“Don't start from the assumption that you are weak, or you will never learn to be strong.”The hypothesis was stated in the context of altering one's play style as a reaction to the perceived skill difference between you and your opponent, which we already concluded was a bad idea. However, the statement itself still stands.
My first objection was in defense of accurate self-awareness. If I don't know my strength (or, rather, weakness), in the first place, how will I know when I'm getting stronger, or even what I need to do to improve? I need to be able to see where I am to know where I'm going. The first step to attaining competence is understanding one's incompetence.
I suspect the hypothesis is built on the assumption that someone who believes they are weak will take fewer risks than someone who believes they are strong. That's a critical falsehood. A person who believes they are weak but isn't afraid of failing will take plenty of risks, while the person who believes they are strong but is afraid of failing will take fewer risks. Fear of failing might be amplified by holding “strong” or “smart” as part of one's identity. As soon as failure threatens identity, a mistake is no longer just a mistake, it's an identity crisis. Higher stakes usually mean taking fewer risks.
There is also a question of which approach a player takes to their learning. In The Art of Learning, the author discusses the critical difference between entity and incremental theories of intelligence. In short, an entity theorist considers ability inherent and ingrained - “I am naturally good at x” - while an incremental theorist considers ability an achievable product of hard work - “I am good at x because I worked hard.” In this case, it is the difference between believing I am doomed to be weak forever and believing that weakness is simply the starting point on a continuum, and that getting stronger is totally possible if I just put in the work. This is exactly why the first thing my favorite professor in art collage did was rip apart the concept of “talent.”
There's also something in here about the perception of risk. There's a close enough link between experience and skill that I'm going to group them together for the sake of this argument. With experience comes the ability to read out further and more accurately. A weak player might think something is risky (and the best move), based on what little they can see, and tackle that instead of the thing a more experienced person would know is actually more important and/or in more danger. I wouldn't say the weak player chose poorly in that case, because they chose based on what information they had and the best of their ability to parse it. What more can you ask? If we aren't talking about a game of Go, you could ask them to ask for more helping parsing the situation. In that case, I'm strongly against “don't assume you're weak...” because a weak person trying to get stronger is more likely to ask for more help than a person who already believes they're strong.
I think a better motto for me might be something as simple as “do what you'd do if you weren't afraid.” My problem isn't that my opponent is stronger (the handicap is supposed to balance that anyway), it's internal; I'm letting fearful self-limiting beliefs narrow the range of options I consider viable. The trick is being able to see clearly enough through the fear, or dismiss it (easier said than done) enough to know what the best move would be if I weren't afraid. Fear also tends to make people think locally, short-term, instead of globally, long-term, which may be an advantage in crisis, but not in a Go game.
This is one of the things I adore about Go: whatever issue you're tackling in life, it's gonna come out on the board.
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