Fun Video on the Future of 3d Printing

by Cameron Schaefer on January 13, 2012

Popularity: 1% [?]

{ 1 comment }

OODA Isn’t Simple…and It Probably Shouldn’t Be

by Cameron Schaefer on December 19, 2011

LtCol Dave “Sugar” Lyle recently wrote a great rebuttal piece in the Armed Forces Journal addressing the Oct AFJ article “Goodbye, OODA Loop” which Lyle says, “…should have set off alarm bells across the U.S. defense community.”

As has already been commented on by several in the Boyd community, the oversimplified OODA diagram and corresponding straw-man argument presented in the Benson and Rotkoff article takes an elegant and fairly sophisticated framework and cuts it down to the equivalent of a kindergarten finger painting, turning OODA into a linear decision-making checklist of which Boyd himself would have likely lit on fire with his cheap cigar.

Adam Elkus points out in his own rebuttal piece,

The OODA is neither linear nor prescriptive. One doesn’t, as the article implies, sit down and think “What does my OODA say about ordering lunch today?” It’s simply a model of decisionmaking that more or less occurs automatically. As the “full OODA” shows, it’s significantly more complex than simply a tactical model built on speed

 

It’s often our initial tendency when dealing with things or ideas that are complex to quickly simplify them to something more manageable or familiar. In certain cases this makes sense as it allows us to filter through a infinite variety of options without getting bogged down in irrelevant details. The full OODA Loop however, it is itself a simplification of a lifetime of Boyd’s work, so by creating an OODA lite one is actually simplifying a simplification…to the point of irrelevance.

Lyle puts it much more eloquently,

Studies by cognitive neuroscientists have demonstrated that as a basic human trait, we are stressed more by uncertainty than unpleasant certainties. But in our efforts to achieve parsimony and the false cognitive ease often associated with it, we sometimes cut out too much detail and end up building expensive empires on theoretical foundations of sand.

Boyd’s work is no different than that of many great theorists of the past in that it requires a good deal of mental wrestling and time to understand. It is not intended to provide straight-forward answers as much as it is better questions.

Here are a few other sections from Lyle’s piece I found of great value,

Ironically, the popularity of Boyd’s ideas has created the largest cognitive trap in which much of the defense community still finds itself. As people absorbed the wisdom of the OODA Loop, they absorbed the simple version as a decision loop, but not the deeper insights of the adaptation engine that Boyd actually offered. While emphasis on the decision-loop aspects of OODA is absolutely appropriate in tactical situations, large parts of the defense community became obsessed with the idea that paralysis — collapsing the adversary’s OODA Loop while maintaining your own at a faster pace — was the ultimate goal of warfare. Network-centric warfare advocates promised that we could achieve “decision dominance” and gain victory through the right combinations of kinetic and nonkinetic effects if we only had the right interconnected systems to remove the fog of war. Under Transformation, we designed light, agile forces designed to overwhelm the enemy’s ability to respond to our higher operations tempo and assumed that this would collapse our enemies’ wills to resist us.

But this approach, just like the simple OODA Loop that it invokes, fails to consider the longer and more important adaptation loops that describe the long-term interactions needed for lasting conflict termination. We focused on short, fast races, forgetting that the race never really ends. The ability to cause paralysis through combat is vitally important to our national security, but paralysis is irrelevant or even counterproductive if it is not serving as a temporary stepping stone on the way to creating lasting, nonviolent, long-term patterns of complementary adaptation between two societies. In the strategic sense, victory does not come from paralysis — it comes from its opposite.

——————————————-

We’ll never be able to accurately predict the future in a complex world, and we’ll never be able to completely control what happens in it, but with a better understanding of the universal process of adaptation, we can organize what we already know from various disciplines of study, and find new ways to leverage the entire process of adaptation — in the physical, cognitive and moral domains — with comprehensive approaches that go far beyond paralysis. The “better peace” we’re looking for on the other side of war comes when societal patterns of adaptation favor nonviolent methods of competition and cooperation over violent ones. If we don’t understand what drives and sustains mutually beneficial adaptation, how can we ever hope to create the conditions for it using military force?

