John Boyd, First

I do not want to refute John Boyd’s characterization of the decision-making process.  OODA has proven useful for many scenarios, and in many ways, utilitarian; but at the same time I cannot help considering the context of Boyd’s conceptualization.  As a fighter pilot, Boyd had to react quickly to unfolding situations, and his enemies were individual pilots; these two considerations alone point at the way his concept of OODA always had preconditions:  Boyd with his genetic heritage and cultural traditions and his enemies with theirs;  Boyd in a fighter jet and his enemies in theirs.   I.e., in any person-to-person combat, or in fact in combat between large groups, these factors would already be long-set, influencing each party’s ability to make decisions.  Plus, quick-thinking and short reaction times, and the very environment of being the operator of a fighter jet or helicopter, etc., already eliminate many factors that might influence a person’s actions.  (For instance, using a pistol would have been long ruled-out in any confrontation between fighter pilots.)  Similarly, previous experiences in different combat situations would have been long-set, for Boyd and his enemy. 

When Boyd considered observation, then, that observation would be temporal and quite conditional.  The fighter pilot’s cultural traditions are not much on his mind, in the sense that he would need to observe his own cultural traditions — he has observed them long ago, when a child.  No, what he needs to observe will range from weather conditions, time of day, the instruments on his craft, his enemy’s maneuvers, etc.  However, not having a long personal memory of his enemy’s cultural traditions would perhaps require an abstract “observation” or consideration of his enemy’s background as the fighter pilot makes decisions during combat, even if such consideration is not on the forefront of the pilot’s mind.  His own past experiences might or might not be at the forefront, depending on the unfolding situation; if not consciously considered, those experiences might nonetheless influence quick reactions .  On the other hand, a conscious consideration or “observation” of his enemy’s past experiences, if these are known, might be very much on the pilot’s mind.  The Wikipedia article linked above actually includes a similar consideration of the Orient phase; cultural traditions and genetic heritage are assumed to refer to the enemy’s traditions and heritage, not the pilot’s.

We see in Boyd’s diagram for Orient these long-set factors:  genetic heritage, cultural traditions, previous experience.  It is less clear to me that new information would be long-set; but obviously, new information would interact with our memories of past experience, cultural traditions, etc., to affect a person’s ability to orient to any given unfolding of circumstances.  In fact, Boyd seems to have desired a consideration of Orient in which all these factors interact to form a type of understanding of how one should act.  Analysis & Synthesis is the fifth element included under Orient — that the diagram at Wikipedia goes a step further in drawing the subprocesses of Orient as a well-defined pentagram, is interesting, because of the mystical implications.  These are assumed subprocesses, each interacting with each of the others, but unlike Dan, I do not see these things as being co-equal in the Orient phase.  That is, one’s cultural traditions or genetic heritage are not analogous to the processes of analysis and synthesis.  They influence analysis and synthesis; or, analysis and synthesis use the information provided by these others.  As a mystical diagram — a fuzzy schematic of what happens during Orient — Boyd’s concept might be better imagined as a Magic Cloud.

Magic Cloud OODA: tdaxp

Dan of tdaxp has addressed the magic of Boyd’s cloudy diagram before: “Quality 5, The Magic Cloud”.  Following Boyd’s diagram of the Orient phase, Dan redrew the diagram to show Orient as individual subprocesses interacting with Observe, Decide, and Act:


But such a consideration of Orient would be messy, confusing, especially since we do not know exactly how each of these assumed subprocesses interact with each other; in Dan’s words,

But this becomes a mess — we don’t really understand how the different parts of Orientation work together, and all the excess information confuses the eye. Plus, each of the new boxes are truly unknown themselves — genetic heritage is an area of new research, not known facts, etc. We know each of the new boxes are sub-processes — genetics don’t “stop,” nor does reconstruction of old experiences, but how do they work? Unknown.

