better off than we are.

But now we are created with an opening to eternity in our heart. Unlike our furry friends, our minds can travel the paths of time, and not merely the horizontal timeline that goes into the past and the future, but even the vertical line that connects Heaven and Earth. Because we believe this, we do not want the heart to rely on temporary things for its happiness. For these things come and go, but the soul itself is looking toward a time and place where none of these earthly things exist anymore. If they were our sole source of happiness, then perdition would be sure. Then the best we could hope for would be to be utterly annihilated along with the things we relied on. That is not much of a hope, but some have it.

But for those whose hope goes beyond that, it makes sense to avoid attachment. I do not mean avoid using the things of the world, but avoid basing our happiness on them. Chocolate tastes delicious, but it would be pretty sad if an adult were to base all his happiness on chocolate. For a toddler, chocolate is heaven. While he enjoys the chocolate, nothing else matters.* But once we are grown up, we cannot go back to that. We know that this small enjoyment, while true, is not enough. In the same way, when we grow up spiritually, we realize that the joys of the world are not enough. It is not so much that they are not real – they are real to our senses – but they are small and temporary.

(* From my childhood, I remember a vivid fantasy I entertained for some length of time, about being able to buy a whole kiosk full of chocolates and snacks. Now I might afford to buy something like that, but it would only make me sick.)

***

There is a heresy called “gnosticism”, in which the religious person believes that the world is inherently sinful. The early Christian gnostics, for instance, insisted that Christ could not possibly have been incarnated, since bodies are sinful and not fitting for an awesome person like Christ. He must have just pretended to be in the flesh. Spirit is good, matter is bad, is the theory. But we do not say that. What we say is that spirit is eternal, matter is temporary. To hang onto matter and forsake spirit is to shorten our horizon dangerously. Even in this life, things fall away. As the Buddhists say, it is sure that we will lose our youth, our health, our material possessions, our friends and loved ones, and even our life. Either we will lose them over time, one after the other, or all at once. But we will lose them. The Buddha’s final words were reported such: “All things that have form, are subject to decay. Strive diligently!” Namely, for that which has no form and is not subject to decay.

Because of our natural tendencies or animal nature, we easily attach to things in this world even when we should know better. We have to correct ourselves. Well, most of us do, at least. It may be just a fairly innocent liking for something, but may grow into a fully grown attachment, which has the form “I cannot live without you”. When we say this in our heart to anything on Earth, anything that is limited in time, then we are attached, and we are in a sense already perished. For we will have to live without all such things, at some point, whether we want to or not. Or die trying, I guess, if God is merciful and powerful enough to simply obliterate us. There are some who believe that there is no eternal suffering, because God simply destroys those who are not saved, or rather he stops perpetuating them, stops giving them life. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe this. It is a very attractive theory, and I am not sure it is wrong. But as a hope, it is pretty bleak.

The opposite of saying to someone or something on Earth: “I cannot live without you”, is to say (as is said in the psalm): “Who have I besides you in Heaven? When I have you, I desire no one (or nothing) on Earth.” The saints have it this way. Death is not a big deal for them, since there is nothing on Earth, nothing temporary, that they particularly miss. Everything they wanted was in Heaven anyway, so once they have fulfilled their tenure on Earth, off they go with a smile.

I am not a saint exactly myself. I am pretty nervous about my own transition. I don’t look forward to making account for my wasted life. But on the other hand, I can think of nothing on Earth that fills my soul to the point where I think: “No, I cannot die from that! I cannot leave that! I must go back to that!”** It would be a sad note to end a life on, don’t you think? That is how I see perdition.

But I may be wrong. You see, you hear these funny voices, in the Tower of Song… 

(** When I was much, much younger than today, I remember worrying that Christ might return before Christmas, which I thought would be a real downer. In my defense, the Norwegian word for Christmas does not actually mention Christ.)

Vexation or compassion?

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I have a feeling this may become a recurring picture. Although in my case it feels more like I am returning from a different planet and seeing my own with new eyes.

