[HN Gopher] OODA Loop ___________________________________________________________________ OODA Loop Author : yehudabrick Score : 106 points Date : 2023-02-21 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org) (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org) | KineticLensman wrote: | 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'. | samatman wrote: | Or by barbarians as "Observe, Orie--" "TIMING!" | hosh wrote: | 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's | something you should be doing to the adversary, rather than | something you yourself should be doing. | | For example, a friend told me this story. He doesn't know OODA | as a formalism, but he knows human nature and practices martial | art. He was at a party and some dude hits on his girlfriend and | then challenges him to a first person shooter game. He told me, | he doesn't have great reflexes, but he knew how people behave | and act, and so he was able to dictate the entire engagement. | dang wrote: | Related. Others? | | _Colonel John Boyd - briefings and personal papers_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34153730 - Dec 2022 (2 | comments) | | _John Boyd_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33766979 - | Nov 2022 (1 comment) | | _Boyd 's Management Model_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28660415 - Sept 2021 (2 | comments) | | _Boyd 's Law of Iteration (2007)_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28218194 - Aug 2021 (1 | comment) | | _The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate | Decisions_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26465766 - | March 2021 (93 comments) | | _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) | | _How winners win: John Boyd and the four qualities of victorious | organizations_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16179009 - | Jan 2018 (1 comment) | | _"Patterns of Conflict" - a techno-industrial "Art of War" | (1976) [pdf]_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9063017 - | Feb 2015 (4 comments) | | _John Boyd and the four qualities of victorious organizations_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669129 - Nov 2013 (29 | comments) | _glass wrote: | This reminds of the concept of D.I.E. that we use in the social | sciences, describe, interpret, and evaluate. It is important to | separate the stages clearly, because if you interpret while | describing, this taints your observations. Evaluate can be seen | as a precursor to action, because it is from the implications | where science then moves forward. | hosh wrote: | OODA is a lot more than that. Since it is something developed | for adversarial interactions, you're also talking about | disrupting or overwhelming the adversary's OODA. Or another way | is feeding the OODA bad intel (tainting their observations), | and then stepping up the tempo so that they are making worse | decisions faster. Another is taking advantage of the | adversary's "frame" (the orientation) and using that to drive | the adversary into diverging from reality. (Sun Tzu talks about | direct and indirect actions for that). | | There's also a version of OODA where things become intuitive | and there are shortcuts within OODA as well. | _glass wrote: | Oh wow, cool. Thanks for the explanation. This is very | stimulating as a concept, I will dig deeper then. Actually, | this can be quite productive as a research strategy. | philip1209 wrote: | I have fond memories of my Krav Maga instructor casually saying | "reset their OODA loop" in place of "punch them in the face" | during lessons. | AstralStorm wrote: | Casually a trained badass (or a sufficiently unhinged person) | will ignore that punch and proceed to destroy you. So unless | you're a super trained boxer and can knock out everyone in one, | it's a waste of time. | | You lost the element of surprise and tempo. If you want to do | some damage, do it, not rely on the opponent obliging or | complying. | RealityVoid wrote: | Certainly it's better to punch them than not punch them. Many | many times overwhelming violence is sufficient to win a | fight. Trained people might not be as phased, true. | varjag wrote: | _Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth_ - | Mike Tyson | lolbert3 wrote: | [dead] | abhiyerra wrote: | I found Science, Strategy, and War a great deep dive of the OODA | Loop. | | https://amzn.to/3IKx77A | Entwickler wrote: | LazerPig gives a pretty good (albeit irreverent) take on John | Boyd... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZDfdCj61dY | barking_biscuit wrote: | 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 | completely meaningless in that formulation. Search up the | original diagram of it and you see that it's actually a set of | loops through which there are some different pathways. | | It starts with an observation that comes from the outside world, | and proceeds to the orientation phase which is about how you | interpret the situation, and from the orientation phase it can go | one of three ways. In one path you aren't sure what action you | need to take so you form a hypothesis upon which you act, which | generates a change in the external world which then becomes a new | observation and the cycle starts again. Another path is that of a | reflexive or instinctual reaction in which you have no need to | form a hypothesis but rather you have a heuristic upon which you | act, and so you are able to act quicker, and again your action | generates a change in the external world which becomes a new | observation and the cycle starts again. The third and most | important pathway, and they key idea/realisation, is that new | observations can be generated directly from the orientation phase | and this can be exploited! Why? It's a positive feedback loop | that is devoid of any information from the external world, so the | more iterations it goes through before finally breaking out and | going through one of the paths that do interact with the external | world it will be more and more detached from reality and hence | the action will be less effective at moving you towards your | goals. | | I recall the guy saying that Boyd's key insight was the | exploitability of that positive feedback loop that was detached | from physical reality and if one can purposely trigger it in | their adversary they can make