John Boyd – Leapfroglog

My plans for 2016

Long story short: my plan is to make plans.

Hubbub has gone into hibernation. After more than six years of leading a boutique playful design agency I am returning to freelance life. At least for the short term.

I will use the flexibility afforded by this freeing up of time to take stock of where I have come from and where I am headed. ‘Orientation is the Schwerpunkt,’ as Boyd says. I have definitely cycled back through my meta-OODA-loop and am firmly back in the second O.

To make things more interesting I have exchanged the Netherlands for Singapore. I will be here until August. It is going to be fun to explore the things this city has to offer. I am curious what the technology and design scene is like when seen up close. So I hope to do some work locally.

I will take on short commitments. Let’s say no longer than two to three months. Anything goes really, but I am particularly interested in work related to creativity and learning. I am also keen on getting back into teaching.

So if you are in Singapore, work in technology or design and want to have a cup of coffee. Drop me a line.

Happy 2016!

“Orientation is the Schwerpunkt”

Putting this here so I can point to it. Such an important concept that has really changed the way I approach decision making. I used to operate in something like an observe-decide-act manner. But understanding that you can orient to change your options is crucial for the ability to win.

Orientation is the Schwerpunkt. It shapes the way we interact with the environment – hence orientation shapes the way we observe, the way we decide, the way we act.

Orientation shapes the character of present observation-orientation-decision-action loops – while these present loops shape the character of future orientation.

—John Boyd, Organic Design for Command and Control

Blog All Kindle-clipped Locations: Destruction and Creation

I finished my previous post on why designers should be interested in John Boyd with the recommendation to read his essay “Destruction and Creation”. I thought I’d share the bits I highlighted in my copy. It is part of Osinga’s Science, Strategy and War, to which the locations below refer.

Location 3176 – Boyd introduces a very simple but fundamental reason for why we should care about decision making:

… a basic aim or goal, as individuals, is to improve our capacity for independent action

Location 3183 – the same applies to design and designers. We do not want to be controlled by our circumstances. Boyd was talking to a military audience, but the description below is true of any social situation, including the design practice:

In a real world of limited resources and skills, individuals and groups form, dissolve and reform their cooperative or competitive postures in a continuous struggle to remove or overcome physical and social environmental obstacles.

Location 3190

Against such a background, actions and decisions become critically important.

Location 3192

To make these timely decisions implies that we must be able to form mental concepts of observed reality, as we perceive it, and be able to change these concepts as reality itself appears to change.

Location 3195 – designers are asked to do nothing but the above. The succes of our designs hinges on our understanding of reality and our skill at intervening in it. So the question below is of vital importance to us:

How do we generate or create the mental concepts to support this decision-making activity?

Location 3196 – in the next section of the essay Boyd starts to provide answers:

There are two ways in which we can develop and manipulate mental concepts to represent observed reality: We can start from a comprehensive whole and break it down to its particulars or we can start with the particulars and build towards a comprehensive whole.

Location 3207

… general-to-specific is related to deduction, analysis, and differentiation, while, specific-to-general is related to induction, synthesis, and integration.

Location 3216

… such an unstructuring or destruction of many domains – to break the correspondence of each with its respective constituents – is related to deduction, analysis, and differentiation. We call this kind of unstructuring a destructive deduction.

Location 3225

… creativity is related to induction, synthesis, and integration since we proceeded from unstructured bits and pieces to a new general pattern or concept. We call such action a creative or constructive induction.

Location 3227 – here Boyd starts to connect the two ways of creating concepts. I have always found it gratifying to immerse myself in a design’s domain and to start teasing apart its constituent elements, before moving on to acts of creation:

It is important to note that the crucial or key step that permits this creative induction is the separation of the particulars from their previous domains by the destructive deduction.

Location 3230

… the unstructuring and restructuring just shown reveals a way of changing our perception of reality.

Location 3237 – so far so fairly straight-forward. But Boyd gets increasingly more sophisticated about this cycle of destruction and creation. For example, he suggests we should check for internal consistency of a new concept by tracing back its elements to the original sources:

… we check for reversibility as well as check to see which ideas and interactions match-up with our observations of reality.

Location 3240 – so this is not a two-step linear act, but a cyclical one, where we keep tuning parts and wholes of a concept (or design) and test them against reality:

Over and over again this cycle of Destruction and Creation is repeated until we demonstrate internal consistency and match-up with reality.

