Color Neutral Debate

[Kirjava]

No, that was everyone else.

Please show where anyone said that ever.

 

[Sillas]

No, that was everyone else.

Haha.. so true. :fp

Well, if anyone want to see the opinion of own Feliks Zemdegs, about color neutrality, look here.

Just it:

Spoiler

"It helps in the cross, and the lookahead to the first pair, which in turn helps the whole solve flow." Feliks

 

[timeless]

I have had some even times, just not full averages. I have noticed though, that I don't seem to favor any particular colors like I did a few months back. It just doesn't seem to matter anymore. As for Esquimalt, he told me it was a very slow process. He pretty much, just did slow, walkthrough solves until he got used to the colors, which is what I did as well. It does seem to help rather than just full on solving straight away.




Personally, I didn't switch for the advantages of easier crosses, etc, I switched solely because I was tired of solving the same color, over and over. It's just something to make it a little more exciting.

i am attempting to be CN but i keep doing white cross subconsiously, did you this problem too?

 

[rubikmaster]

Would it be easier to become color neutral if I took a break for a few weeks and then started switching to color neutral?What do you guys think?

 

[AbstractAlg]

breaks definitely help.

I am in progress of switching to color neutral, from white.
It's amazing I found out that green as cross is much, much easier for me, and all the f2l pair colors suit me better than those with white cross.
but. there's always a 'but'.
my times are lower when doing CN, compared to white cross only. but benefit, as already said is that my white cross is faster, in inspection I am able to see the first f2l pair.

so white improved. other color - not that much. was it worth of it? i believe yes.
so my vote goes to CN practice at least, if not complete switching to CN.

 

[DaKrazedKyubizt]

I switched to color neutrality. My times definitely went down at first, but of course, the CN times went back up where they should be for a while. I'm not fully color neutral though. I'm still a lot more comfortable with W/Y bi-CN.

I just started trying to look for first F2L pair for as many solves as possible. I find that if you can do that, your CN will get a lot better merely because there's less work necessary DURING the solve.

I am starting to take notice of what my eyes do with CN vs bi-CN. I am just now realizing exactly how fast I look for the cross with bi-CN. I don't really do much work with bi-CN. I don't even try to look for the F2L pairs at times, and I often end up just sorta finding them. If I'm feeling lazy, I'll go for W/Y cross, usually yellow, since I used to use only yellow before I was bi-CN. My brain almost thinks that the best cross is always on white or yellow. It's kinda weird.

I'm working strictly on F2L for a while (as you can see from my signature). When I make comparisons on my CN vs bi-CN times and notice anything else, I'll update you guys.

 

[drewsopchak]

I switched after nats 2010. I averaged just sub 20 and now I'm perfectly cn at 10. It took me about 6-7 months to fully adapt.

 

[Kirjava]

It should only take a month if it took 6 months you were doing it wrong maybe you should try turbo tracking.

 

[Godmil]

I'm 5 weeks into yellow cross.... kinda more natural now, but I'm still not as fast

 

[yoshinator]

Practice. It is the ultimate way to improve, the only way to beat the best, and the reason is obvious:

Practically everything can be improved by practice, pauses can be eliminated, TPS can be raised, lookahead can be maximized. But there's one thing that practice cannot improve, and that's move count.

While optimization helps to lower move count enormously (probably more than becoming color neutral), it, like everything, has a limit. And so once you have mastered optimization, or while you are working on optimization, I would say that becoming color neutral is helpful, because it can also help reduce move count.

Knowing that color neutrality can do what practice cannot (reduce move count), I would argue that color neutrality is definitely worth it, because it can, still combined with a massive amount of practice, improve your times slightly more than practice alone.

Furthermore, I think that the argument of how long it takes to become color neutral is ultimately futile. Because regardless of how long it takes, it is worth it.

It's kind of like the transfer between Beginners method and CFOP/Roux, it's hard, it takes a while, but ultimately, it's worth it.

Agree with me? Awesome, lets have a conversation about it!

Disagree with me? Even more awesome, let's have a civilized and mature discussion about it!

Please reply to the entire post, not just parts of it. Text only makes sense within its context.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Rubiks560]

Think of it as learning ZBLL, you know that by the end of it you are going to be faster, but you don't know how hard it is going to be, or how long it will take, but you know it will be worth it, because you will have something (almost) nobody else does.

Full ZBLL is not worth it, at all period. Look at Chris Tran, he learned it all and he now says it isn't worth it.

 

[drewsopchak]

Full ZBLL is not worth it. At all period. Look at Chris Tran, he learned it all and he now says it isn't worth it.

Often times simple is better.