their adversary behave in a way | that takes them away from their goals. To me that's such a neat | observation. | rwc wrote: | Can you share the YouTube video? | vault wrote: | maybe it's this one: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdK4y6O-llE | badrabbit wrote: | The thing about OODA is, everyone needs to be onboard. | | I've had higher upd override my decision and go "nah,we're just | gonna act, not gonna let you observe or orient" basically as well | as peers thay go around you and take actions that prevent your | observe+orient attempts. | | It is intuitive to just act. | | I work in infosec for context. One of the biggest non-technical | issues I have is convincing people to ignore their intuition. | Especially technical people who don't do IR. Like maybe you spent | 50 years as a ninja coder or netadmin but I am still gonna want | the threat actor loose until I have some idea of their intent or | scope of compromise unless I have reason to believe they're | acting on their objectives. | | Actual military brass get this, you need to understand the | situation before you can react. That's how ambushes happen or you | get flanked. | redivysoft wrote: | "Adapt, react, readapt, act" | WalterBright wrote: | Boyd's biography is a great read: | | https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031... | | about a very unconventional man. | rcarr wrote: | For me, OODA really clicked when I mapped it to the Weinberg- | Satir Interaction Model: | | Observe -> Intake | | Orient -> Meaning | | Decide -> Significance | | Act -> Response | | Highly recommend checking out the work of Gerald Weinberg and | Virginia Satir. HN people will probably appreciate Weinberg more | than Satir as Weinberg was a programmer for NASA back in the day | so his books are aimed at technical types. People from an arts | background will prefer Satir who was one of the all time great | counsellors/therapists. | | https://stevenmsmith.com/AONW/Satir%20Interaction%20Model.pd... | dingosity wrote: | I fear the Wikipedia article offers only the slightest of | overviews of a surprisingly deep subject. Don't get me wrong, | it's a great place to start. | | But I would suggest also reading the related "Patterns of | Conflict" Wikipedia page: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Conflict | | Which references this 1986 version of the presentation: | https://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/poc.pdf | | I met John Boyd at Eglin when I was a kid, and later in the 80s | when I was a Marine. Dude was a complete nut. But I mean that as | a compliment. Preaching a brand of war-fighting at odds with the | dominant narrative, I would not have been surprised to see Apple | feature his image in a "think different" commercial. | | The Air Force was slow to warm up to Boyd (and the OODA Loop) -- | but the Marines were ready to hear something new. Here's a page | with some decent info, including a link to a short video where | John Schmitt, Van Riper and (my old boss) Al Gray discuss the | "intellectual renaissance" in how they thought about war- | fighting. If you're not a military history nut, the 5 minute | video is good to give you an idea for how "novel" ideas permeated | the US military in the 70s and 80s. You don't _HAVE_ to be an Air | Force pilot or Marine to make use of the intellectual | underpinnings of Boyd 's "Patterns of Conflict." But you _MAY_ | miss out on some critical detail if the only thing you read is | about the more-generic, not-specific-to-the-military OODA loop. | | Which is to say... even if you're not inclined to study military | history or operations, you may get some decent context on the | formation of the OODA loop by investigating the environment in | which it arose. "Maneuver Warfare" is much more than the OODA | loop, but it was definitely influenced by Boyd's E-M Theory, | Patterns of Conflict and the OODA loop. | | Here... the videos on this page total just over 10 minutes. Worth | a watch. https://grc- | usmcu.libguides.com/pme/qpme/history-of-mcdp-maneuver- | warfare/context-background | | And... the link to the full video seems to be broken, so here's | the direct YouTube link if you're hip: | https://youtu.be/RL4__NVYByw | Kim_Bruning wrote: | Compare also PDCA [1] which is used more by civilians. | | Every time people rediscover rapid iteration in tight feedback | loops, and every time so far it's gotten watered down to nothing | again by people who get the rituals, but don't quite grok the | underlying concept. [2] | | On the other hand, you could do practically any sort of ritual or | even just laze around in bed: if you understand the underlying | concept, you'll still get decent results. [3] | | see also: [4] for a short bit on OODA when actually flying an | aircraft. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult | | [3] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html See eg. Tom Knight | and the Lisp Machine ;-) | | [4] https://youtu.be/OCFMX5z-ed4?t=940 (starting 15:40) Art of | the kill, Pete "Boomer" Bonanni | Terretta wrote: | PDCA is entirely unrelated to OODA. There are a bunch of | graphics that confuse people into thinking they're related, by | showing O-O-D-A-> in a circle. That's dead wrong. | | OODA is all about feedback mechanisms: | | https://co2partners.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ooda.png | | So any correspondence is a misunderstanding: | | https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f16206_0206cf0c618a47b1ab... | | You will _not_ achieve the same results with an iteration. | | You will only achieve similar results with "double loop" | learning and informed intuition driven actions that skip the | "decide" step. | cjmb wrote: | 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 somebody calls me an analyst. A personal insult. If | you've read the last paragraph, I've showed there are two things | you have to be able to do: analyze and synthesize. Analysis and | synthesis. And if you can do that in many different areas, | tactics, strategies, goals, unifying theme, you can run | businesses, you can do any goddamn thing you want. | | I find his discussion of Clausewitz's "friction" and the idea of | speed as always being relative to one's adversary incredibly | useful, even for my day to day work in Tech. | taeric wrote: | 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! | hencq