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I’m not sure how Sun Tzu is complete garbage when his strategies were vague and often not specific, so you can adapt them according to the situation To me the

I’m not sure how Sun Tzu is complete garbage when his strategies were vague and often not specific, so you can adapt them according to the situation To me the problem is that the study of war, like the study of economics or any other social study; isn’t a real science. There is no repeatable theoretical model, including The Art of War. There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations.

eru 4y ago
> There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations. You could still apply statistics. That's what people who breed animals or plants do. Every organism is different and individual, too.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  I was referring to social studies. Biology on the other hand is a real science. A science has laws.
  - eru 4y ago
    Not sure I buy that. There's plenty of studies in economics (especially micro-economics) that have statistical laws just like biology does. Similar for psychology. And even for war: It's hard to run controlled experiments at the largest scales, but there have been plenty of experiments and studies at smaller scales. And some of them yielded statistical 'laws'.
mcv 4y ago
> There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations. There are some. An army marches on its stomach. For war, you need three things: money, money and money. Except in a guerilla war maybe. Maybe you're right after all.
- t43562 4y ago
  Guerillas need money too. Weapons are not free and guerillas need to eat too.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    As long as you've got some bootstrap weapons, you can always steal more from whatever force it is you're fighting against. In WW2 the US proposed sending resistance fighters a million single-shot handguns [1], allowing them to kill occupation forces and take their weapons. And while men with guns very often get shot, they never starve. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator
    - kjs3 4y ago
      Getting shot is a cost, even if it isn't necessarily 'money'. Resistance fighters do go hungry. The resistance in the Warsaw ghetto had guns; they starved. On the Long March, Mao's men had guns, and they very much faced starvation. And ask the Confederates about the difficulty of feeding a rebel army. The idea that the answer to logistics issues is "moar guns" is comical and more than a little sad.
      - michaelt 4y ago
        > Getting shot is a cost, even if it isn't necessarily 'money'. Maybe, but we're evaluating the quote "For war, you need three things: money, money and money" which is presumably about money.
    - t43562 4y ago
      That puts you at an extreme disadvantage which could be solved with ... money. And of course in history guerillas often have had sources of supply from other countries who are in effect providing the money. All the proxy wars of the Cold War period were like this - the Chinese or Russians or North Koreans supplying guerillas in Africa against non-communist governments or the US or South Africa doing the same for guerillas against "communist" governments. I'm from Zimbabwe - everything in Rhodesia was about money. Money needed by the government of the time to stop the guerillas and money needed by the guerillas to house them in neighboring countries, feed and arm them. Now that Zimbabwe is in terrible economic trouble and has obviously rigged elections and much suppression of opposition voters and of course a military coup that everyone denies was a coup, there is no rebellion and there are no guerillas because they would have no support (no money, no safe harbour, no weapons). The Russians, Chinese, South Africans and DPRK have the situation they want and the US etc don't care about it either.
_0ffh 4y ago
> like the study of economics [...] There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations I've got great news for you! There are universal economic laws that always hold true in all situations. For example, "man acts". You can't deny that, because denying it would be an act in itself, leading to a (performative) contradiction. From this law, and just a few others of a similar kind, you can build a whole structure of logically provable theorems that have profound implications for economics and the social sciences in general.
- jones6ofMont 4y ago
  You take 1000 economists and ask them for opinions on a certain problems, you will get hundreds if not thousand different solutions. If you do math say a million mathematicians/physicists, you will almost always get a few if not 1 solution to the problem. By the way, Nobel for economics isnt even part of original Nobel. It basically force fed into it and tag with Nobel label. Economics is essentially just common sense applicable at the specific time...at other times it will fail.
- snapcaster 4y ago
  Like what? can you name one? If this is true, how come the people that study this aren't rich?
  - _0ffh 4y ago
    The law of diminishing marginal utility for example can be logically proven using this method. Alas, knowing it won't make you rich, the world is not that simple.
    - snapcaster 4y ago
      Agree with sibling comment that this is more "heuristic" than "law". There are many things that have basically 0 utility up until some threshold, there are things that become more marginally useful the more of them you have (users for your social media app)
    - 4y ago
jesterson 4y ago
> There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations As many people pointed out, there are plenty. Humans don't change over course of centuries.
- karatinversion 4y ago
  Indeed, many of these are present in Sun Tzu, eg. - soldiers need to be fed - attacks on undefended locations are more likely to succeed - if you can set your enemy on fire, do so, people really don’t like being on fire

eru 4y ago

> There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations. You could still apply statistics. That's what people who breed animals or plants do. Every organism is different and individual, too.