A little background before we get to the philosophy. I am still trying to learn the ancient Oriental board game of Go. The rules are simple but the strategies almost unlimited. One of the resources I use is the Go Teaching Ladder, a website where you can comment on games by those less skilled than you, and get comments from those more skilled than you. More importantly, there are thousands of commented games, with various skill levels both in the commenter and the players. Walking through these can be very instructive.

I was stepping through a couple games played by 28-kyu players (that is very close to the bottom of the newbie league) and commented by a 2-dan player (that’s someone who may have a small chance at becoming a professional, depending on luck and location). The comments were instructive (if a bit above my head from the midgame onward) and amusing. You got a pretty good feeling for how he experienced watching the blind fighting the blind. At one point, when one of the players had made variations of the same error a number of times in a row, “magnus” (not me! the 2-dan player) exclaimed that playing like that  “is like bashing your own face with a brick”.

And this, dear congregation, is my text today: Living in the dark and making the same mistakes over and over is like bashing our own face with a brick, and not knowing who is doing it.

***

I suppose a “dan player” in the game of real life is one who is able to understand the great masters – the Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tzu, Socrates etc – and not only learn from them on a conscious level, but also practice wisdom, even if not necessarily on the highest level and all the time. Such a person would live a wonderful life in some ways, but would also be almost completely surrounded by the sight of people bashing their own faces with bricks, cutting themselves by grabbing knives by the blade, burning themselves by picking up red-hot coals to throw at other people, all that kind of stuff.

I can’t even claim to be on that level, but I guess I am not a beginner at life anymore, at least not in all ways. And one of the things that really bother me about social networks such as Google+ (not to mention Facebook, well, I mentioned Facebook but I don’t go there every month) is the sheer number of people bashing their faces in public and holding onto hot coals, getting angrier and angrier the more it hurts.

But enough about the American election campaigns.

The question is, how do I react to the self-inflicted suffering of other people? Given that I have inflicted a lot of suffering on myself over the past and will likely do so in the future, just on a more private and subtle level, my first response should be compassion. And there is some of that, if I must say so myself. (And who else would?)  But then someone – I or another – tries to given them some helpful advice. And this makes them very upset, causing them at best to run inside and close the door, at worst to hurt themselves even more. So after a while, some of us reach the conclusion that this is not a forum where we can actually help people.

In theory, it should be possible. I think it may happen occasionally, but it is so rare at least that I cannot offhand recall seeing it.

There is a tendency, when the less skilled fail to accept advice, that compassion turns to vexation. This is not a good thing, I think.

In the Christian story of the Incarnation, God had to go all the way down to where the people were, down in the manger, down in the desert, eventually down in the grave. Because with the possible exception of the few scattered saints of the Covenant, people just weren’t able to get up on high ground despite the best advice. Looking at this story from almost 2000 years later, there is some doubt as to the effectiveness even of this rescue expedition. Although I think my country would have been worse off if we were still following Odin, truth to tell. (Odinists may disagree. The Håvamål has some pretty good advice, after all.)

Anyway, it may be vexing to see people demand the right to keep bashing their own faces with bricks, but let us remember that it could have been us (or for some of us, it actually was) and hold on to compassion.

You can cure (some) cancer yourself

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Meditation – which brings detachment from the things of this world – is also one of the best ways to stay in this world longer. 

Back when the AIDS epidemic was new, before we knew about the HIV virus, doctors were grasping at any clue to find out what caused it. One thing they discovered was that several patients had a rare sarcoma, a muscle cancer. Usually we don’t get cancer in the muscles, or that’s what we thought. It turned out that the cancer was not a cause but an effect of the failing immune system. Other, more common cancers also were found more often in AIDS patients. So today we know that the human immune system can detect and destroy a range of cancers without us even knowing.

In fact, if you have been an adult for a long time, it is likely as not that you have already had cancer and healed yourself without even knowing it. The activation of the immune system would give some body-wide symptoms similar to the flu but without the localized symptoms. You might have a temperature for a while, feel tired and lose your appetite, things like that. Of course these can happen for any number of reasons, so I am not saying you have a cancer just because you’re under the weather for a while. But it is one of the things that can happen, and do to most people.

