81–90 of 99 posts
The OODA Loop and the Half-Beat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22601681 - March 2020 (31 comments)
Ask HN: How do you apply Boyd's OODA Loop in your life? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16447690 - Feb 2018 (10 comments)
John Boyd and the four qualities of victorious organizations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669129 - Nov 2013 (29 comments)
Related: terrific biography. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram > https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38840.Boyd
* Information * Position * Speed * Gear * Acceleration
Bikers are probably more prone to injury and death than your average fighter pilot, too.
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As long as you keep the "act" small in scale (and you continue to loop through the steps), this is probably the best approach in most circumstances. If for no other reason than is break you out of the initial tendency many people have to freeze when confronted with crisis.
I'm sure I've been told by someone who had been trained as an officer in the British army that they were very much trained to have a "Bias for Action" - i.e. the worst thing you could in most situations would be to get caught in their version of "analysis paralysis". Of course, he told me this with impeccable self deprecating humour (presumably also part of their training) - so difficult to tell how serious he was be…
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I'm unclear as to what's novel about OODA. Can someone give me an alternative model for context? It seems like all other permutations, e.g. DOAO or ADOO or DOOA wouldn't make sense, so what is the "eureka" about OODA? Also, separately, it just sounds to me like perception (OO), planning (D), control (A) renamed so I'm still not seeing what's novel about it.
The eureka was giving it a name in order to articulate its importance in tactical and strategic thinking. That's really it. Other people, throughout history, have operated in the same fashion but either not described what they did or described it in different terms.
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I feel like when I learned about the OODA loop, the big strategic advantage came from getting inside your opponent's OODA loop. It's less about being faster than them, and more about matching their tempo such that you're always one step ahead of them. In a fighter pilot context, this makes a lot of sense, and gives you a model for figuring out who is chasing who. One person controls the flow of battle, and one ends u…
Yes, precisely. Speed of execution of the OODA loop isn’t the goal in and of itself. The goal is to keep your opponent in a reactive state, and yourself in a proactive state.
Think a baseball game. The kids are taught to recognize where the "play" is. That is, if they know that the "out" comes at 2nd base, they are prepared to throw the ball there if they get it. If, once they get the ball, they have to think about where to throw it, the runner can get 3-4 strides farther along and might beat the throw.
For anyone interested in OODA, the Robert Coram biography of John Boyd, and "Certain to Win" by the Boyd disciple Chet Richards are good entry points. The value of OODA isn't really in providing a model for individual-level decisionmaking. The value is as a model for intra-organizational conflict: that one obtains strategic advantage (i.e. tempo) by running through one's OODA loop faster than competitors or opponents…
I'm unclear as to what's novel about OODA. Can someone give me an alternative model for context? It seems like all other permutations, e.g. DOAO or ADOO or DOOA wouldn't make sense, so what is the "eureka" about OODA? Also, separately, it just sounds to me like perception (OO), planning (D), control (A) renamed so I'm still not seeing what's novel about it.
Clausewitz taught that the way to victory in war was to reduce your friction in operation, so things go smoothly for you. Boyd showed that a better way was to not worry so much about your own friction, but to cause the friction in your opponent.
Boyd's famous OODA loop (observe-orient-decide-act) is probably the most misunderstood and misused diagram of practical significance in decision making. It is to decision-making what the five elements (earth/fire/water/wind/ether) model from alchemy is to modern chemistry. Or what Freud's id-ego-superego model is to neuroscience ... Though the terms and concepts of the OODA loop are intuitive and coherent at least at…
My issue with OODA and other decision frameworks is that in complex situations a lot information we get is noise, misunderstandings, or lies. Separating the wheat from the chaff takes a very long time. During the meantime, the best thing to do is to minimize risk in case the info is true. Only if we are certain the info is real, should we perform a complete course correction.
Before stating *how* fighter pilots make fast and accurate decisions, surely we need to study *if* fighter pilots make fast and accurate decisions? I mean, do they really? What evidence is there that pilots are great, or even above average, decision makers?
A lot of the discussion here is assuming that the US military is good at what it does, but we've been losing for twenty years to people who live without electricity, so either the Taliban has a lightning fast OODA loop or the concept is basically useless as applied.