51–60 of 68 posts
I'm sorry, but isn't this just... obvious? Like, I'm not sure how else one would conduct themselves if they have a serious problem they have to think through? Blind panic and reaction?
Every discussion I see of the OODA loop is almost always ridiculously oversimplified to the point of being useless or just plain wrong. I watched a ~2 hour interview on YouTube with a guy who worked alongside Boyd when he was developing the idea, and the way he explained it just clicked and was one of the most beautiful ideas I've seen to date. You mostly see it depicted as a circle, well forget that as it's complete…
Tangentially, Taleb tweeted a nice quote yesterday, "You don't do well by trying to be right; it is impossible for humans. You do well by figuring out when you're wrong faster than others do." https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1627765781168619520
This is wack advice. There's value in shipping an MVP (or multiple MVPs) fast, sure. Cull the failures and iterate the successes. Better than trying to achieve perfection with a forever-delayed product that never ships. But even the sloppiest, most minimal MVP has to get something extremely right. You need to solve some problem for the user in ways that others haven't. If you don't get things right enough, you've jus…
both Apple and Tesla have had plenty of failures to learn from -- and they recovered remarkably.
There isn't much reason to believe that the parents' quote is at-odds with the operation of either of those two companies.
The idea of getting inside an enemy's decision loop means that you are iterating OODA faster than they are. OODA is sometimes paraphrased by cynics as 'Observe, Overreact, Deny, Apologise'.
Iterating OODA faster is not the same as getting inside the adversary’s OODA loop. That’s a common misconception. It’s more that, you are able to drive the adversary’s OODA loop so that they start doing things in a way you control. Sometimes that means iterating faster, but if you are not controlling the adversary’s OODA loop, you are more likely to be “observe, overreact, deny, apologise”, just doing it faster. That…
This sounds super interesting, but it's so generic I can't get anything concrete from it. Could you elaborate a bit on how he dictated the engagement?
I'm sorry, but isn't this just... obvious? Like, I'm not sure how else one would conduct themselves if they have a serious problem they have to think through? Blind panic and reaction?
Switching to OODA would allow the troops in the field to make live observations and (to a reasonable extent) orient, decide, and act on thir own.
Every discussion I see of the OODA loop is almost always ridiculously oversimplified to the point of being useless or just plain wrong. I watched a ~2 hour interview on YouTube with a guy who worked alongside Boyd when he was developing the idea, and the way he explained it just clicked and was one of the most beautiful ideas I've seen to date. You mostly see it depicted as a circle, well forget that as it's complete…
Hmm, can you provide an example regarding the third pathway feedback loop?
The other is the effect that "the element of surprise" has on your adversary where they have very little information as to what is actually going on and hence have to make a lot of internal assumptions about what might be going on.
My takeaway is basically if you can get an adversary to "think about things" and make long chains of inference without doing 'reality testing', the longer the chains of inference become, the lower the probability that they are correct. This is advantageous to you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is wack advice. There's value in shipping an MVP (or multiple MVPs) fast, sure. Cull the failures and iterate the successes. Better than trying to achieve perfection with a forever-delayed product that never ships. But even the sloppiest, most minimal MVP has to get something extremely right. You need to solve some problem for the user in ways that others haven't. If you don't get things right enough, you've jus…
>Look at Apple both Apple and Tesla have had plenty of failures to learn from -- and they recovered remarkably. There isn't much reason to believe that the parents' quote is at-odds with the operation of either of those two companies.
Tesla, on the other hand, is a great example -- they're willing, even enthusiastic, about killing their customers as learning experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Iterating OODA faster is not the same as getting inside the adversary’s OODA loop. That’s a common misconception. It’s more that, you are able to drive the adversary’s OODA loop so that they start doing things in a way you control. Sometimes that means iterating faster, but if you are not controlling the adversary’s OODA loop, you are more likely to be “observe, overreact, deny, apologise”, just doing it faster. That…
> but he knew how people behave and act, and so he was able to dictate the entire engagement This sounds super interesting, but it's so generic I can't get anything concrete from it. Could you elaborate a bit on how he dictated the engagement?
It is better to draw examples from your own experience in adversarial games, even perfect information games with fixed turns like Chess or Go. Take the game you are most skilled at, and see if you remember playing against someone who was so unskilled, that you can see their moves and mistake a long way coming. And if you weren’t teaching them, you can close off avenues long before they are even aware of it. If you pay attention, you might even know the minute they realize something, only it is far too late. There is a sense as if you are inside their head, knowing what they are going to do — must do — before they are even aware of it themselves.
It’s like that, only perhaps with a peer adversary.
I highly recommend reading Boyd's transcript of a talk he gave in 1989 instead of the wiki on this stuff: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5497331ae4b0148a6141b... It will resonate with any builders in the HN audience and give a ton of context behind the thinking here. > You know, some people like to be regarded as being an analyst. They think that’s a term of endearment. I treat it as a personal insult if some…
Would be amazing if that talk is available as a recording somewhere. I was several pages in before I looked at how big the transrcipt is. Will have to come back to it. Huge thanks for posting it!
- a good summary of Getting Things Done (definitely not the whole book), like: https://www.blinkist.com/en/books/getting-things-done-en
- a Trello template for GTD, or whatever software you use, like: https://blog.trello.com/gtd-getting-things-done-maximizing-p...
- think of the whole thing as a set of interconnected OODA loops of different time scales
GTD and OODA actually go very well together - it explains for example why the easiest way for GTD to fail is to skip the weekly cleanup. You're just left with the daily loop, which is very much not enough. Proper GTD has organized loops up to around one year. It also a great way to force you to think on longer time scales, stuff like "what do I want to do the next 3 months?".