As with an infection, once you have beaten a particular strain of cancer, you will be immune to it, probably for the rest of your life. So if you get a sarcoma when you are 40, for instance, and the body quietly beats it, you are the lucky one. If your identical twin doesn’t get it until 70, it is likely they won’t see the cherry trees blossom twice. From middle age upward, white blood cells start dying off if they have not been used before. So the older we get, the harder it is to beat our cancers.

Thanks to genetic wizardry that I don’t understand, it is even possible to put white blood cells in a petri dish with a known cancer and teach them to recognize it, then put them back into the body to mop up any remnants of the cancer after surgery. This is expensive though, so I suppose even if it is approved, it will only be available for the rich. At least for a while. But the point is, bodies can cure cancer by using the same immune system we use to fight off the flu or an infected hangnail. I have even read of scientists who believe that being exposed to more germs during our healthy years – including some vaccines – could increase our chance of staying cancer-free well into old age.

People often talk about “fighting cancer” and even say of those who die that they “lost the fight against cancer”, as if dying means you are some kind of loser. In that sense, we are all losers, with the possible exception of Elijah and Enoch. Life ends, and cancer is one of the way it ends. But cancer is not always the end of life, less so now than before, but even apart from medical intervention, we know today that the body can heal itself of cancer sometimes – most times, probably. But not by fighting. Not by getting angry. Getting enough rest, meditating, eating healthy, moderate exercise, all these things help. Anger or fear weaken the immune system. Fighting cancer is a losing proposition. Rather we heal ourselves, the way we generally do.

But sometimes it is the end of the road. That does not mean that you are a loser, or that you did not have enough faith. So perhaps you did not eat your veggies as often as you should back before you knew you were ill. Perhaps you could have meditated more, stressed less, not burned your candle in both ends. Hindsight is surprisingly sharp-eyed. But we are mortals, at least physically. We can do our best but sometimes it is not enough. Sometimes it is not enough to run faster, you need to have started earlier. And we can’t wind back life. Life is the expression in time of who we are.

For as long as we have a future, we can change that, though. Mostly by changing ourselves.

Half-a-theism

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Watching you: A dark and jealous god arises.

Atheists will often say to monotheists: “I just believe in one less god than you do.” In practice, the difference is arguably even less. I would argue that the vast majority of atheists today believe in “half a god”.

There is an invisible, benevolent but still dangerous being that has the power and the wisdom to decide over life and death. Due to its nature, this being is not visible to the human eye, but its commands are carried out by a large staff of human servants. This being is also considered competent to regulate our lives (and, perhaps more important to most of us, the lives of our neighbors) in great detail, down to who we are allowed to have sex with. But it also looks after us, and gives us each day our bread even if we don’t deserve it, and far more than bread if we serve it faithfully. Generations are born, live and die, serving this great being, giving their lives if needed. I am, of course, talking about the state or nation.

The gradual growth of the state has given it steadily more of the powers that were in the past considered suitable only for God, and this process has particularly gained speed over the last few generations. During the same time, and in the same countries, open atheism has begun to blossom. In the social democratic nations of northern Europe, atheism is now the norm. But how much of a leap is that really, if the state conveniently provides pretty much the same framework for individuals and societies, which religion provided in the past?

Now you may argue that the state is thoroughly this-worldly and does not promise salvation or a blessed afterlife to the soul. That is hopefully the case, but I will point out that neither did Yahweh back in the days of the Pentateuch. Even as late as Solomon (or whoever wrote in his name), God’s own truth was that “the dead know nothing” and have no more part in what transpires under the sun. Toward the end of the Old Testament, there are more or less clear promises of a future resurrection. But the concept of a non-corporeal afterlife in an invisible paradise is at best hinted at in the New Testament, where the resurrection is still the main event. So today the state is roughly at the level of Moses’ God in that it can kill and that’s the end of it. If the technology advances enough, it may start offering selective resurrections, and perhaps eventually promise to upload us to the Cloud. This could certainly happen in your lifetime if you are young, although it may not happen at all, depending on how history unfolds.

