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Sun Tzu’s Art of War is one of the most overrated pieces of military advice. The writing is beautiful, the analogies are nice, and it is easily comprehensible to an outsider, but the advice is so generic as to be useless while sounding profound.
Finally someone said it. I thought it was just me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever gone to war? Have you ever been the mastermind behind a war on another? How can you say it’s overrated? It’s timeless and simple for a reason.
The issue with it is that Sun's writings are not used as guidance for war, it's used as guidance for X. There X is random action you're engaged in. If it was used as guidance for war, it would be popular in military circles, whereas I see it popular in entrepreneurial circles.
Yes, they are.
> it's used as guidance for X.
To the extent that's a problem (and for some values of X it is), it is not a problem with the writing, but with the use.
> If it was used as guidance for war, it would be popular in military circles
It (and newer works grounded in part in it and/or intermediary sources derived in part from it) is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. You often see soldiers making mistakes that Tzu warns against. Some of what he says has only been put into practice over the last hundred years as we have developed doctrines like manoeuvre warfare. The advice sounds generic because it’s been given for so long! Everyone knows it - it turns out it’s difficult to have the discipline to apply it which is why it’s important to keep saying it. As a concrete ex…
Yeah, deception. > inexperienced commanders constantly forget to apply deception ... My tactical checklist says ‘use deception’ And what deception have you used in warfare? Or other spheres?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever gone to war? Have you ever been the mastermind behind a war on another? How can you say it’s overrated? It’s timeless and simple for a reason.
The issue with it is that Sun's writings are not used as guidance for war, it's used as guidance for X. There X is random action you're engaged in. If it was used as guidance for war, it would be popular in military circles, whereas I see it popular in entrepreneurial circles.
You're ignorant - they are used as guidance for war.
For just one example - British Army Doctrine Land Operations, the current core document for how the British think about fighting war on land, quotes Tzu:
> The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finally someone said it. I thought it was just me.
If it was applicable to modern war, it would talk about logistics and technology, whereas it talks about merely tactics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finally someone said it. I thought it was just me.
If it was applicable to modern war, it would talk about logistics and technology, whereas it talks about merely tactics.
This is simply factually false; chapter 2 of tAoW is nearly entirely about strategy at a level which subsumes logistics, logistics itself, and economic considerations of conduct of war and their impacts on logistic concerns.
The work says more about tactics, but that seems to be not because tactics are viewed as more important but because they are viewed as more amenable to detailed generic advice; the higher level rules are simpler to describe (but not necessarily to execute on effectively.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue with it is that Sun's writings are not used as guidance for war, it's used as guidance for X. There X is random action you're engaged in. If it was used as guidance for war, it would be popular in military circles, whereas I see it popular in entrepreneurial circles.
> Sun's writings are not used as guidance for war You're ignorant - they are used as guidance for war. For just one example - British Army Doctrine Land Operations, the current core document for how the British think about fighting war on land, quotes Tzu: > The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
This illustrates my pointer perfectly. This quote is just a fancy way of saying "It's great if you can get what you want without fighting."
While true, pretty much every leader since the dawn of time has known that. Darius I, sent a mission to Sparta demanding earth and water for this very reason. The advice is nicely stated, but it isn't all that practically helpful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sun's writings are not used as guidance for war You're ignorant - they are used as guidance for war. For just one example - British Army Doctrine Land Operations, the current core document for how the British think about fighting war on land, quotes Tzu: > The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
> The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. This illustrates my pointer perfectly. This quote is just a fancy way of saying "It's great if you can get what you want without fighting." While true, pretty much every leader since the dawn of time has known that. Darius I, sent a mission to Sparta demanding earth and water for this very reason. The advice is nicely stated, but it isn't all that prac…
Well your point was that it wasn't used as guidance for war until we showed that it was...
> While true, pretty much every leader since the dawn of time has known that.
No I don't think they have. I think it has been constantly forgotten and rediscovered. Today when we talk about how to fight we might say this in terms of 'shatter the enemy's cohesion and will to fight' rather than fighting them directly. Get inside their OODA loop, match strength with weakness, in other words. It turns out people don't naturally do this! It has to be taught!
They forgot this, for example, during WW1 when they fought attrition warfare. They focused on meeting the enemy and having a fight, toe-to-toe, force against force. There's something about human nature that seems to always lead people toward this approach by default, and we have to constantly remind ourselves of advice, using for example Tzu, to avoid it and instead of looking to fight the enemy, to break the enemy's cohesion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finally someone said it. I thought it was just me.
If it was applicable to modern war, it would talk about logistics and technology, whereas it talks about merely tactics.
Sun Tzu’s Art of War is one of the most overrated pieces of military advice. The writing is beautiful, the analogies are nice, and it is easily comprehensible to an outsider, but the advice is so generic as to be useless while sounding profound.
It's abstract advice, not generic advice. You don't understand what is being said unless you can instantiate it in concrete situations.
Conversations like this remind me of the phenomenon of books that people say have a lot of re-reading value. There was either too much going on the first time through. So you reread it many times and see things you missed.
When you watch a professional athlete or a master of anything, you can only 'see' the things that are within your horizon of comprehension. If someone is narrating they can expand that horizon. Someone who is more advanced than you will always be learning new things, but if you see them doing something new, odds are reasonably good that it's you who changed, not them.
Sun Tzu comes out of a culture that values intuition highly. Allusion and understatement are tools in that toolbox. You are meant to be spending time unpacking things, instead of being beaten over the head with them. If Lego came pre-assembled you wouldn't appreciate it as much.