Human beings are wired to find patters, but unfortunately, we can see patterns even where they do not exist. A recent study in Science magazine demonstrates the people imagine patterns even where there are none, especially in times of stress. Like all of science, Sun Tzu's strategy uses patterns, models, for making decisions about the chaotic information in the environment, but these models have been proven over 2,500 years in the most unforgiving environment of all: the life and death struggles of war.

Foolish ideas seem logical if they are repeated often enough. Sun Tzu's strategy teaches the use of analogies to support logic. For example, do the arguments about energy policy make sense in terms of food policy? Current food technology does a thousand times more ecological damage than any other human activity including using oil. Farming cuts down trees, plows up the land, depletes limited water resources, spreads dangerous chemicals, and intentionally poisons natural plants and animals. Using ecologically unsound food is destroying the planet.

For some time, I have written about how the "power curve" represents many aspect of competition situations better than the "bell curve" that charts controlled situations. Thanks to a reader, we now have some solid scientific research that verifies our observation, providing the first solid proof for a prediction we have made based on Sun Tzu's 2,500 year-old science.

In Sun Tzu's strategy, the goal is always improving your position. A common strategic errors is thinking that, if there is a problem, action is ALWAYS necessary. However, action only makes sense if it makes the situation better. There are many situations that action makes work. For example, Freeman Dyson, one of the world leading mathematicians and physicists, discusses the problem of Global Warming in exactly the context.