When starting, the best strategy is to spread the pieces far apart and — Go (game)

"Go is an ancient board game that takes simple elements — line and circle, Black and White, stone and wood — combines them with simple rules and generates subtleties that have enthralled players for millennia. Gos appeal resides not only in its oriental elegance, but also in practical and stimulating features in the design of the game. Gos few rules can be demonstrated quickly, and grasped easily. It is enjoyably played over a wide range of skills. Each level of play has its charms, rewards and discoveries. A unique and reliable handicapping system leads to equal contests between players of widely disparate strengths. Go is uniquely flexible and rewards patience and balance over aggression and greed. An early mistake can be made up, used to advantage or reversed as the game proceeds. There is no simple procedure to turn a clear lead into a victory. Go thinking seems to be more lateral than linear, less dependent on logical deduction, and more reliant on a "feel" for the game, a "sense" of form, a gestalt perception of significant patterns. Beyond being merely a game, Go can take on other meanings to enthusiasts: an analogy with life, an intense meditation, a mirror of ones personality, an exercise in abstract reasoning, or, when played well, a beautiful art in which Black and White dance across the board in delicate balance. But most importantly for those who play, Go is challenging and fun."

"Hoy, 9 de septiembre de 1978, tuve en la palma de la mano un pequeino disco de los trescientos sesenta y uno que se requieren para el juego astrológico del go, ese otro ajedrez del Oriente Es más antiguo que la más antigua escritura y el tablero es un mapa del universo Sus variaciones negras y blancas agotarán el tiempo En él pueden perderse los hombres como en el amor y en el día 9 de septiembre de 1978, yo, que soy ignorante de tantas cosas, sé que ignoro una más, y agradezco a mis númenes esta revelación de un laberinto que nunca será mío"

"Ive always loved games. When I was in high school I read a book about Go and realized its the best game. I was an exchange student in Japan mostly because I wanted to play a lot of Go, and in the year I was there, there wasnt much else to do. There was a chess master that said, "If aliens exist they might play chess, but they certainly play Go." ... Theres something beautiful that happens when simple rules lead to a complex system. It also teaches me patience and composure and handling ambiguity. ... I think its helped a lot with my business, or at least its shaped my style of management. ... Go is all about handling ambiguity. For example, do I want a region of the board to be well defined or undefined? Beginners stress out too much about leaving territory unclaimed or stones half-captured. But you learn often thats advantageous. I think a big part of running an early stage start-up is not freaking out about things being left undefined."

"Rather than being the image of a single struggle as in chess, Go is much more like the panorama of an entire campaign, or complex theatre of war. And so it is more like modern warfare where strategic mass movements are the ultimate determinants of victory. … As in modern warfare, direct combat, without supporting tactics, rarely occurs. In fact, to engage too soon in direct combat frequently spells defeat."

"This is the universe! And Im placing stones one by one on that. Like Im increasing the number of stars one by one... Im making the universe. Its like Im a God. Im going to become a God! On this Go Board."

"It is difficult for a man who always has a full stomach to put his mind to some use. Are there not players of Liubo and Weiqi? Even playing these games is better than being idle."

"I appeal to all pupils, students and young people, asking you to focus on the horizons that are opening up for you, and which you could only dream of a year ago. Our future will depend on your desire for education and moral values as well as on your entrepreneurial spirit."

"We have created a wealthy society with tens of millions of talented, resourceful individuals who play virtually no role whatsoever as citizens. Bringing these people in — with their networks of influence, their knowledge, and their resources — is the key to creating the capacity for shared intelligence that we need to solve our problems."

"We are shocked when we see educators, timid before criticism and confused about first principles, betray their trust. And we wonder what can be that philosophy of education which believes that young people can be trained to the duties of citizenship by wrapping their minds in cotton wool."

"I cant read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up. I couldnt read the proletarian crap that came out in the 30s; again you had sentimentalism — the poor oppressed workers."

"An [hypertext] encyclopaedia will be an overall attempt by the knowledgeable, the learned societies or anyone else, to represent the state-of-the-art in their field. An encyclopaedia will be a living document, as up to date as it can be, instantly accessible at any time. It will contain carefully authored explanations and summaries of the subject, as well as computer-generated indexes of literature. A reference to a paper from the encyclopaedia conveys authority and acceptance by academic society. A measure of a paper’s standing may be conveyed by the number of links it is away from an encyclopaedia."

"One of the first major steps in the direction of modern skepticism came through the victory of Occam over Aquinas in a controversy about language. The statement that modi essendi were replaced by modi significandi et intelligendi, or that ontological referents were abandoned in favor of pragmatic significations, describes broadly the change in philosophy which continues to our time. From Occam to Bacon, from Bacon to Hobbes, and from Hobbes to contemporary semanticists, the progression is clear: ideas become psychological figments, words become useful signs. ... To one completely committed to this realm of becoming, as are the empiricists, the claim to apprehend verities is a sign of . Probably we have here but a highly sophisticated expression of the doctrine that ideals are hallucination and that the only normal, sane person is the healthy extrovert, making instant, instinctive adjustments to the stimuli of the material world."