[Dan, tdaxp]

Such a consideration may lead us to think of Orient as a “Magic Cloud.” The process may be cloudy, but we know that something happens within the mind during the thought process, in which all these pieces interact to orient us; and thus, this cloudy understanding is magical:  we don’t understand it, but it understands or continues to operate.

Unfortunately, I’ve never liked magic clouds, because so much superstition can be similarly lumped together through the magic of what is commonly called faith.  How can we have faith that our limited understanding of the decision making process is not in fact incorrect or misleading?  To what degree can we have an accurate understanding of these things, if we are in fact ignorant of much that occurs within our minds?  Most importantly: How can we use the fact of our own ignorance as we move toward making decisions of what to do about that ignorance?

Grossly Speaking: ‘Metaphysics and Physics’

John Boyd’s concept of OODA obviously assumes preconditions for any action, but within a localized environment, many preconditions can be safely ignored.  If one is in a fighter jet, one does not need to consider sand traps on a golf course several miles below the dog fight (unless, of course, one does not want to shoot down an enemy’s plane while people play oblivious below…that might not be the most important decision, however.)  Rethinking the name given to a pink flower by Grandmother when one was seven-years-old is also going to be unnecessary.  In fact, it would be distracting.  Thus, context plays a major role in the OODA diagram put forth by John Boyd.

Others have since attempted to utilize Boyd’s OODA for describing other phenomena.  For instance, I introduced the subject of OODA when debating “homosexual orientation.”  Business persons have found much in OODA of a utilitarian nature, which was not the original intent of John Boyd.

Dan of tdaxp has recently hinted at a use of OODA for understanding Thomas Barnett’s concept of SysAdmin work and even for handling insurgencies, among other things, by considering genetic factors and memetics.  Applying the Loop to general theories of cognition would stretch the original concept even further — particularly when we fall into the orthodoxy that cultural traditions are somehow always long-set for people, even from birth.  For Boyd, the point at which fighter pilots come into conflict occurs after much learning; but for a general consideration of OODA in human cognition, we cannot avoid a consideration of how humans in fact learn cultural traditions.

During intense combat, much observation will concern the concrete world — “unfolding circumstances” & “outside information” — whether that observation is of weather, the enemy plane, or the instruments of one’s own jet; much less time will be spent in conscious introspection, except for a consideration of past experiences, perhaps.  In general life, however, such fast-thinking will not be as necessary much of the time, and much more time may be spent in introspection.

Boyd’s Loop confuses the exterior world and the “interior world,” or the concrete world and the abstract world.  These things are addressed in the Loop, but their demarcation is not clear.  The lines between them are blurred, and this can lead to misunderstanding.  Let’s take another look at Boyd’s OODA Loop:



Most everything after World is intended to represent the abstract —

Middle English, from Latin abstractus, past participle of abstrahere, to draw away : abs-, ab-, away;  + trahere, to draw.

— i.e., we may think of this as “drawing in the mind” of the concrete world, even if that is the wrong draw; or we might say that after observing the World, we then “draw away” from that world and begin to consider it abstractly.  We analyze these abstracts, synthesize them, think about them, and make decisions about them, whether consciously or subconsciously.  Not everything after World is abstract, however; Act is a physical action, and Unfolding Interaction w/ Environment [UIE] is how we make changes in the concrete world based on our considerations of abstracts of that world.  Thus, I consider the feedback line from Act to Observe as being somewhat a blurring of the concrete and abstract, since in all actuality, our action upon/within the world changes that world.  The line should have been drawn back to World, and then we would follow the line from World to Observe for an observation of our unfolding action upon/within the World.  [This, incidentally, will figure significantly in my consideration of EBO, or Effects-Based Operations, in the second part of this series.]

That blurring of lines between the concrete and abstract becomes even more problematic when we consider the other feedback loops.

