“Survival on our own terms.”

Action (Test) appears as the last element in the OODA loop. But to consider any action as just an ‘end product’ would be to miss the point. This happens when you rigidly use the input, throughput, output model. Such an interpretation makes the OODA loop an allopoietic system, the bumper-sticker model. A system where energy information enters, is manipulated and exits as a disconnected object from the system itself. OODA loops are not assembly lines.

Now we’ll revisit the “All models are wrong, but some are useful” post. In terms of movement, the physical part of action, I’ll use Bernstein’s models of the degree’s of freedom and the shifting focus heuristic. In those models you find antagonistic forces, coordination and exploration that combine to reach some future state. Those forces set up a binary choice, pick one or the other action in order to move towards a goal. The goal is asymmetrical that is, you cannot go back to a previous state.

So where do the goals originate? How does ‘why’ in the goal selection come into play? An answer can be found in Destruction and Creation;

“Studies of human behavior reveal that the actions we undertake as individuals are closely related to survival, more importantly, survival on our own terms… In viewing the instinct for survival in this manner we imply that a basic aim or goal, as individuals, is to improve our capacity for independent action…

Against such a background, actions and decisions become critically important. Actions must be taken over and over again and in many different ways. Decisions must be rendered to monitor and determine the precise nature of the actions needed that will be compatible with the goal. 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. The concepts can then be used as decisionmodels for improving our capacity for independent action…”

But in any social system, and soccer is a social system, there is always tension between two antagonistic forces, the need for individual freedom and the constraints of cooperative action. It’s the old ‘me or the team’ argument. Boyd addresses this tension and the need for finding a balance;

“The degree to which we cooperate, or compete, with others is driven by the need to satisfy this basic goal. If we believe that it is not possible to satisfy it alone, without help from others, history shows us that we will agree to constraints upon our independent action—in order to collectively pool skills and talents in the form of nations, corporations, labor unions, mafias, etc. —so that obstacles standing in the way of the basic goal can either be removed or overcome. On the other hand, if the group cannot or does not attempt to overcome obstacles deemed important to many (or possibly any) of its individual members, the group must risk losing these alienated members. Under these circumstances, the alienated members may dissolve their relationship and remain independent, form a group of their own, or join another collective body in order to improve their capacity for independent action.”

The Hollywood, i.e. popular view of this conflict is the ‘who’ll step up and take charge in the moment of crisis’ picture. It’s the “win one for the gipper” moment. This assumes that one, you can predict when these moments will occur and two that you have time to do anything about it. It’s likely you can’t and you won’t. That’s back to Paget’s point about these ‘big’ moments seeming to be a singular, isolated event. They aren’t. The tension between finding your own solution or coordinating with others for survival is ongoing, never-ending and occurs over a rapidly changing landscape of possible options. The ideas that people find and create must compete with the ideas of others for survival. It’s a bloody and brutal process and one that is necessary for action that insures “survival on our own terms.”