wrote: | Some Googling led me to this: https://geekboss.com/blog/boyd- | patterns-of-conflict It does have 4 youtube videos that seem | to be of a presentation he gave, though I don't think it's | the same one as the transcript (apologies, I haven't watched | them yet, only briefly skipped through them). They are a bit | potato quality, but might still be of use. | taeric wrote: | My apologies on having you do the googling for me! Huge | thanks! | notShabu wrote: | FYI vgr of Ribbonfarm has a significant body of work expanding on | the OODA loop, including a book "Tempo". | | https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-use-and-misuse-of-the-oo... | | If I were to summarize it to a 5 year old I'd use the analogy of | rhythm games like taiko drum master. Once you make a mistake your | timing is thrown completely off and everything going forward is | wrong unless you can get your timing back. OODA is way of | thinking about things to help you "get into the rhythm" of a | situation faster than an opponent. | NoraCodes wrote: | I always find formalized metacognitive tools like this very | interesting. Having ingrained "memory items" that can be called | on as if they were instinctual requires a huge training | investment, and for highly dangerous situations the tradeoff of | time spent to value is much clearer than for, say, software | engineers. That said, having the _right_ metacognitive tools | deeply embedded in one 's thought pattern might still be very | valuable for those of us that fly desks rather than jets! | meltyness wrote: | This is not untrue, but a more applicable interpretation of | this conceptual framework might go as follows: | | In an AAR[0] operators explain risks, causes, and limitations | of the system. This provides a formal structured language for | describing how, precisely, supporting systems can be improved | and how they impact all specific aspects of operator | interaction. | | Since the operator is viewed simply as a networked control- | system in this case, the cognitive path from structure, | supporting physical system, and then physical quantities | needing improvement is unmistakably clear, as is required in | successful planning, acquisitions, operations, and | maintenance.[1] | | Essentially it makes subjective experience concrete, and is | prophylactic against bikeshedding/blame-gaming. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After-action_review | | [1] https://youtu.be/ir0FAa8P2MU?t=1340 | getpost wrote: | 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 | john-tells-all wrote: | Strongly agree. We need to put out a constant stream of low- | quality products, and iterate quickly to achieve our goals. | | I used to do the opposite: write high-quality well-tested code, | but very often the results weren't useful to the business by | the time I was done. It would have been much better to produce | a couple "sketches" of the feature first, then the business | could kill or refine it as they want. Everyone wins! | | (disclaimer: writing a book, featuring feedback loops) | wruza wrote: | Isn't most of our business code just glue, forms and api? I | appreciate the quick way, but also believe that our tools at | hand have a plenty of room to improve. Sometimes I drop a | project because it induces "ah, here we go again" mood. Quick | mudballs that could be bricks that could be panels, but | there's nowhere to order them. The worst part is when the | idea actually works so that mudball becomes your home. | quickthrower2 wrote: | That is quite nuanced. It is good to be clear when you are | building a POC or a production ready feature. Often the POC | becomes the POS. But https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.p | hp/2730:_Code_Lifesp... | JohnBooty wrote: | 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 just trashed your | entire brand. Game over. | | And sometimes, getting things "right" is literally your entire | unique selling point. Look at Apple nailing the iPod's features | in ways that its predecessors didn't. Look at Tesla nailing | their vehicles' features in ways that its predecessors didn't. | Etc. | ouid wrote: | It is not impossible for humans to be right. This is an idiotic | position. | angry_octet wrote: | Taleb loves an idiotic aphorism. | getpost wrote: | I have no idea what Taleb actually means, but to the extent | it isn't dramatic rhetoric, I imagine his claim is based on | the idea that humans can never be completely right, due to | the limits of our perception and memory. The best we can hope | for is to be right enough to survive until the next iteration | of our learning process. | zoenolan wrote: | Some previous discussions | | The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate | Decisions (2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26465766 | | The OODA Loop and the Half-Beat (2020) | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22601681 | | Ask HN: How do you apply Boyd's OODA Loop in your life? (2018) | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16447690 | grrdotcloud wrote: | I teach the OODA loop in Martial Arts. Watching the pattern | develop in my child was fascinating. | | First object permanence, then two and three and eventually four | dimensional tracking. Throwing is easy. Catching tool effort and | developing these skills. I recall him reaching blindly at objects | as he could recall their position in space, orient his body, and | grab them without looking. | | Having him catch Frisbees and racquetballs at 2 years gave me | insight into what skill and observational development was | required. At some point he was able to transition between | projecting the path of a rolling object vs a thrown object. | user3939382 wrote: | I built a startup around 2005 based on a variation of OODA that I | independently devised before I learned of it. Unfortunately the | critical hardware features I needed weren't caught up yet and it | didn't work out, but the competitors to this day still don't have | feature parity. Thinking in the framework of feedback loops is | super powerful. | jph wrote: | I teach OODA loop ideas to software teams, and have open source | notes here: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ooda-loop | lolbert3 wrote: | [dead] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-21 23:01 UTC)