BGonline.org Forums

Nactation: S/Z rehash, etc.

Posted By: Matt Ryder
Date: Friday, 2 December 2011, at 7:19 a.m.

In Response To: Nactation: S/Z rehash, etc. (Timothy Chow)

Tim chow wrote:

What I claim to have seen clearly is that this kind of philosophy is inevitably going to lead to the equivalent of spaghetti code if you carry out consistently to the bitter end, and come up with a way to nactate all 2226 legal ways to play snake eyes in Zare's position.

This is a straw-man. Nobody wants to use nactation to describe these types of crazy extreme positions.

You wouldn't criticize your banking system because it can't accept a googol dollars even though somebody might theoretically want to make such a deposit (would you?).

Thank goodness for out-the-box thinkers like Nack who aren't trapped in these intellectual rabbit-warrens. It takes a certain special genius to envisage a system where a single letter may stand in for complex spatial configurations.

You can waste time quibbling from some academic ivory tower about nactation's theoretical boundaries, but if you'd like to nactate practical early to mid game situations (including blunders and complex doublets), it behooves you to extend your facility with the system beyond the basic symbols in Nack's original tutorial.

Taper_Mike ably demonstrated the value of this extended knowledge by authoritatively answering Mochy's recent nactation questions about early-game doublets.

It is going to confuse people, and turn nactation into a religion, where you'll get loyal disciples like Matt Ryder and sneering critics like Neil Robins.

Okay, I'm certainly a fan of nactation, but I'm no drooling religious acolyte. I've been fairly critical of certain developments, particularly the ugly TyPogGrapHical contortions required to describe extended nactation families. (See this thread for a representative sample of my feelings on that topic.)

But it's not my system, so I don't get to dictate every detail. Neither do you. We must defer to the system's author.

Nactation has become a lingua franca for discussion with some of the world's top players. Reams of data have been recorded with the system, and cutting-edge research into opening theory has been conducted where nactation plays a central role. If you want to be part of that dialogue, learn nactation - including the bits you don't like.

It's just plain condescending (not to mention fundamentally wrong-headed) to paint admirers and critics of nactation here as confused zealots in warring camps, with yourself the only person with the necessary background in computers or maths to act as the voice of calm and reason.

Matt R.

Messages In This Thread

• 42P-51S-32
  Timothy Chow -- Friday, 25 November 2011, at 8:21 p.m.
  • 42P-51S-32
    Casper van der Tak -- Friday, 25 November 2011, at 8:34 p.m.
  • 42P-51S-32
    Stick -- Friday, 25 November 2011, at 9:14 p.m.
    • 42P-51S-32
      David Rockwell -- Friday, 25 November 2011, at 11:48 p.m.
      • Nactation questions
        Timothy Chow -- Saturday, 26 November 2011, at 12:07 a.m.
        • Nactation questions
          Stick -- Saturday, 26 November 2011, at 12:09 a.m.
        • Nactation questions
          Dmitriy Obukhov -- Saturday, 26 November 2011, at 2:07 a.m.
          • Nactation questions
            Taper_Mike -- Saturday, 26 November 2011, at 7:55 a.m.
            • Nactation questions — Correction
              Taper_Mike -- Saturday, 26 November 2011, at 8:07 a.m.
              • Higher-number-first corollary
                Nack Ballard -- Monday, 28 November 2011, at 9:12 p.m.
            • Nactation questions
              Timothy Chow -- Saturday, 26 November 2011, at 8:32 p.m.
              • Nactation questions
                Matt Ryder -- Sunday, 27 November 2011, at 6:52 a.m.
                • Nactation questions
                  Timothy Chow -- Sunday, 27 November 2011, at 6:44 p.m.
                  • Nactation questions
                    Matt Ryder -- Tuesday, 29 November 2011, at 4:40 a.m.
                • Nactation questions
                  Nack Ballard -- Monday, 28 November 2011, at 5:43 p.m.
                  • Nactation questions
                    Matt Ryder -- Tuesday, 29 November 2011, at 5:03 a.m.
              • Nactation: S/Z rehash, etc.
                Nack Ballard -- Monday, 28 November 2011, at 5:00 p.m.
                • Nactation: S/Z rehash, etc.
                  Timothy Chow -- Wednesday, 30 November 2011, at 7:05 p.m.
                  • Nactation and Zare's position
                    Nack Ballard -- Friday, 2 December 2011, at 12:43 a.m.
                    • Nactation and Zare's position
                      Timothy Chow -- Friday, 30 May 2014, at 3:37 p.m.
                      • Nactation and Zare's position
                        Nack Ballard -- Friday, 30 May 2014, at 8:53 p.m.
                  • Nactation: S/Z rehash, etc.
                    Matt Ryder -- Friday, 2 December 2011, at 7:19 a.m.
            • Nactation questions
              Nack Ballard -- Thursday, 1 December 2011, at 4:36 p.m.
            • Definition of T (sTack, Tower)
              Nack Ballard -- Thursday, 1 December 2011, at 5:21 p.m.
    • 42P-51S-32
      Taper_Mike -- Saturday, 26 November 2011, at 8:42 a.m.
      • 42P-51S-32
        Casper van der Tak -- Saturday, 26 November 2011, at 9:13 a.m.
  • 42P-51S-32
    Dmitriy Obukhov -- Friday, 25 November 2011, at 10:57 p.m.
    • 42P-51S-32
      Timothy Chow -- Friday, 25 November 2011, at 11:17 p.m.
  • 42P-51S-32
    neilkaz -- Sunday, 27 November 2011, at 7:04 p.m.
  • 42P-51S-32 GNU Rollout
    Stick -- Sunday, 27 November 2011, at 10:36 p.m.
  • 42P-51S-32 XG2 RO
    Dmitriy Obukhov -- Sunday, 27 November 2011, at 11:23 p.m.
    • 42P-51S-32 XG2 RO
      Timothy Chow -- Monday, 28 November 2011, at 3:21 p.m.
    • 42P-51S-32 and 31P-51S-32
      Nack Ballard -- Thursday, 1 December 2011, at 8:16 p.m.