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I'm going to dramatically oversimplify things and just blame John Boyd for this. John Boyd was an Air Force officer who came up with the OODA loop theory. Basi

I'm going to dramatically oversimplify things and just blame John Boyd for this. John Boyd was an Air Force officer who came up with the OODA loop theory. Basically, a pilot in air combat loops through the stages of Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act, and if a pilot is capable of iterating through this loop faster than their opponent, they win. Some people realized this same theory could actually explain combat more generally (particularly maneuver warfare) as well as business and everyday life. John Boyd's magnum opus was a slide presentation of several hundred slides, which took several hours to present, which he never allowed to be abridged or summarized in any way. John Boyd was influential and I don't even think he was a complete crackpot, but the military's tendency to overuse PowerPoint and develop vague theories-of-everything as their operational doctrines reminds me of him. I don't think they pull it off as well as he did.

otoburb 6y ago
>>John Boyd's magnum opus was a slide presentation of several hundred slides, which took several hours to present, which he never allowed to be abridged or summarized in any way. I think you're referring to Patterns of Conflict[1] which is/was 187 slides plus around 9 slides of sources. The funny thing is that Patterns is mostly comprised of dense text, not diagrams or pictures. It was a lot of fun trying to absorb Boyd's ideas if one can find the presentations online. They are quite a contrast to (publicly available) military briefings and papers these days given the lower text-to-visuals ratio. Chuck Spinney and Chet Richards worked with Boyd, as did Ginger Richards, on various major briefings. To your point, most of them are 40+ pages/slides each. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Conflict
- vageli 6y ago
  It seems to be available online [0] (found a link in the linked wiki page). [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20210414195621/http://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/poc.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210414195621/http://www.ausair...
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  Remastered audio combined version, no captions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TpFQuBY8E0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TpFQuBY8E0 Nearly 5.5 hours! Standalone modern slides, almost 200 pages: http://www.projectwhitehorse.com/pdfs/boyd/patterns%20of%20conflict.pdf http://www.projectwhitehorse.com/pdfs/boyd/patterns%20of%20c... Alternate modern slides with PiP presentation of same presentation as above, but in separate parts, but best audio IMO, with auto-generated captions, typos included: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4pmLxkc7CTcukIlpD0UThT7Y_K09oxXe https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4pmLxkc7CTcukIlpD0UThT7Y... The story behind the original uploader getting the source videos which were uploaded in separate parts, which have been remastered and combined since: https://medium.com/@jasonmbro/uploading-john-boyd-4264b82d73ed https://medium.com/@jasonmbro/uploading-john-boyd-4264b82d73... Original slides: https://geekboss.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/patterns-of-conflict.pdf https://geekboss.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/patterns-of-... via https://geekboss.com/boyd-patterns-of-conflict/ https://geekboss.com/boyd-patterns-of-conflict/ Which seems to link to an alternate version of the talk in four parts, but which is not exhaustive or complete as above versions.
ultrastable 6y ago
Boyd's stuff is really interesting but yeah, he doesn't provide quite as much of a unified theory of everything as a lot of the Pentagon people seem to think. imo one result of the over-bureaucratized nature of the US military is that ideas that would be considered fairly basic in other contexts are treated as incomparable advances there [edit] which reminds me of the IDF/Deleuze thing - the grand insight they got from reading Difference & Repetition was that... they could blow holes in walls instead of going around them https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/art-war-deleuze-guattari-debord-and-israeli-defence-force https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/art-war-deleuze-...
jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
The theories of everything stuff comes heavily from the academies as I understand it. Cadets go through a curriculum of military history that tries to look at everything since Rome from 100,000 ft altitude abstracting some hodgepodge set of exogenous principals of warfare. The other part is these "theories of war" become vehicles for self advancement. These become almost cult like fads within the pentagon. Then a few years later the new fad takes over. Remember "Shock and Awe?" Don't hear much about that anymore do we...
- ethbr0 6y ago
  It's inherent in hierarchical command structures, especially with advancement (and therefore politics). From a game theory perspective, groups are incentivized to advertise (and hopefully popularize) their positions. Individuals are then incentivized to align and advertise their allegiance with either popular or up-and-coming positions. The end result... exactly what we see. (And it's not like this isn't present in tech via cargo cultism either)
bena 6y ago
It's like they're reading the situation, evaluating their options, then printing their results in the form of actions. But that's the case for a lot of things. REPL and OODA fall into that category of philosophies that are simple once presented, but we needed someone to recognize as existing. And there is a benefit to recognizing these patterns as they allow us to optimize them. Also, things that get independently discovered in several places are more likely to be correct as they seem to be naturally emergent.