Location 3249 – in the next section, Boyd problematises the process he has proposed by showing that once we have formed a concept, its matchup to reality immediately starts to deteriorate:

… at some point, ambiguities, uncertainties, anomalies, or apparent inconsistencies may emerge to stifle a more general and precise match-up of concept with observed reality.

Location 3257 – the point below is one I can’t help but iterate often enough to clients and coworkers. We must work under the assumption of mismatches occurring sooner or later. It is an essential state of mind:

… we should anticipate a mismatch between phenomena observation and concept description of that observation.

Location 3266 – he brings in Gödel, Heisenberg and the second law of thermodynamics to explain why this is so:

Gödel’s Proof indirectly shows that in order to determine the consistency of any new system we must construct or uncover another system beyond it.

Location 3274

Back and forth, over and over again, we use observations to sharpen a concept and a concept to sharpen observations. Under these circumstances, a concept must be incomplete since we depend upon an ever-changing array of observations to shape or formulate it. Likewise, our observations of reality must be incomplete since we depend upon a changing concept to shape or formulate the nature of new inquiries and observations.

Location 3301 – so Gödel shows we need to continuously create new concepts to maintain the usefulness of prior ones due to the relationship between observed reality and mental concepts. Good news for designers! Our work is never done. It is also an interesting way to think about culture evolving by the building of increasingly complex networks of prior concepts into new ones. Next, Boyd brings in Heisenberg to explain why there is uncertainty involved when making observations of reality:

… the magnitude of the uncertainty values represent the degree of intrusion by the observer upon the observed.

Location 3304

… uncertainty values not only represent the degree of intrusion by the observer upon the observed but also the degree of confusion and disorder perceived by that observer.

Location 3308 – Heisenberg shows that the more we become intwined with observed reality the more uncertainty increases. This is of note because as we design new things and we introduce them into the environment, unexpected things start to happen. But also, we as designers ourselves are part of the environment. The more we are part of the same context we are designing for, the less able we will be to see things as they truly are. Finally, for the third move by which Boyd problematises the creation of new concepts, we arrive at the second law of thermodynamics:

High entropy implies a low potential for doing work, a low capacity for taking action or a high degree of confusion and disorder. Low entropy implies just the opposite.

Location 3312 – closed systems are those that don’t communicate with their environment. A successful design practice should be an open system, lest it succumb to entropy:

From this law it follows that entropy must increase in any closed system

… whenever we attempt to do work or take action inside such a system – a concept and its match-up with reality – we should anticipate an increase in entropy hence an increase in confusion and disorder.

Location 3317 – it’s important to note that Boyd’s ideas are equally applicable to design plans, design practices, design outcomes, any system involved in design, really. Confused? Not to worry, Boyd boils it down in the next and final section:

According to Gödel we cannot – in general – determine the consistency, hence the character or nature, of an abstract system within itself. According to Heisenberg and the Second Law of Thermodynamics any attempt to do so in the real world will expose uncertainty and generate disorder.

Location 3320 – the bit below is a pretty good summary of why “big design up front” does not work:

any inward-oriented and continued effort to improve the match-up of concept with observed reality will only increase the degree of mismatch.

Location 3329 – whenever we encounter chaos the instinct is to stick to our guns, but it is probably wiser to take a step back and reconsider our assumptions:

we find that the uncertainty and disorder generated by an inward-oriented system talking to itself can be offset by going outside and creating a new system.

Location 3330 – creativity or explorative design under pressure can seem like a waste of time but once we have gone through the exercise in hind sight we always find it more useful than thought before:

Simply stated, uncertainty and related disorder can be diminished by the direct artifice of creating a higher and broader more general concept to represent reality.

Location 3340

I believe we have uncovered a Dialectic Engine that permits the construction of decision models needed by individuals and societies for determining and monitoring actions in an effort to improve their capacity for independent action.

Location 3341

the goal seeking effort itself appears to be the other side of a control mechanism that seems also to drive and regulate the alternating cycle of destruction and creation toward higher and broader levels of elaboration.

Location 3347 – chaos is a fact of life, and as such we should welcome it because it is as much a source of vitality as it is a threat:

Paradoxically, then, an entropy increase permits both the destruction or unstructuring of a closed system and the creation of a new system to nullify the march toward randomness and death.