In the Feedback shown leading back from Act to Observe, no distinction is made between one’s physical act upon the world [UIE] and one’s consideration of that physical act. Thus, we might wonder if the two types of feedback would be confused.  For instance,

1. if I decide to take out an enemy’s supply route because that would greatly interrupt that enemy’s ability to act,
2. I follow through and actually take out that node,
3. then I may think, “Ah, success!  The enemy is greatly disrupted!”
4. but if I have not continued to observe the actual physical effects of my action, I many not see that the enemy has not been greatly disrupted after all!  Perhaps he has several alternative routes he is using…
   

I.e., #3 is the result of my abstract thoughts about the effects of my action, largely pre-formed before I even decided to act.  #4 would be an observation of unfolding interaction with my environment, if I kept looking at that objective environment.  The first is an abstract observation, or quite within the mind; the second, an objective observation, or concrete observation.  Boyd’s loop actually includes both types of observation but blurs the lines between them.  We might say that a person actually following the loop consciously would have an abstract and a concrete observation of the effects of the action, would see that they do not match, and would then choose some other type of action the next time around.  But all too often, such careful consideration does not occur, particularly when life-threatening situations involving a necessity for quick action are not involved; i.e., during strategy and longer-lasting operations.

The feedback loop from Decide to Observe is almost entirely abstract.  Boyd listed the subtitle “hypothesis” for Decide, in which case we hypothesize an action and then “observe” the effects of that theoretical action, against the physical situation, before acting: quite abstract observation, there. If our action fails and we see that it has failed, we may seem to have a feedback from that Decision after the fact, but only in a situation requiring quickly looping OODA; and, that isn’t so much a direct feedback from Decide as it is a combination of UIE and a memory of past activity or past experiences. But this process of remembering a past decision is not clearly addressed or delineated in Boyd’s OODA loop.

Each of the Implicit Guidance & Control shortcuts are intended to represent the way a person’s orientation may affect either his observation or his actions in a subconscious manner.  Perhaps in considering the direct step from Orient to Act, Boyd wanted to show how a fighter pilot might act instinctively, without having to hypothesize or decide an action.  These are truly Magic Cloud material, because they represent largely subconscious or even unconscious processes in the Loop which are not well understood.

Part of the reason the Implicit Guidance & Control steps were introduced to the diagram may be the inclusion of things such as genetic heritage and cultural traditions in the Orient stage, even of past experiences in that stage.  Suppose a person is born blind; his blindness will greatly affect his ability to observe the world as well as his ability to act upon it, below or beyond his conscious decision-making process/ability.  But such a consideration also points at the way the concrete, objective world has been blurred with the abstract in Boyd’s OODA, since physical blindness is quite obviously a matter of the concrete world even if those who are blind have built up abstract considerations of their own blindness during the course of a life.  Other things, like extreme mental retardation, may be entirely physical, especially if those having such conditions are incapable of introspection about those conditions.  Boyd, when considering the decision-making process of fighter pilots did not need to consider congenital blindness or extreme mental retardation, however.

The inclusion of cultural traditions and past experiences within the Orient step represents abstractions; but how those abstractions have been formed is not clear from the OODA loop as it is normally diagrammed.  These things may well subconsciously influence a person’s observations and actions, simply because they represent either habitual thought patterns or limitations on past observation of the concrete world.  If one has not experienced the taste and physical effects of a particular berry, he is not going to know if it tastes bad or is extremely poisonous, when he is trapped in the wild behind enemy lines.  But he might eat it anyway if he is starving (a physical condition) and if it looks a lot like a blackberry.  He might not.  If he bases this decision on his limited past experience with berries, he is basing his decision on an abstract, and he might come to regret that decision if he has never before experienced the effects of eating such berries.  In a different situation, the same man might not be very hungry and might avoid taking the risk.  His state of being starved, or not starved, is not a long-standing condition, nor an entirely abstract condition, but a relatively new physical condition, even if it is also a result of genetic heritage.