My point is that it is a lot easier to be an atheist these days, as long as you are allowed to trust in a state that does its best to make itself as godlike as possible. It is rather less impressive than it would otherwise have been. And monotheists may not need to actually use their faith a lot either, since they can just float along on the same current as the atheists – for now. There are times and places where you cannot serve God and State, and where the State basically says, “Thou shalt have no other god before me.” I am not  fond of this practice. I’d rather we give Caesar what is Caesar’s, and not much more.

But at least, don’t crow about being an atheist if you depend on an invisible higher power to give your life direction.

Now is the Age of Faith

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Do you really know for sure that bacteria are not thinking, feeling organisms? Chances are you have only seen them for a couple minutes through a school microscope, if at all…

It may sound highly unlikely when I say that we live in an age of faith, the like of which the world has never seen through all the ages. But it is true. It is just not true in the sense most people hear it. Their internal translator reads “religion” where I just wrote “faith”.

This misunderstanding is easy to explain: In the Middle Ages, faith was mainly needed in religion. You went to church on Sunday and listened to stories about things that happened far away and long ago, or in a world unseen by human eyes. The rest of the week you spent working with animals or crops or iron or clothes, things you could see and touch. There was no need for faith in those things. You could see for yourself.

But in our age, we spend upward of 15 years in school, and only a tiny fraction of this is spent on hands-on experiments. Most of the time is spent listening to stories about things that happened far away or long ago, or in a world unseen by human eyes. Even the things that could be experienced, such as the view through a microscope or telescope, are usually just transmitted by faith. Far more so the more complex teachings, such as the structure of the atoms or the evolution of species. We learn these things by taking them on faith from people who have taken them on faith, usually from people who have taken them on faith again. Sure, there are scientists who have actually researched the various things we learn about. But they are few and far between, and each of them has only experienced a tiny corner of a small part of one field of science, while taking the rest – including most of their own branch of science – on faith.

Now the voices in your head may be jumping up and down screaming. But I am not saying that science is a religion, or that there is no big difference between science and religion. What I am saying is literally that we live in an age where we have very little experience, and the rest of our knowledge rests on faith. It rests on trust in authorities. Almost all you know rests on trust in authorities. Think it over if you don’t trust my authority…

 

Not everyone can be smart

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If something is difficult to learn, it is good to have someone to explain it to you. I wish I could do that sometimes. 

Certainly a lot can be done to improve our thinking, and perhaps most for those who start out with less, as I mentioned yesterday. But it is also a fact that we are born with different resources of the brain, just as with the body in general. Some are stronger, some are faster, some have more endurance, and some aren’t really good at sports even if they work at it. Everyone can improve, but not everyone can become a master, and certainly not without the most extreme effort. In the same way, some simply learn faster and think more quickly, and there are various other talents as well.

Reality is not a democracy. We are not all given the same number of “points”, like in some role playing games, where you just place them differently. In real life, some just start out with less. The world is not a level playing field. But that is not a reason to quit.

***

Let me take an example. After buying the Go board that I wrote about a few days ago, Amazon wanted to follow up by selling me some beginner books about Go. I don’t think that is necessary, as there are so many resources on the Internet. But the books exist and some people buy them.

Reading reviews of the books, I noticed that people had different opinions. Some criticized the classic Go for Beginners by Iwamoto, saying that it was hard to read, it was not suited for real beginners, you should read an easier book first such as for instance Learn to Play Go by Janice Kim. And what do you think people said about the first book by Janice Kim? It is too little substance, it is very friendly and easy to read but where is the beef? Is the author trying to earn more money by writing four books instead of one? You would be better off with a less fluffy book, like Go for Beginners by Iwamoto…

So that is how it is. For some people, learning Go is fairly easy, so they find a book “for dummies” to be fluffy, patronizing and a waste of time and money. For others, learning Go is hard, and they get lost and disappointed when the book treats difficult problems (for them) as something obvious.

***

It is good that there are many different books, then, and not just about Go! A book that is too hard for one, may be just right for another. And if you have to give up on one book, you may read another and then perhaps return to the first when you understand more.