Location 3350 – one of Boyd’s final lines is a fine description of what I think design should aspire to:

The result is a changing and expanding universe of mental concepts matched to a changing and expanding universe of observed reality.

John Boyd for designers

The first time I came across military strategist John Boyd’s ideas was probably through Venkatesh Rao’s writing. For example, I remember enjoying Be Somebody or Do Something.

Boyd was clearly a contrarian person. I tend to have a soft spot for such figures so I read a highly entertaining biography by Roger Coram. Getting more interested in his theories I then read an application of Boyd’s ideas to business by Chet Richards. Still not satisfied, I decided to finally buckle down and read the comprehensive survey of his martial and scientific influences plus transcripts of all his briefings by Frans Osinga.

It’s been a hugely enjoyable and rewarding intellectual trip. I feel like Boyd has given me some pretty sharp new tools-to-think-with. From his background you might think these tools are limited to warfare. But in fact they can be applied much more broadly, to any field in which we need to make decisions under uncertain circumstances.

As we go about our daily lives we are actually always dealing with this dynamic. But the stakes are usually low, so we mostly don’t really care about having a thorough understanding of how to do what we want to do. In warfare the stakes are obviously unusually high, so it makes sense for some of the most articulate thinking on the subject to emerge from it.

As a designer I have always been interested in how my profession makes decisions. Designers usually deal with high levels of uncertainty too. Although lives are rarely at stake, the continued viability of businesses and quality of peoples lives usually are, at least in some way. Furthermore, there is always a leap of faith involved with any design decision. When we suggest a path forward with our sketches and prototypes, and we choose to proceed to development, we can never be entirely sure if our intended outcomes will pan out as we had hoped.

This uncertainty has always been present in any design act, but an argument could be made that technology has increased the amount of uncertainty in our world.

The way I see it, the methods of user centred design, interaction design, user experience, etc are all attempts to “deal with” uncertainty in various ways. The same can be said for the techniques of agile software development.

These methods can be divided into roughly two categories, which more or less correspond to the upper two quadrants of this two-by-two by Venkatesh. Borrowing the diagram’s labels, one is called Spore. It is risk-averse and focuses on sustainability. The other is called Hydra and it is risk-savvy and about anti-fragility. Spore tries to limit the negative consequences of unexpected events, and Hydra tries to maximise their positive consequences.

An example of a Spore-like design move would be to insist on thorough user research at the start of a project. We expend significant resources to diminish the amount of unknowns about our target audience. An example of a Hydra-like design move is the kind of playtesting employed by many game designers. We leave open the possibility of surprising acts from our target audience and hope to subsequently use those as the basis for new design directions.

It is interesting to note that these upper two quadrants are strategies for dealing with uncertainty based on synthesis. The other two rely on analysis. We typically associate synthesis with creativity and by extension with design. But as Boyd frequently points out, invention requires both analysis and synthesis, which he liked to call destruction and creation. When I reflect on my own way of working, particularly in the early stages of a project, the so-called fuzzy front end, I too rely on a cycle of destruction and creation to make progress.

I do not see one of the two approaches, Spore or Hydra, as inherently superior. But my personal preference is most definitely the Hydra approach. I think this is because a risk-savvy stance is most helpful when trying to invent new things, and when trying to design for play and playfulness.

The main thing I learned from Boyd for my own design practice is to be aware of uncertainty in the first place, and to know how to deal with it in an agile way. You might not be willing to do all the reading I did, but I would recommend to at least peruse the one long-form essay Boyd wrote, titled Destruction and Creation (PDF), about how to be creative and decisive in the face of uncertainty.

A Battlefield of Disorder

In the first post of this year I started out with a bit of video by Adam Curtis, which mentions Russia’s use of “nonlinear war” to create confusion in its enemies. I said it reminded me of the ideas of John Boyd, because he talks about mismatches a lot: The importance of minimising mismatches between your perception of external reality and its actual nature, and maximising same for your enemies.

After writing that post, Alper shared an article criticising Adam Curtis. In it, Dan Hancox says Curtis imposes his (overly simplistic) world view on us, while dressing it up as revealing journalism. Along the way he mentions this LRB article by James Meek on the British campaign in Afghanistan’s Helmand region. It makes for an intriguing read. To mention two things:

Meek talks about how there was a mismatch (my words, not his) between the concepts that made up the British doctrine, and the nature of the reality they encountered. For example, they were unable to account for a large part of the population resisting them.
Meek also talks about the British army’s inability to learn in peacetime. There seems to be a lack of interest for intellectual analysis and the development of new ideas.