We are also not able to draw a distinction between the subconscious or unconscious “decision-making process” implicit in Implicit Guidance & Control and the conscious decision-making of Boyd’s OODA loop.  A cultural tradition may have larger sway over one individual than another within the same culture, for instance.  The Magic Cloud of Boyd’s Orient does not discount this possibility, but neither does it attempt to clarify such a possibility for those not engaged in live-or-die dog fights.  Thus we might attempt to use Boyd’s OODA loop for understanding how a particular element within a culture can be coerced into engaging in some particular activity (EBO, 4GW, 5GW) but severely mistake that person’s cultural traditions for personal obsessions which are in fact not present.  I.e., going back to the consideration of interrupting supply routes, we may have a very abstract idea about cause-effect, based on abstractions of others’ abstractions, without considering exactly how an unfolding action upon the environment may greatly influence that other person’s abstractions (his relation to his cultural traditions.)  Without a careful observation of that particular enemy in reaction to similar concrete actions (UIE), we may greatly misjudge, mis-decide, and mis-act. 

Furthermore, lumping cultural traditions, genetic heritage, and past experiences with analysis and synthesis greatly blurs the real-world environment and the abstract processes of the mind. Analysis and syntheses are mental processes, but genetic heritage is a physical condition/process, and past experiences and cultural traditions have a direct precedent in a person’s objective environment (even if these two have subsequently been idolized or ideologized into abstractions.) By considering an enemy’s abstractions without also considering an enemy’s physical environment, we are assuming a cognitive process for our enemy that is entirely ab- stract: i.e., a cognitive process entirely drawn apart from concrete reality. This is a severe confusion between the abstract and the concrete, and may lead to the belief that our abstractions of the enemy and even our enemy’s abstractions are in fact concrete realities when they may have very little relation to objective reality. The degree to which a person may “live in the abstract” (at its extreme: ideologues, fanatics, the insane) rather than according to objective observation is not clearly addressed by Boyd’s OODA.  In fact, his loop almost entirely addresses the abstract portion of the decision-making process — which is why things such as genetic heritage and feedback from Action to Observe are left rather cloudy or inexact.  Boyd seems to have wanted to address both the abstract and the concrete, but by using cloudy feedback loops to combine the two “worlds” and types of process.

Re-Vision of the OODA

In consideration of the above, I have tentatively redesigned the OODA to address some of the cloudier aspects.  Obviously, not every process is clearly understood, by me or by anyone; but in particular I’ve wanted to address a division between the concrete world and the abstract “world,” or between what exists and our thoughts about what exists:

• between the concrete and the abstract processes of ‘observation’
• between concrete and abstract decisions/hypotheses and acts/activities
• between conscious, subconscious, and unconscious observation and activity.

This is a first reworking of the loop, and I have largely kept Boyd’s terminology even though later clarifications might necessitate a new set of terms, preferring to build upon Boyd’s Loop rather than replace it — it is a good starting point.


As you can see, I have attempted to separate the objective and concrete from the subjective and abstract, resulting in two different OODA loops. The first OODA loop represents the concrete:

WORLD
• Exterior Physical Environment
• Personal Genetic Heritage (Body)
  

OBSERVE
• Sensory Stimulation
• Genetic Information
  

ORIENT
• (Abstract OODA)
  

DECIDE
• Choice-Act
  

ACT
• Physical Act
  

In actuality, this is a move from the concrete world, to the concrete interaction between world and person (reception of information), to the abstract decision-making process (contemplation/analysis of information), to a physical act — with a potential choice-act, or conscious and focused decision to act upon the physical world. So it is movement beginning and ending with the concrete world.  Unlike Boyd, I have included Genetic Heritage in the exterior environment.  In the first place, when considering future warfare, we will need to consider potential viruses and biochemicals capable of altering the genetic structure similar to the way that present methods of warfare may alter — injure, destroy — a person’s body or other parts of the concrete world like infrastructure; such alteration affects a person’s observation, and hence decisions and activity, but it does so through acting upon the physical environment, or concretely.  In the second place, a thinking being must exist before cognition may occur, and Orient is a process of cognition.  Also, because human beings are dynamically alive, genetic information is always new information, consistently feeding into the abstract portion of the OODA.  We may think that the information is static, but it is not; e.g., genetically I am a male, but that could change due to physical alteration (whether genetic or not) — it’s just that, until a physical change has occurred, the same genetic information is continuously passed and continues to affect the later stages of the OODA loop.

