
Water rabbits and logs: The nature of Sun Tzu’s war, reexamined - collapse
https://supchina.com/2019/10/08/water-rabbits-and-logs-the-nature-of-sun-tzus-war-reexamined/
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harimau777
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

~~~
empath75
> 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

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

~~~
Aperocky
{

: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.

}

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twic
> “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.

~~~
chongli
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.

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

~~~
bjornsteffanson
"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.

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whatitdobooboo
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

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solstice
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

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
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.

~~~
whalesalad
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.

~~~
RealityVoid
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.

~~~
chrisseaton
> 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/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/605298/Army_Field_Manual__AFM__A5_Master_ADP_Interactive_Gov_Web.pdf)

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> 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.

~~~
chrisseaton
> 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.