The same day I finished reading Meek I watched Restrepo, a documentary about a US platoon in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. One of the things that stood out for me was the apparent mismatch (again, my words) between how the US forces we follow in the doc conceptualise their opponent, and what we know about their true nature. They often talk about Al-Qaeda as if it is some well-organised army mirroring their own, when as with British in the Helmand, we can see that more often than not they are being resisted (while sometimes simultaneously being exploited) by a local populace who does not consider them bringers of freedom and prosperity.

The feeling crept up on me that part of what is going on with those US soldiers may also be wilful ignorance, because for them that almost seems the only way to be able to keep fighting. (They go home broken men regardless though, it is terrible to see the change in them wrought by such violence.)

All the same, conceiving of your opponent as a well-ordered force which can at some point be decisively defeated, plays into the enemy’s hands. It also misunderstands the nature of contemporary warfare, which isn’t a contest of technology, but a war of ideas. This is also what is mentioned in Curtis’s film, when he talks about Surkov’s nonlinear war.

I later dug up a Foreign Policy article which delves even deeper into the nature of Russia’s approach to warfare. Reading it, a picture emerges that the Kremlin may very well understand nonwestern perspectives on the current world order better than the west does, which they leverage to their benefit. Or, if this understanding is present in the west, then the Russians are simply better able at acting in accordance with it.

Peter Pomerantsev, the article’s author, says we can compare the Kremlin’s view of globalisation as a sort of corporate raiding, “the ultra-violent, post-Soviet version of corporate takeovers.” Even if Russia is weak, technologically speaking, through nonlinear war it can leverage its relative weakness. And if we think Russia is isolated, we might be too eager to stick to our own view of globalisation as (again) a liberating influence which brings prosperity to less developed nations. According to Pomerantsev, BRIC countries see the “global village” as a rigged game (justifiably so, I would add), thus they have no issues with Russia not playing by the (that is to say the west’s) rules.

In short, Russia seems to have a more sophisticated grasp of contemporary warfare as a war of ideas than the west does.

Circling back to Boyd, in the final section of Osinga’s book on the Mad Major he refers to a 1989 article by Bill Lind, one of Boyd’s associates, which talks about idea-driven fourth-generation warfare. Its practitioners wage protracted asymmetric war. For these actors it is a political, not a military struggle.

Lind says the battlefield has shifted from one of order, to a battlefield of disorder. But western military organisations are still organised on first-generation principles, operating in an orderly fashion, in stead of being structured so that they can deal with and leverage disorder.

Osinga also talks about Van Creveld, who makes the point that for these 4GW practitioners, war is an end, not a means. Western rules do not apply to their conception of the struggle. War does not serve a policy, it is policy. In addition, war is not fought in the technological dimension but in the moral dimension.

All of this leaves me even more conflicted about contemporary warfare than I already was. (And let me say here that my interest in the subject comes not from bloodlust but an almost naive desire for world peace, or at least an ever-increasing diminishment of suffering. But I try to face reality regardless.) Perhaps one of the most troubling implications is that for us to have a chance at “winning”, we need to abandon our old rules of conduct.

This is the type of essentially illegal war being engaged in by the US, as documented in Dirty Wars. I was and still am appalled by the practices of remote warfare described therein. But having read all of the above it now also makes a perverse kind of sense. If you’re at war with non-state actors, you are at a severe disadvantage if you must adhere to international laws and the sovereignty of states.

The alternative—if we accept that for us war is a means towards an end but for our adversaries war is an end in itself—is to exercise a much larger amount of restraint as nations, even in the face of all manner of terrorism, than we ever have before. Sometimes Obama’s drone program is framed as this more restrained, controlled response to terror, but I can’t help but think that any kind of violent response plays into our enemy’s hands, as today’s drone strikes clearly do.

And anyway, remote warfare misses the point about the shift from technology to ideas: We’ll never “win” if we don’t start to make convincing arguments about the morality (but not moral supremacy) of our way of life to those populations effectively being held hostage by those actors benefiting from perpetual war.

Because, if we hope to win by abandoning things that made us who we are (the rule of law, democracy, economic and social justice) in many ways we are already defeated.