This is not just for “dummies”. I could read newspapers and books before I started school, and used to read my school textbooks soon after I got them. Decades have passed with me being like that, and there are still many books that are hard for me to read. Indeed, some of my favorite books are so compact, half a page can be enough for me to digest in one session. And there are some books I think highly of, but which I only understand bits and pieces of, even though they are in English. But I have also experienced that after reading more on the topic, I could come back and read in the book again and gain more from it. There are books that may require several reads even for me, and I am not just talking about holy scriptures. These books would be out of reach for many gainfully employed people, unless perhaps they dedicated decades of their spare time to studying them.

But as I said, luckily there are books that are not written for scribes and professors. Some people have a gift for writing luminous prose, and some have trained themselves to keep the ordinary or even simpleminded reader in their thoughts when writing. I also do this when I take the time. I often go over what I have just written and replace words with more simple and common ones. Some detail is lost, but perhaps more people can get the gist of what I write.

I have left MSN as the start-up page on my Internet Explorer, so that I can be reminded each time I start it about the plight of the simpleminded. Not everyone can be smart, but they should be spared the indignity of being preyed on. Even if you are not smart, you are still human. The truly important things in life and death are the same to all of us, and it is not fair to distract people with breasts and dresses all the time. Not that there is anything wrong with breasts and dresses as such, but you should not need to be a sage to look for something deeper. Not everyone can be smart, but we are all human. We all deserve a chance at understanding ourselves and the world where we live.

Sanity for the simple

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Many people have admirable aspirations, but lack the mental resources to achieve them. I feel that something should be done to help them, starting from the very basics of understanding the human mind. 

I had a brief interchange on Google+, where I mentioned that there are days when I wish I could upgrade the brain of everyone with improved software. One of my online acquaintances replied: “You never know whether that would crash them completely (RAM problems)”.

But I have already given that some thought. I believe that, in fact, it may be more gain from upgrading the “program code” of brains that have less memory and less processing power. I certainly think this is better than the modern path of just adding more and more data to them.

Today, education just goes on and on. Whereas my grandfather went to school for 7 years – and I believe 3 days a week, at that – and I took a few college courses after high school, young people today need 3-4 years of college to get a job, and sometimes stay in schools until they are closer to 30. That is not in and of itself a horrible fate, but if you have “RAM problems” – not very good memory – it must be a taste of purgatory. To know that you either have to cram all that knowledge over and over, or face a life as an outcast, unable to win your own bread.

This cannot be necessary. There must be better way to teach people to think than to just throw books at them and hope that the information overload will make their brains shift into a more effective way of thinking to deal with it. I acknowledge that in our information age, younger people seem to become steadily more intelligent (the Flynn Effect), but I don’t think the excessive schooling is the cause. It starts too early in childhood for that, and it also started before the current “education bubble” – we can trace it back to right after World War I. It is more likely that the Flynn Effect has opened the way for the education society. But not everyone fits in that mold. And frankly, it seems a bit of a waste of time and resources.

***

I think we should still teach basic skills like reading, writing and basic maths. But rather than trying to teach everyone a whole lot of knowledge they most likely won’t need, the next stop should be to teach basic thinking skills. And not just logical thinking, but brain use more generally.

Mediation. Self-control, how to get along with basic instinct and primitive emotions. How to deal with insomnia.  How to avoid destructive stress behaviors like overeating, booze and drugs. Self-reflection, seeing oneself as if from a neutral person. And yes, basics of logic, the use and limits of generalization and prejudice.

Study techniques: The different types of memory, how to learn by spaced repetition, association, triggers, involving more senses. How to sort what is most important to remember, and when we can wing it. This can help prevent cram purgatory and the despair of forgetting anyway.

This does not need to take decades. And it would pay off for the rest of their life, for them and for those around them and society at large. The more people we could get onto this, the greater the benefits for their families, their neighborhoods, their country and the world.

Even learning mind skills poorly is a huge improvement from not even knowing that they exist. And it is particularly valuable for those who haven’t picked up these skills at home or figured them out on their own. The current situation causes a lot of suffering. It needs not be that way.

Go: Adventures in kifu

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Felt tip coloring pencils are not ideal for writing game records, but they will do in a pinch, at least for short games.