Genetic heritage affects not only one’s ability to observe via the senses — e.g., congenital blindness — but also continues to inform the process of cognition via other genetic information, such as mental retardation, biochemical differences between the sexes, and through biological signals for starvation, pain, etc.

When considering the decision-making process, it will be important to remember the distinction between concrete information and what I’ve called “old information” in the abstract OODA loop of the ORIENT stage.  Both types of information feed into the Abstract Observation stage (within ORIENT), and different individuals in different situations may well give more “weight” to one type of observation than the other.  Mark Safranski of ZenPundit has recently written on the subject of paying attention:

As poorly as we sometimes are at paying attention extrospectively - we could benefit far more by greater attention or some old fashioned Zen “mindfulness” being directed inward. Metacognitive regulation requires an introspective monitoring of one’s thoughts and ideas, which means active, conscious, effort to pay attention.

[Mark Safranski, ZenPundit]

I suspect that such Zen mindfulness, though on the surface seeming quite introspective, is in fact a method of disentangling oneself from inordinate focus on abstract thoughts.  I.e., we are often “viewing” our own thoughts when we think we are engaging in “extrospection” — really, we are not distinguishing between the two — and by making ourselves more aware of our internal cognitive processes, we may become better able to separate what is real and what is only a memory or pale imitation of past extrospection (if even that.)  Interestingly, Mark mentions master Yogis and Zen monks who were able “to effect significant physiological changes” merely by focusing inwardly.  This may seem like a refutation of the Revised OODA loop, in that mind acts directly on the physical world rather than the other way around, but it’s not.  In fact, such a decision and act are methods of acting physically upon the world, or upon one’s own physiological being; our minds have brains and a body of electro-chemical processes which may act upon the world just like hands and feet may act upon the world.  So these Yogis and master Zen monks have an ability to Observe the physical world — their genetic heritage, or bodies — and act upon it.

Clearly, however, a wide gulf separates such Zen mastery and wishful or superstitious thinking, probably since the latter remains focused more on past information than new information; i.e., on ideology or memory or other mental constructs rather than on one’s own physical being or any other aspect of the present and concrete world. 

I have loosely defined three types of action: the impulsive act, the focused act, and reflexive or habitual acts.  Within the abstract OODA of the primary ORIENT stage, I have attempted to show (loosely, again) how each type of act flows from the cognitive process.  Specifically, I have given two abstract “worlds”:

• Mental Constructs which tend to be longer-lasting information and sets of information, probably reinforced via multiple iterations of the entire OODA process but which are set by the Abstract OODA loop.
• Conditional Constructs which are short-term:  individual present ideas and new but hypothetical sets of ideas, which one reviews before coming to an understanding of the information or even a formal ideology built from multiple sets.
  

Reflexive and Habitual Acts originate from previously formed mental constructs and are loosely analogous to Boyd’s fighter-pilot reaction to familiar situations.  One might  wonder if such a quick-looping through the Abstract Act phase can occur, but remember that the cognitive process is generally rather quick.  I.e., before the Abstract Act stage, information has fed from the outside (his enemy’s actions) as well as from past experience (Mental Constructs), they have been compared (Analysis & Synthesis), the fighter pilot may decide the comparison fits rather nicely (and so not question it through another OO cycle), and then may come to an Understanding (Abstract Act) before acting.  In fact, we will likely find that habitual acts tend to occur most often when quite familiar situations occur frequently; i.e., when physical Observation of the World quickly matches up with whatever Mental Constructs we have previously formed — and, thus, not requiring further contemplation or hypotheses. (However, the viewer may be mistaken about the World, due to subterfuge; as will be considered in part two of this series.)

