[sdfgsrget]

Military training stuff has to be accessible. Here's Frank Wilczek:

WHEN I WAS ABOUT TO BEGIN TEACHING at Princeton, my friend and mentor Sam Treiman called me into his office. He had some wisdom to share. Sam pulled a well-worn paperback manual from his desk and told me, "During World War Il the Navy had to train recruits to set up and operate radio communications in a hurry. Many of those recruits were right off the farm, so bringing them up to speed was a big challenge. With the help of this great book, the Navy succeeded. It's a masterpiece of pedagogy. Especially the first chapter. Take a look."

He handed me the book, opened to the first chapter. That chapter was titled "Ohm's Three Laws." I was familiar with one Ohm's law, the famous relation V = IR that connects voltage (V), current (I), and resistance (R) in an electric circuit. That turned out to be Ohm's first law.

I was very curious to find out what Ohm's other two laws were. Turning the fragile, yellowed pages, I soon discovered that Ohm's second law is I = V/R. I conjectured that Ohm's third law might be R = V/I, which turned out to be correct.

[ethbr0]

I desperately wish there was more awareness of military writing styles in the civilian world.

- They're organizations that have existed for as long as their countries.

- They're incredibly large.

- They have to communicate critical information to a very diverse set of readers.

- They iteratively update their approaches, over decades, often in direct reaction to the most stringent real-world tests.

... how could we not learn something from the systems they're currently using?

My favorite nuggets are (1) the glory of BLUF (bottom-line, up front; or an executive summary of everything to follow), (2) including a formal intent preface to any document (to guide writers and readers in what to include/exclude), (3) thoroughly defining terms (to avoid "we're using the same word with different meanings" problem), and (4) rigorously structuring information into separate sections.

Which isn't to say militaries get everything right all of the time. They do tons of stupid things. But dismissing or ignoring them as a source to cherry-pick best practices is shortsighted.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

BLUF is my favorite nugget as well

> ... how could we not learn something from the systems they're currently using?

You haven't noticed the aversion to the military, especially the US military, around here or in "academic" circles?

[ethbr0]

I wouldn't say I've seen aversion, more lack of awareness.

And what aversion there is seems to be a missing distinction between the military organization and military outcomes.

There are 1.3m active duty US DoD uniformed personnel. And another 1m reserve.

The bulk of those are performing support functions and keeping the whole organization running.

It's difficult for me to form any kind of ethical judgment about support folks, however the military is ultimately employed. And especially when weighed against the large number of tech careers that are in support of advertising/tracking.

[Aerroon]

>BLUF is my favorite nugget as well

I wonder if the next generation will invent their own version of this. The current 'trendy' one is tl;dr

[wongarsu]

Because "Abstract" is too abstract of a concept, and "Executive Summary" is too long and presumes the audience.

It's one of these ideas that are universally useful, but get a different name in each context.

[jwiz]

I will often do "TL;DR:" at the top when realize I've written rather more than I'd expected.

[AndrewKemendo]

>But dismissing or ignoring them as a source to cherry-pick best practices is shortsighted.

No truer statement about humanity has been spoken

[nunez]

BLUF is great but is kind of like the MVP in that execution highly varies from author to author