Water rabbits and logs: The nature of Sun Tzu’s war, reexamined | Hacker News Reader

Water rabbits and logs: The nature of Sun Tzu’s war, reexamined

supchina.com

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There's a quote that's apparently not actually by Sun Tzu but a similar/related source that says:

    The skillful employer of men will employ the wise man, 
    the brave man, the covetous man, and the stupid man.

    The wise man delights in establishing his merit
    The brave man likes to show his courage in action
    The covetous man is quick at seizing advantage
    And the stupid man has no fear of death

    - Su-ma Ch’ien

I wonder if a similar strategy could be applied to software teams. There was an article on Hacker News a while back talking about how developers can be broken down into camps depending on whether they care most about elegant code (artists), performance (hackers), or solving practical problems (makers). Perhaps one could say something like:

    The skillful employer of programmers will employ the artist,
    the hacker, the maker, and the tester.

    The artist delights in writing code that is elegant
    The hacker likes to show that his code is performant
    The maker is quick at meeting the spec
    And the tester has no fear of integration errors

> I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.

— General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord

For extra mischief points, you get to map these four groups to the four groups of developers listed above :)

{

:Wise => Architect that actually writes code

:Brave => The guy who refactor old code

:Covetous => Project manager

:Stupid => Count as -1 head because it take half an engineers time to help him and another half to refactor any code he's written.

}

We ran the Clausewitz vs Sun Tzu A/B test and we know how it went. "War is merely the continuation of politics by other means"

Or if you didn't miss one of the malicious compliant story on reddit.

Hiring (transferring) stupid in for the time when the department is trimmed per order.

The Noble’s Sword uses intelligent and courageous people as its tip, honest and honorable people as its body, and virtuous and good people as its edge

— The Three Swords, Zhuangzi

> “Like a whetstone hurled at eggs.”

The translation i read has this as "like a grindstone hurled against eggs", and i'd always understood that to mean a millstone, rather than a whetstone. That makes the analogy far from anti-climactic: it's a perfect illustration of a huge force meeting entirely unequal resistance.

The whetstone I think it’s referring to is not the small brick-shaped ones you use to sharpen kitchen knives but the large wheel-shaped ones used to sharpen swords. Very similar to a millstone actually.

What is a "water rabbit"? Why is it never mentioned in the article outside the title?

"Water Rabbit" is a reference to the Chinese Zodiac, as in "Year of the Water Rabbit". I have no idea what this could mean in the context of the article other than offering a poetic-sounding title.

Just as improbably, it could also be a missing comma typo for Water, Rabbits, and Logs, since the author refers to all of those things separately.

I can agree that it may be an over-cited piece of work, but the analysis in this article is very surface level. Not worth a read imo

I'd like to encourage people to read this website for news about China and also to listen to the Sinica podcast, which is partly made by the same people (Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn). Supchina also has a newsletter

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.

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

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

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.

> 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.)

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.

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?)

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

The Mongols really were masters of the retreat mechanic in combat. They used it themselves very often by feigning retreat with their light cavalry (which could move quicker than most enemies they fought) only to lead the enemy into a prepared ambush, since again the conventional wisdom was that a "routed" enemy was most vulnerable and the enemy would push the "advantage" by chasing them.

They got so good at this tactic (which is one of the hardest to pull off, even in modern combat) that they had a special word for the manoeuvre, but my Google-fu has unfortunately failed me in trying to dig it up.

Isn't that simply the feigned retreat?

Across the few Khan and Mongol histories I've read the tactics are there, but often end up with different names. Like the only tactic that springs to mind right now is to spread out a march to stay low profile during movement. They would call that "moving tree formation", or "moving bush", or "waking tree", or some other related variation from similar root. A quick search brought me to [1], which calls it the new-to-me "bush clump tactic". This book calls your feigned retreat "Luring into Ambushes".

Translation seems to bring a lot of variation in these supposed names. So I end up entirely unsure what they really called them. :)

[1] http://deremilitari.org/2014/06/the-art-of-war-under-chinggi...

It's definitely a feigned retreat in English yeah. What made the Mongols so unreasonably good at it was that no one was better than them on a horse or with a bow (i.e. they could attack from range while retreating; the introduction of guns levelled the playing field because they required much less strength and skill to use). They could pull the feigned retreat off in a way that resulted in few if any casualties, since even a feigned retreat has a high level of danger associated with it (which is what makes it so tough to pull off).

Thanks for doing the digging up on all the names :) It really is interesting how the tactic has been used and adapted over time and place, and how the names necessarily would be different depending on who you ask. I guess calling it any of the above is totally valid XD

> 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.

> 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).

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.

Have you?

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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/...

> 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.

> 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.

>it would be popular in military circles

It is popular in military circles ...

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

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

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.

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.

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