 

[yoshinator]

Full ZBLL is not worth it, at all period. Look at Chris Tran, he learned it all and he now says it isn't worth it.

Sorry, you're right, that was a stupid comparison.

However, my point still remains, for real improvement, it is required for you to destroy previous work. Look at how we solve the cube, we make some, we destroy and restore in order to make more progress. This applies to practically everything in life, and color neutrality as well.

 

[Rpotts]

Practice. It is the ultimate way to improve, the only way to beat the best, and the reason is obvious:

Practically everything can be improved by practice, pauses can be eliminated, TPS can be raised, lookahead can be maximized. But there's one thing that practice cannot improve, and that's move count.

Sure you could learn more algorithms, or try to optimize you blocks/F2L more, but those really only work to an extent. Something that can improve your move count however, is color neutrality.

Knowing that color neutrality can do what practice cannot (reduce move count), I would argue that color neutrality is definitely worth it, because it can, still combined with a massive amount of practice, improve your times slightly more than practice alone.

Furthermore, I think that the argument of how long it takes to become color neutral is ultimately futile. Because regardless of how long it takes, it is worth it.

It's kind of like the transfer between Beginners method and CFOP/Roux, it's hard, it takes a while, but ultimately, it's worth it.

Agree with me? Awesome, lets have a conversation about it!

Disagree with me? Even more awesome, let's have a civilized and mature discussion about it!

Please reply to the entire post, not just parts of it. Text only makes sense within its context.

Thanks for reading.

I strongly disagree, practicing pair selection and basic multislotting and blockbuilding will reduce your movecount far more than simply becoming color neutral.

 

[yoshinator]

I strongly disagree, practicing pair selection and basic multislotting and blockbuilding will reduce your movecount far more than simply becoming color neutral.

I am unsure as to whether my phrasing was bad, or just that you misunderstood. However:

My point is not that optimization, lookahead etc. will not help to improve, because they will, and probably more than becoming color neutral.

What I am saying is that those things (like all things) have a limit, and so becoming color neutral is another thing you can do to help you improve. And since it is independent of optimization (being CN does not affect optimization), with enough practice, you can maintain everything else, while also having a slightly lower move count, which results (obviously) in faster solves.

I've incorporated this into my initial post, tell me what you think.

 

[MWilson]

You would have to look so far into the solve during inspection that you would know the resulting move count of the whole solve. You can pick a four move cross over a seven move cross, but end up with more moves because the four move cross results in a really bad F2L + LL whereas the seven move cross turned into a really lucky F2L + LL. That said I think the best reason to be color neutral is for the fun of it. I'm 100% CN and often I will ignore an easy cross just because I did that color twice in a row already, and it doesn't affect my average at all.

 

[yoshinator]

You would have to look so far into the solve during inspection that you would know the resulting move count of the whole solve. You can pick a four move cross over a seven move cross, but end up with more moves because the four move cross results in a really bad F2L + LL whereas the seven move cross turned into a really lucky F2L + LL. That said I think the best reason to be color neutral is for the fun of it. I'm 100% CN and often I will ignore an easy cross just because I did that color twice in a row already, and it doesn't affect my average at all.

First of all, sometimes it is quite easy to look relatively deep into a solve, especially of you are comfortable with ZZ (for EO), and Petrus (for lookahead into the second, or even third pair). With that in mind, colour neutrality can be very helpful, because if your cross and/or first pair are easy to execute, and look-ahead during, than the entire solve will, overall, be smoother, this is why Feliks Zemdegs, arguably the best cuber in the world, is color neutral. Second, if the only advantage of becoming colour neutral was because it was more fun, than very few serious cubers would be CN, because their main goal is to improve.

 

[Godmil]

While I don't have a problem with colour neutrality, I've got to pick up a couple of mistakes in that last post.

...this is why Feliks Zemdegs, arguably the best cuber in the world, is color neutral....

Actually he's colour neutral because he started out colour neutral, you can't reverse the cause and effect. This is the post-hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy.

Second, if the only advantage of becoming colour neutral was because it was more fun, than very few serious cubers would be CN...

Actually it is the case that very few of the top cubers are colour neutral. (Although I can imagine as time goes on the proportial will shift dramatically)

 

[Escher]

Full ZBLL is not worth it, at all period. Look at Chris Tran, he learned it all and he now says it isn't worth it.

Hm, I disagree. Imo Chris Tran learned it way too fast and perhaps in the wrong way - he was so desperate to become the first person to learn it he put memorising the algs themselves over everything else.

Anyway, this discussion is for another thread.

 

[Kirjava]

Full ZBLL is not worth it, at all period. Look at Chris Tran, he learned it all and he now says it isn't worth it.

You cannot possibly know if ZBLL is 'worth it' or not.