This is a fascinating topic. So I’m going to put some thoughts out there, even if it’s a little long
The reason I find it fascinating is looking at the struggle to work out what to do with this knew knowledge - the knowledge that what our Dans know is not “the best there is”.
One reaction to this new knowledge is “therefore there is nothing we know about what you should do anymore”.
I actually think this “there is no such thing as what you should do” actually should only be directly applied to Pros aspiring to beat AlphaGo. They need their minds completely open to the new exploration.
But the new experience from AlphaGo doesn’t negate the years and depth of experience of human play about ho to learn the game and how to learn to progress up from the basics to Dan.
It in fact just tells us that there’s another layer to master (or many more) than we had thought before.
For example, we used to joke (before AlphaGo) “Dans are crazy, don’t try to understand them”.
We did not say “because we can’t understand what Dan’s are doing, there is no ‘what you should do’”.
In fact, we understood that there are layers of learning. There is the initial learning, that TPKs do: “corner side centre” etc. Then there is the learning we do to move up through DDK and strive for SDK. This is very solid learning, and I assert that it is not undone by AlphaGo.
Then there was SDK and finally crazy Dan level play. The Dans used to teach us how to progress through these layers from a platform of certainty about their own knowledge.
What AlphaGo did is challenge their knowledge, and make them realise that they too don’t have just incremental learning to progress up through Dan, but a whole massive unexplored field of how to play.
And for sure as they discover things out there, new knowledge will flow down, be “captured and simplified”, for us lower people to use. One such example might be the overthrow of “don’t invade 3-3 early”. But this doesn’t throw out all the old guidlines and knowledge, just modifies and extends it.
Therefore, I think it is not right to answer any question about “what should we do” with “there is no more should”.
It’s just like before: to answer that question, you need to know what level the asker is asking from and give them the suitable guidance, based on the wealth of experience we humans draw on and have systematised into strategies and guidelines (proverbs).
GaJ
- TPK: twenty plus KYU. I deliberately call this layer out, because it is easy to lump them with DDK, but 19k is like a god to a 23k: the challenges that DDKs face are diferent to those of TPK learners. I think the lack of this distinction does the Go community a disservice, because beginners can’t tell what advice is stuiable for them, compared to advice suitable for people in the low DDKs.