Nu, nu este la noi ci la Comandamentul Armatei SUA și la Colegiul General al Statului Major.

Aflăm aceasta din următorul articol publicat pe situl Asociației de Go Americane.

https://www.usgo.org/news/2019/10/go-as-part-of-curriculum-at-u-s-army-command-and-general-staff-college-an-interview-with-dr-james-sterrett/?fbclid=IwAR1s5uahiFAjl7oPHoDGpq8hb7TliBNDNrTxQtd-yFxx4Q_OxUv3F39tRdk

Traducere integrală.

În calitate de șef al educației de simulare din cadrul Comandamentului Armatei SUA și al Colegiului General al Statului Major din Fort Leavenworth, dr. James Sterrett folosește jocuri și simulări într-o varietate de moduri pentru a îi educa pe elevi. Într-un interviu realizat de Chris Ghorbani luna trecută, dr. Sterrett a descris cum a fost inițiat în Go, precum și modul în care și de ce folosește Goul în orele sale. A început în facultate să joace cu un prieten cu un prieten „pe o tablă desenată manual folosind capace de sticlă ca pietre”,  și acum el folosește Goul pentru a demonstra conceptele de eleganță de design. În cadrul clasei sale de instruire cu simulări, elevii joacă 30 de minute înainte de discuția despre profunzimea și utilitatea creată în joc doar printr-un număr mic de reguli. Studenții folosesc acest lucru ca inspirație pentru a-și proiecta și dezvolta propriile jocuri de antrenament, încercând să obțină eleganță cu propriile cerințe de joc.

Dr. Sterrett descrie unul dintre lucrurile sale preferate despre Go ca fiind discuțiile pe care le provoacă în clasele sale, descriindu-le drept „minunate – nu doar de strategie, operațiuni și tactici din interiorul lui Go, dar oamenii ajung să tragă paralele între situația de pe tablă și diverse situații din actualitate, istorie sau chiar propriile lor vieți. ”El continuă în interviu pentru a discuta despre joc, creșterea AI și comparații între jocuri și alte jocuri pe care le folosește în programa sa, inclusiv kriegspiel și șah. „Goul te învață strategie, operații, tactici și  cum să le combini pentru a obține victoria”, spune dr. Sterrett. „Lipsa unui centru de greutate clar definit în Go asigură că jucătorii trebuie să-l definească prin deciziile lor, la fel ca în marea strategie. Astfel, Goul este un instrument superb pentru respectarea unei mentalități strategice și pentru a vedea legăturile dintre nivelurile de război. ”

Dr. Sterrett concluzionează mulțumind comunității  de Go pentru eforturile continue de a se extinde, și speră că se va mai juca mii de ani în viitor.

Mai jos aveți interviul complet în original.