Focused Acts also come from an Understanding, informed by Memory and Past Experience and perhaps Ideology, but are not reflexive or habitual — probably because whatever information is entering the ORIENT phase from the outside World includes unexpected information.  This might be because:  the viewer is in a new environment; an old environment has changed; or perhaps a viewer’s sensory ability, or physical Observation, is quite new.  Consider what happens when the power goes out in the middle of the night and we must make our way to a flashlight or a fuse box in complete darkness.  Or, consider what would happen if we suddenly went blind for no reason — or what we would do if we heard a very large animal outside our tent!

Impulsive Acts are quite different than the other two, although they may appear to be related to either.  Retailers know the importance of placing novelty items within quick and easy reach of shoppers.  And, twentysomething partygoers may end up in a bed they never expected to see, regretting their “decision” later.  Many impulsive acts have some relation to Mental Constructs — “Oh, so-and-so wears that cologne, and everyone likes it; I must buy some too!” — but this is because those past experiences feed into the Abstract OODA; when the person comes to decide an action, on the spur of the moment, he usually does so from a belief that his hypothesis is an understanding: “If I wear that cologne, I’ll get laid!”  If such a decision-making process is made in advance (he goes to the store planning to buy the cologne), it would be a Focused Act, whether it leads to a desired changed World or to some disappointment.   But if the act flows from suddenly new information without  passing into a resilient understanding and careful decision-making process, it is an Impulsive Act. 

Arguably, Conditional Constructs and Mental Constructs could be combined within the internal OODA, since both are created through operation of the Abstract OODA, but to do so would, I think, obscure the decision-making processes.  For instance, consider a different Impulsive Act:  While at the Mall, a person suddenly hears lots of gunfire near him, sees people falling, and rather than quickly duck behind a convenient metal barrier starts running around, screaming — and, gets shot.  But a person who has been in combat situations might quickly duck behind the barrier:  a reflexive act based more on past experience than on present new information and sudden ideas of impending death.

From There to Here and Beyond

Many of the distinctions I have just made could be made in consideration of Boyd’s OODA conceptualization. In fact, without Boyd’s conceptualization, I might not have begun to consider these distinctions.  It is only in futher consideration, of new applications of the OODA loop, that new distinctions need to be made.  For instance, Dan of tdaxp has previously theorized an overlap between Boyd’s OODA loop and William Lind’s theory of generations of warfare, in “Go Deep (OODA and the Rainbow of Generational Warfare).”  That is a post that I will address in the second part of Rethinking the OODA.  For instance, if we theorize a 5GW that works on an enemy’s ability to Observe, are we thinking of the primary, physical Observe or the internal, Abstract Observe?  If 4th Generation warriors work on the enemy’s OODA between Observe and Orient, as suggested by Dan, which OO are we discussing?  Furthermore, which are we considering when we decide to make war on an enemy: his primary, physical OODA loop?  his Abstract OODA? Both? Or do we sometimes mistake our own Abstract Constructs for a physical observation of his loop(s)?  These are questions I’ll address in part two of the series — along with a consideration of Effects-Based Warfare and, if I can manage it, Network-Centric Warfare [pdf link].

---

Rethinking the OODA
• Part One: Rethinking the OODA


• Part Two: EBO is Everything in War — Almost


• Part Three: Observing the Maturing World

---

Update:  corrected the punctuation and styling in the paragraph on Reflexive and Habitual Acts to clarify confusing syntax.

Update: added link to Part Two, and changed the subtitle to reflect an expansion of the series.

Update: added link to Part Three.

Update: created new blog subcategory: OODA.