otoburb 6y ago

>>John Boyd's magnum opus was a slide presentation of several hundred slides, which took several hours to present, which he never allowed to be abridged or summarized in any way. I think you're referring to Patterns of Conflict[1] which is/was 187 slides plus around 9 slides of sources. The funny thing is that Patterns is mostly comprised of dense text, not diagrams or pictures. It was a lot of fun trying to absorb Boyd's ideas if one can find the presentations online. They are quite a contrast to (publicly available) military briefings and papers these days given the lower text-to-visuals ratio. Chuck Spinney and Chet Richards worked with Boyd, as did Ginger Richards, on various major briefings. To your point, most of them are 40+ pages/slides each. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Conflict

vageli 6y ago
It seems to be available online [0] (found a link in the linked wiki page). [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20210414195621/http://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/poc.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210414195621/http://www.ausair...
aspenmayer 6y ago
Remastered audio combined version, no captions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TpFQuBY8E0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TpFQuBY8E0 Nearly 5.5 hours! Standalone modern slides, almost 200 pages: http://www.projectwhitehorse.com/pdfs/boyd/patterns%20of%20conflict.pdf http://www.projectwhitehorse.com/pdfs/boyd/patterns%20of%20c... Alternate modern slides with PiP presentation of same presentation as above, but in separate parts, but best audio IMO, with auto-generated captions, typos included: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4pmLxkc7CTcukIlpD0UThT7Y_K09oxXe https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4pmLxkc7CTcukIlpD0UThT7Y... The story behind the original uploader getting the source videos which were uploaded in separate parts, which have been remastered and combined since: https://medium.com/@jasonmbro/uploading-john-boyd-4264b82d73ed https://medium.com/@jasonmbro/uploading-john-boyd-4264b82d73... Original slides: https://geekboss.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/patterns-of-conflict.pdf https://geekboss.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/patterns-of-... via https://geekboss.com/boyd-patterns-of-conflict/ https://geekboss.com/boyd-patterns-of-conflict/ Which seems to link to an alternate version of the talk in four parts, but which is not exhaustive or complete as above versions.

ultrastable 6y ago

Boyd's stuff is really interesting but yeah, he doesn't provide quite as much of a unified theory of everything as a lot of the Pentagon people seem to think. imo one result of the over-bureaucratized nature of the US military is that ideas that would be considered fairly basic in other contexts are treated as incomparable advances there [edit] which reminds me of the IDF/Deleuze thing - the grand insight they got from reading Difference & Repetition was that... they could blow holes in walls instead of going around them https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/art-war-deleuze-guattari-debord-and-israeli-defence-force https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/art-war-deleuze-...

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago

The theories of everything stuff comes heavily from the academies as I understand it. Cadets go through a curriculum of military history that tries to look at everything since Rome from 100,000 ft altitude abstracting some hodgepodge set of exogenous principals of warfare. The other part is these "theories of war" become vehicles for self advancement. These become almost cult like fads within the pentagon. Then a few years later the new fad takes over. Remember "Shock and Awe?" Don't hear much about that anymore do we...

ethbr0 6y ago
It's inherent in hierarchical command structures, especially with advancement (and therefore politics). From a game theory perspective, groups are incentivized to advertise (and hopefully popularize) their positions. Individuals are then incentivized to align and advertise their allegiance with either popular or up-and-coming positions. The end result... exactly what we see. (And it's not like this isn't present in tech via cargo cultism either)

bena 6y ago

It's like they're reading the situation, evaluating their options, then printing their results in the form of actions. But that's the case for a lot of things. REPL and OODA fall into that category of philosophies that are simple once presented, but we needed someone to recognize as existing. And there is a benefit to recognizing these patterns as they allow us to optimize them. Also, things that get independently discovered in several places are more likely to be correct as they seem to be naturally emergent.