chaostheory 4y ago
I was referring to social studies. Biology on the other hand is a real science. A science has laws.
- eru 4y ago
  Not sure I buy that. There's plenty of studies in economics (especially micro-economics) that have statistical laws just like biology does. Similar for psychology. And even for war: It's hard to run controlled experiments at the largest scales, but there have been plenty of experiments and studies at smaller scales. And some of them yielded statistical 'laws'.

mcv 4y ago

> There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations. There are some. An army marches on its stomach. For war, you need three things: money, money and money. Except in a guerilla war maybe. Maybe you're right after all.

t43562 4y ago
Guerillas need money too. Weapons are not free and guerillas need to eat too.
- michaelt 4y ago
  As long as you've got some bootstrap weapons, you can always steal more from whatever force it is you're fighting against. In WW2 the US proposed sending resistance fighters a million single-shot handguns [1], allowing them to kill occupation forces and take their weapons. And while men with guns very often get shot, they never starve. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator
  - kjs3 4y ago
    Getting shot is a cost, even if it isn't necessarily 'money'. Resistance fighters do go hungry. The resistance in the Warsaw ghetto had guns; they starved. On the Long March, Mao's men had guns, and they very much faced starvation. And ask the Confederates about the difficulty of feeding a rebel army. The idea that the answer to logistics issues is "moar guns" is comical and more than a little sad.
    - michaelt 4y ago
      > Getting shot is a cost, even if it isn't necessarily 'money'. Maybe, but we're evaluating the quote "For war, you need three things: money, money and money" which is presumably about money.
  - t43562 4y ago
    That puts you at an extreme disadvantage which could be solved with ... money. And of course in history guerillas often have had sources of supply from other countries who are in effect providing the money. All the proxy wars of the Cold War period were like this - the Chinese or Russians or North Koreans supplying guerillas in Africa against non-communist governments or the US or South Africa doing the same for guerillas against "communist" governments. I'm from Zimbabwe - everything in Rhodesia was about money. Money needed by the government of the time to stop the guerillas and money needed by the guerillas to house them in neighboring countries, feed and arm them. Now that Zimbabwe is in terrible economic trouble and has obviously rigged elections and much suppression of opposition voters and of course a military coup that everyone denies was a coup, there is no rebellion and there are no guerillas because they would have no support (no money, no safe harbour, no weapons). The Russians, Chinese, South Africans and DPRK have the situation they want and the US etc don't care about it either.

_0ffh 4y ago

> like the study of economics [...] There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations I've got great news for you! There are universal economic laws that always hold true in all situations. For example, "man acts". You can't deny that, because denying it would be an act in itself, leading to a (performative) contradiction. From this law, and just a few others of a similar kind, you can build a whole structure of logically provable theorems that have profound implications for economics and the social sciences in general.

jones6ofMont 4y ago
You take 1000 economists and ask them for opinions on a certain problems, you will get hundreds if not thousand different solutions. If you do math say a million mathematicians/physicists, you will almost always get a few if not 1 solution to the problem. By the way, Nobel for economics isnt even part of original Nobel. It basically force fed into it and tag with Nobel label. Economics is essentially just common sense applicable at the specific time...at other times it will fail.
snapcaster 4y ago
Like what? can you name one? If this is true, how come the people that study this aren't rich?
- _0ffh 4y ago
  The law of diminishing marginal utility for example can be logically proven using this method. Alas, knowing it won't make you rich, the world is not that simple.
  - snapcaster 4y ago
    Agree with sibling comment that this is more "heuristic" than "law". There are many things that have basically 0 utility up until some threshold, there are things that become more marginally useful the more of them you have (users for your social media app)
  - 4y ago

jesterson 4y ago

> There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations As many people pointed out, there are plenty. Humans don't change over course of centuries.

karatinversion 4y ago
Indeed, many of these are present in Sun Tzu, eg. - soldiers need to be fed - attacks on undefended locations are more likely to succeed - if you can set your enemy on fire, do so, people really don’t like being on fire