[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

Sun Tzu’s Art of War is one of the most overrated pieces of military advice. The writing is beautiful, the analogies are nice, and it is easily comprehensible to an outsider, but the advice is so generic as to be useless while sounding profound.

[chrisseaton]

I disagree. You often see soldiers making mistakes that Tzu warns against. Some of what he says has only been put into practice over the last hundred years as we have developed doctrines like manoeuvre warfare. The advice sounds generic because it’s been given for so long! Everyone knows it - it turns out it’s difficult to have the discipline to apply it which is why it’s important to keep saying it.

As a concrete example - Tzu bangs on about deception. Super obvious, right? Doesn’t need to be said? No - it turns out inexperienced commanders constantly forget to apply deception and need to be reminded. My tactical checklist says ‘use deception’ and many other things Tzu said.

[thaumasiotes]

> many other things Tzu said

Tzu, 子, is an honorific title along the lines of "Mister". The name is Sun, 孫.

It would be more normal to call him Sunzi, along the lines of Mozi, Xunzi, Confucius (the "ci"), or Mencius (ditto).

[tempguy9999]

Yeah, deception.

> inexperienced commanders constantly forget to apply deception ... My tactical checklist says ‘use deception’

And what deception have you used in warfare? Or other spheres?

[chrisseaton]

For example I might use one sub-unit to conduct a feint to draw the enemy's focus and then use my other sub-units to conduct an attack in another area. If you don't have a checklist to think about that sort of thing almost everyone tends to go into tunnel vision and put all their units on a conveyor belt towards the objective. People still need to be explicitly told to use deception. It's specific useful advice that it turns out we need in practice - it isn't generic.

[Waterluvian]

I have to ask. I recall reading that Sun Tzu suggests the value of giving a formidable enemy a route to flee, lest you accidentally force them to fight despite being ready to rout. Is that practical advice in modern warfare? From the cheap seats that I occupy, it seems like the goal is to kill or capture and allowing an enemy to flee is a failure.

[chrisseaton]

> it seems like the goal is to kill or capture

The goal is almost never to kill or capture. That’s not why you’re there in the first place, is it? The goal is to achieve some effect. If you can do that without killing or capturing then all the better. If you narrowly focus on killing and capturing then you may be missing other options which are easier. That’s what Sun Tzu is reminding us, and it’s why a modern tactical checklist includes an item like ‘what effect do I want to have on the enemy?’ so you don’t just go straight to kill or capture.

[michaelscott]

He didn't mean don't kill or capture the fleeing enemy, only giving them the opportunity to do so. The idea is that nothing is more dangerous and likely to fight with all his strength than a man who knows he can't get out, but give a man the hope that he can and he will use all his strength to escape.

I'm not sure if it was also Sun Tzu or perhaps Marcus Aurelius who also mention that the most vulnerable state an army can be in is when it routs (this is borne out historically, as most battles with very heavy casualties on one side suffer them during a rout). So if you allow the enemy a gap to flee you have options to either spare them or wipe them out depending on your goal as a commander.

[OG_BME]

My favorite example of this is from the Battle of Mohi[0] during the Mongol conquest of Europe. The legendary Mongol general Subutai left a "hole" in the their encirclement of the Hungarian army. He did not want the crossbowmen and cavalry of the Hungarians making a last stand on "death ground" as Sun Tzu calls it. Thus, they fled through this "hole" only to be cut down individually by Mongols on horseback.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mohi

[danharaj]

It's abstract advice, not generic advice. You don't understand what is being said unless you can instantiate it in concrete situations.

[hinkley]

Is it abstract, or esoteric?

Conversations like this remind me of the phenomenon of books that people say have a lot of re-reading value. There was either too much going on the first time through. So you reread it many times and see things you missed.

When you watch a professional athlete or a master of anything, you can only 'see' the things that are within your horizon of comprehension. If someone is narrating they can expand that horizon. Someone who is more advanced than you will always be learning new things, but if you see them doing something new, odds are reasonably good that it's you who changed, not them.

Sun Tzu comes out of a culture that values intuition highly. Allusion and understatement are tools in that toolbox. You are meant to be spending time unpacking things, instead of being beaten over the head with them. If Lego came pre-assembled you wouldn't appreciate it as much.