Today’s newbie Go player report is from the mysterious land of “kifu”. The word means a record or map of the game. It is usually drawn on a simple picture of a Go board. On each intersection you write the number of the move. The first move is number 1, the second move is number 2 etc, and you write them on the map where they were played on the board. That way you can easily reconstruct the game later. Seasoned players can even read the game directly from a kifu as if they had watched it, more or less. I am not one of those. Definitely not.

Do you need a kifu? Not if you are just playing for fun. You can play the game and forget about it. Well, you may want to reflect on particularly stupid moves so as to not do those in the future, or on particularly clever moves of the opponent if you can figure them out. But apart from that, it is all water under the bridge.

But if you are studying Go, and want to get better, there are two obvious uses for kifu. You can record your own games so you can reflect on them at your leisure later. Or you can use kifu from better players to replay their games. This is one of the time-proven methods of getting stronger at Go. Even young professionals do it, so I hear. I am definitely not one of them, though.  Still, I wanted to try it.

I did a Google search for “kifu paper”. There are a number of web sites which are eager to tell you to not use the phrase “kifu paper”. It is called “game record form” in English. But that is not a good search term as you will get lots of irrelevant hits. If you search for “kifu paper”, you come straight to the places where these sites tell you not to call it “kifu paper”, which happens to be right where you can download the form as well. ^_^

I picked the one from AllAboutGo.com, it was simple and to the point. Some have circles to write in, but I find it more natural to just write on the intersection. As recommended, I write the black moves in black (blue is fine also) and the white in red. It makes a big difference to how easy it is both to write and read. With this, you will not lose track easily or accidentally write 69 two times in a row. The black numbers are always odd, the red always even. Pure genius.

My first was an attempt to kifu an amateur match between a 9-dan and an 8-dan on the Internet Go Server. When you play yourself on the IGS, you can save a kifu that is made automatically, and download it at your leisure. It is possible you can do this with games you watch too, but the voices in my h… er, I thought it might be a good idea to write it by hand, involving other parts of the body and brain in the process.

I found out that fiber-tip coloring pens are not ideal for writing kifu. Who would have thought it? It worked, for the most part, up to 99. After that things became iffy.

Next out was coloring pencils. These worked well enough, although you may want to have a pencil sharpener around after a while. And who has pencil sharpeners in this age?

Eventually today I caved in and bought a red and a black Pilot V5 Hi-tecpoint 0.5. Because the quality of your Go obviously depends on the quality of your stuff. Well, to humans that may actually be true, since science has proven that people borrowing cheap imitations of brand sunglasses tend to cheat and not act with the dignity of those who borrow the real thing. So it is entirely possible that having an expensive Go board in real kaya wood, and writing your kifu with a quality fountain pen on original printed kifu forms will make you take your Go more seriously. But I like to think I am not like that. I am not saying I am not human (although sometimes I have wondered), but hopefully I am human in a different way than that. Still, a good pen is nice to have around. I haven’t had one in the Chaos Node for years.

So that’s my story. I am kifuing, as I call it, mainly to involve other parts of the body and brain, to improve subconscious learning. But is learning Go a good use of the sunset of your life? The Japanese certainly seem to think so, it is very popular among the elderly there. Millions of Japanese can’t be wrong! OK, they can – millions of Japanese were wrong during World War 2. But not about Go. In fact, if they had come to Pearl Harbor with Go boards, they would probably have won…

#go #igo #baduk #weiqi #kifu

Mysterious illness

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As mentioned in my slice of life journal, my pulse is 25-30 beats above normal this evening, after having been some 15 beats above normal for over a week. I have not been able to exercise during this week, or rather I have quickly become stiff and tired even from walking. Apart from that, the symptoms seem to vary randomly. Something is happening inside this body, but I have no idea what.

This is just a heads-up, really. Sympathy (or antipathy for that matter) won’t make a difference, my body will have to handle this on its own. Right now it is too vague to even involve a doctor. (Besides, it is extremely few times in my life that a doctor visit has led to anything at all besides spending time and money. It has happened, but it is not the rule.)