[hosh]

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.

[charlieflowers]

> but he knew how people behave and act, and so he was able to dictate the entire engagement

This sounds super interesting, but it's so generic I can't get anything concrete from it. Could you elaborate a bit on how he dictated the engagement?

[hosh]

He didn’t give me details, and even if it were, it would be highly situational. There is nothing concrete here. If you understand the underlying principles, you would be able to broadly and deeply apply it in many contexts.

It is better to draw examples from your own experience in adversarial games, even perfect information games with fixed turns like Chess or Go. Take the game you are most skilled at, and see if you remember playing against someone who was so unskilled, that you can see their moves and mistake a long way coming. And if you weren’t teaching them, you can close off avenues long before they are even aware of it. If you pay attention, you might even know the minute they realize something, only it is far too late. There is a sense as if you are inside their head, knowing what they are going to do — must do — before they are even aware of it themselves.

It’s like that, only perhaps with a peer adversary.