We don’t need to get rid of the OODA Loop; we need to rediscover it. The universal description of adaptation in OODA can serve as the foundation for a unifying theoretical framework of a more interconnected grand strategy. If Boyd were here today, he would probably tell us to get moving on something better than what he left us.

Popularity: 2% [?]

{ 3 comments }

Best Thing I’ve Seen this Week: JP Auclair Street Segment

by Cameron Schaefer on December 10, 2011

seriously, this is amazing not just for the skiing, but for the creativity that went into making it:

Popularity: 1% [?]

{ 0 comments }

Homemade Egg Nog Recipe

by Cameron Schaefer on December 1, 2011

It’s December, that time of year when we can finally drink one of life’s greatest culinary pleasures without getting any too many looks of judgement…eggnog.  My friend Aaron Stern calls Mountain Dew the “nectar of heaven,” but he is mistaken, it’s eggnog….and it’s not even close.

So, a few remarks before enriching your lives with this recipe.

First, it makes A LOT of eggnog so I recommend going to your local brewery/pub/hipster bar and picking up a couple growlers to store it in.  Also makes it convenient when toting to holiday parties or giving to friends.

Second, if you intend on making this recipe sans alcohol I leave you with the words of the great Deangelo Vickers, “Ever play Russian Roulette? Time to spin the chamber Boris.” The alcohol is what kills potentially harmful bacteria like salmonella that are enter the realm of possibility when the first ingredient in your nog recipe is 12 eggs. Don’t believe me…science proves it.

 

Homemade Egg Nog from GQ Magazine that Author Can No Longer Find (Serves 8-10)

Ingredients:

  • 12 Eggs (pasteurized if possible, but not necessary…see above)
  • 1 Cup + 3 Tablespoons Sugar
  • 3 Pints Whole Milk
  • 3 Cups Heavy Cream
  • 6 oz. Hennessy vs Cognac
  • 6 oz. Maker’s Mark
  • 5 Teaspoons Freshly Grated Nutmeg

Directions:

  • Separate the eggs.
  • Beat yolks w/ electric mixer for a minute or so until they lighten up in color, then
  • Gradually add 1 cup sugar and beat until completely disolved
  • Add milk, cream, cognac, bourbon, and nutmeg – stir to combine
  • Beat egg whites in separate bowl until soft peaks form with the mixer running, then
  • Gradually add 3 tsp of sugar and beat until peaks stiffen.
  • Whisk beaten egg whites into mixture, garnish w/ nutmeg.

Popularity: 3% [?]

{ 6 comments }

Collapsing the Military Rank Structure

November 30, 2011

Posted this on a Facebook thread last week and wanted to add it here to solicit feedback: Here’s what I think we should do to the AF rank structure: 1) Merge 2nd and 1st Lieutenant into Lieutenant 2) Merge LtCol and Colonel into Colonel with squadron command positions going to senior Majors 3) only 2 [...]

Read the full article →

The Future of Education

November 29, 2011

When we look realistically at the world in which we are living today and become aware of what the actual problems of learning are, our conception of education changes radically. Although the educational system remains basically unchanged, we are no longer dealing primarily with the vertical transmission of the tried and true by the old, [...]

Read the full article →

Ink Spots on a “Hollow Force”

November 1, 2011

As talk of big defense cuts continues to make the rounds, one term is being latched onto with gusto by both military and civilian leadership – “hollow force.” Warnings are coming from every direction that large defense cuts could result in this terrifying phenomena. Thankfully, Ink Spots brings a bit of clear thinking to what [...]

Read the full article →

Thoughts on OWS, the Economy and Retirement

October 27, 2011

It may seem odd for a 27-yr old to be spending much time thinking about retirement, but over the past couple years it’s something that keeps popping into my mind at the most random times.  Part of it, of course, is due to the large shift taking place in the economy and all that it [...]

Read the full article →

Attribution Error

October 23, 2011

“A fault in the interpretation of observations is to suppose that every event is attributable to someone.” – W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis Tweet

Read the full article →

A Strategist’s Fiction Reading List

October 21, 2011

One of the chief goals of a strategist is to develop mental models that more closely match reality than those developed by the enemy or competitor. It is not only vital for these mental models to help us perceive situations or events, but more specifically, we must understand the primary agents helping to shape the [...]

Read the full article →