[danharaj]

I personally think Sun Tzu is very readable and has layers of meaning. Some of its lines hit like lightning bolts but much of it is very subtle. I think a lot of Chinese philosophy of the era in this style is about how you approach, not what you're approaching.

This is one of my favorite lines (standing in for the whole chapter). I don't think it's very obvious what it means or how to apply it but after taking it to heart it helps me avoid bad fads and bad orthodoxy alike:

... Thus the battles of the skilled are without extraordinary victory, without reputation for wisdom, and without merit for courage.

[whalesalad]

Have you ever gone to war? Have you ever been the mastermind behind a war on another? How can you say it’s overrated? It’s timeless and simple for a reason.

[RealityVoid]

The issue with it is that Sun's writings are not used as guidance for war, it's used as guidance for X. There X is random action you're engaged in. If it was used as guidance for war, it would be popular in military circles, whereas I see it popular in entrepreneurial circles.

[chrisseaton]

> Sun's writings are not used as guidance for war

You're ignorant - they are used as guidance for war.

For just one example - British Army Doctrine Land Operations, the current core document for how the British think about fighting war on land, quotes Tzu:

> The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

This illustrates my pointer perfectly. This quote is just a fancy way of saying "It's great if you can get what you want without fighting."

While true, pretty much every leader since the dawn of time has known that. Darius I, sent a mission to Sparta demanding earth and water for this very reason. The advice is nicely stated, but it isn't all that practically helpful.

[chrisseaton]

> This illustrates my pointer perfectly.

Well your point was that it wasn't used as guidance for war until we showed that it was...

> While true, pretty much every leader since the dawn of time has known that.

No I don't think they have. I think it has been constantly forgotten and rediscovered. Today when we talk about how to fight we might say this in terms of 'shatter the enemy's cohesion and will to fight' rather than fighting them directly. Get inside their OODA loop, match strength with weakness, in other words. It turns out people don't naturally do this! It has to be taught!

They forgot this, for example, during WW1 when they fought attrition warfare. They focused on meeting the enemy and having a fight, toe-to-toe, force against force. There's something about human nature that seems to always lead people toward this approach by default, and we have to constantly remind ourselves of advice, using for example Tzu, to avoid it and instead of looking to fight the enemy, to break the enemy's cohesion.

[dragonwriter]

> The issue with it is that Sun's writings are not used as guidance for war

Yes, they are.

> it's used as guidance for X.

To the extent that's a problem (and for some values of X it is), it is not a problem with the writing, but with the use.

> If it was used as guidance for war, it would be popular in military circles

It (and newer works grounded in part in it and/or intermediary sources derived in part from it) is.

[whalesalad]

It’s helpful advice for any time you‘re leading one group of people against another. That’s why it’s popular in entrepreneurial circles.

[omginternets]

>it would be popular in military circles

It is popular in military circles ...

[abdullahkhalids]

I have used lessons from the Art of War for playing competitive games.

[tempguy9999]

Have you?

[tempguy9999]

Finally someone said it. I thought it was just me.

[RealityVoid]

If it was applicable to modern war, it would talk about logistics and technology, whereas it talks about merely tactics.

[dragonwriter]

> If it was applicable to modern war, it would talk about logistics and technology, whereas it talks about merely tactics.

This is simply factually false; chapter 2 of tAoW is nearly entirely about strategy at a level which subsumes logistics, logistics itself, and economic considerations of conduct of war and their impacts on logistic concerns.

The work says more about tactics, but that seems to be not because tactics are viewed as more important but because they are viewed as more amenable to detailed generic advice; the higher level rules are simpler to describe (but not necessarily to execute on effectively.)

[rmah]

Um, Art of War does indeed cover the importance of logistics and supply. And espionage (from using deception to spies to scouting). And morale (both yours and the enemies). And many other factors. Tech not so much because armies don't generally develop new tech in the field.

[hinkley]

I had a history teacher whose thesis was that advancements in information asymmetry attended nearly every major military upset in recorded history. Often that was improvements in, or exploits of, communication technology.

See also Alan Turing, or radar (wasn't the carrots and nightvision myth started as misinformation to conceal the perfection of radar technology?)

[dredmorbius]

I'd really like to see more on this if you've anything to provide.

[joycian]

Did the teacher write his ideas down somewhere? Could you point me to them?

[idoh]

It's kinda applicable in a philosophical sense, obviously not in a literal sense. There is a lot of discussion of logistics in the book FYI.