[Note: Go is intentionally capitalized throughout.]
Q: Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do.
A: I’m the Chief of Simulation Education in the Directorate of Simulation Education at the
U.S. Army Command & General Staff College (CGSC). The Directorate as a whole supports the
use of, and teaches the employment of, simulations and command & control systems at CGSC.
My co-instructor, Mike Dunn, and I handle most of the teaching about using games and
simulations, including a number of elective courses, and a Wargame Design Focus Track in the
CGSC Master’s degree program, in which each student designs a wargame and writes their
thesis explaining it.
Q: Why do you use games in simulation classes?
A: First, in a formal sense, all games are simulations. Models are representations: usually
physical or mathematical. A model iterated over time is a simulation: I can build a model of
how a ball flies through the air that shows what forces act on it every second. Iterated, it
provides a simulation of the ball’s flight. Games involve players making decisions to change
things inside the simulation. When you and I start using the ball-flight simulation to see if we
can hit each other without being hit in turn, we have a game.
Second, games are a very effective vehicle for delivering learning. Games permit us to gain
experience without actually performing the gamed act. We lose fidelity in the experience
because the game is always simplified to some degree, but we also lose the cost, in one or
more of time, money, or blood, of performing the gamed act in reality. To make a good
tradeoff between the bits of reality you don’t include and those you do, you must understand
your specific purpose and then design or select the game on that basis.
Q: When and how did you first learn about Go?
A: A friend introduced me to Go in college on a home-made board using bottlecaps as the
stones. He commented that it was unusual for a beginner to grasp the strategy better than
the tactics. We speculated my background in other strategy games helped me. A few years
later, I wound up playing a lot more Go against the woman who is now my wife. She still
beats me!
Q: What exactly do you teach in your current assignment and what specifically do you teach
on Go?
A: One of the courses I write and teach is Training with Simulations, in which students learn to
analyze training and educational requirements, to examine simulations and games, and to
articulate why a given game is a good choice for a given training or educational objective.
In this course, one of the lessons is on how to generate requirements for a new game. Ideally,
the requirements will specify the minimum necessary capabilities, because every additional
feature will cost money, both in design and development, and later in training operators to
use the game and in maintaining the game.
I have students play Go for around 30 minutes at the beginning of that class for three reasons.
The first, and most closely connected with the rest of the class session, is using Go to
demonstrate the concept of design elegance. Go is the most elegant design I know of, with a
tiny number of rules producing a game of incredible strategic depth, plus thousands of years
of use in training strategic thought. After playing it for around 30 minutes, students have
begun to see that depth and utility. We discuss Go a bit, and I pivot from the elegance of Go
to the need to use design elegance in their requirements generation, which they do in small
groups at whiteboards for an hour before presenting their concepts for group discussions in
which elegance is again a key theme.
Second, a broader educational theme in the course is to introduce students to a little of the
breadth of games that are available. Go fits perfectly that theme perfectly. Nearly all of our
students have played Chess, and yet nearly all of them have never heard of Go. I can’t pass
up this opportunity to introduce Go in a context that highlights its strengths. To reinforce the
point, I assign Dr. David Lai’s Learning from the Stones as reading. 1
Third, I might inspire some new Go players! To help with this goal, we hold an optional lunch
session playing Go as soon as possible after the class.
Q: What aspects of Go can be of use to the military professional of any branch of service or
country?
A: First, All games have players examine a situation, formulate a response, and put it into
action against your opposition – even arcade action games, which have you doing this very
quickly. What you can learn from the game is driven by the kinds of dilemmas the game puts
in front of you. Go teaches strategy, operations, tactics, and weaving them together to 2
achieve victory. The lack of a clearly defined center of gravity in Go ensures the players must
define it by their decisions, much as in grand strategy. Thus, Go is a superb tool for honing a
strategic mindset and seeing the links between the levels of war.
Second, in accord with David Lai’s paper, Learning from the Stones, Go is a useful way for
Westerners to expand our Chess- and football- driven mindset and come to grips with the Gotrained mindset of our East Asian allies and competitors.
Q: Do you play Go in your spare time?
A: Only occasionally, which is somewhat paradoxical, because if I had to choose only one
game to take with me to a desert island, it would be Go. In that situation, I’d want a game
certain to hold my attention for the duration, and I can’t think of a better game than Go for
that purpose. However, in my non-desert-island life, I wind up craving variety, so I tend to
bounce around between lots of games. That means I experience lots of different model and
simulation approaches, which is useful in my job.
Q: What do you personally like most about Go?
Download the paper from: https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=378 1
Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design contains a great, fun to read argument that we enjoy 2
games because we learn from them, as they tickle the same reward system in our brains.
A: Its elegance and the discussions it provokes. I can teach someone to play Go in under 5
minutes, but few of us will ever be masters, even with a lifetime of study. In addition, the
discussions it often generates are wonderful – not just of strategy, operations, and tactics
inside Go, but people wind up drawing parallels between the situation on the board and
various situations in current affairs, history, or even their own lives.
Q: What do you like least about it?
A: Paradoxically, its abstraction! I am shallow enough to need more bells and whistles.
Q: If you had to make one change to Go for the military professional what, if anything,
would it be?
A: Two answers:
1) Nothing. Go is not the only perfect game, but it is absolutely a perfect game. I don’t
believe you could add or remove any rules from it and make it better.
2) We have sometimes considered putting a map under the grid to drive discussion. For
example, put a map of East Asia or Europe or Africa underneath the grid, and then make
students justify their choices of areas of the map to contest based on the map as well as on
Go. This is really an extension of David Lai’s argument about Chinese strategic thought in
Learning from the Stones. This never quite seems to mesh with the wider objectives of the
course, but it’s proven useful as a concept to discuss with students.
Q: How do you study Go?
A: Intermittently! Initially, my wife handed me Graded Go Problems for Beginners. More
recently, I use the tsumegi in Gobandroid on my Android phone, and periodically playing
GoDroid; and every so often playing against actual humans! Gobandroid’s handling of the
tsumegi is particularly useful, because I can try approaches and see the likely responses, get
help once I am stumped, and also play the situation a bit further in order to explore why a
given solution may be best. Tsumego apps that simply tell me a move is right or wrong are
much less useful. On a more humbling note, GoDroid taught me that it’s possible to lose
every piece on the board – and the game – in one move.
Q: Favorite professional player?
A: Lee Sedol really impressed me by choosing to play black in his 5th game against AlphaGo on
the grounds that AlphaGo was stronger as white, and thus he would learn more. That’s a
great attitude.
Q: How do you feel about emerging AI in Go, and can you draw any parallels to emerging AI
in warfare?
A: I’ve been fascinated by the rise of AI! When AlphaGo and AlphaZero were making
headlines, they came up frequently in class, and still come up when we discuss AI.
I am cautious about parallels. On the one hand, there are some really hard problems to solve
simply in getting a military AI to understand the data it is given – but equally, AI is getting
better about recognition. It wasn’t many years between XKCD’s cartoon “Tasks” https://
xkcd.com/1425/ (which points out that recognizing birds in photos will need a research team
and 5 years) and The Cornell Lab putting out the Merlin Bird ID app http://
merlin.allaboutbirds.org/ .
Could AI start commanding formations of troops? At the moment, betting against it happening
someday seems unwise. Will those troops trust their commander?
Q: If you had to compare Go to any other game you study and play, what would it be and
why?
A: First, to Kriegsspiel, the Prussian Army’s training game from 1824, and the grandfather, by
various lines of descent, of most of the wargames we have today. Go and Kriegsspiel both
surprise students, who often don’t expect games that old (though Kriegsspiel is barely born
compared to Go!) to be engrossing and relevant to their own professional needs.
Second, to Chess, because it, too, has stood the test of time, and the comparison between
the rules of each, and the gameplay of each, is a good entry to considering the impact of
game rules on the game experience. For example, even at the level of objectives, the
absolute focus on the king in Chess and the diffuse focus on territory in Go produce very
different strategic landscapes for the player.
Third, the elegance discussion involves comparing Go to every game, because Go is such a
splendid example of a focused design, with all extraneous elements removed. It serves as a
contrast to the other games which are more complicated, but less complex. It also stands as
a warning; because sometimes we need the complication of other games in order to teach
more specific tasks, but we need to be sure that when we add complication, we are also
adding value.
Q: Anything in particular you would like to say to the Go community?
A: Thank you for your continued efforts to introduce more people to Go! Without those, it’s
very likely I would never have been introduced to it (even if with bottlecap stones).
Hopefully, humans will still be playing it several thousand years from now.