The Art of War: Warrior Rules - winning by comparing positions

Sun Tzu's six rules regarding the role of chance in strategic processes and systems.

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This article describes how, if we expect the adaptive loop to advance our position in a predictable way, we will be disappointed. Deterministic processes solve problems working through a predictable linear process. Each step makes a change that gets us closer to our goals, like the steps in the manufacturing process.

Sun Tzu's process is a stochastic process based on probability not a deterministic process. Its probabilities are not fixed. In a competitive environment, we are always prepared for failure because of these uncertainties. We use methods that increase our chances of success over the alternatives but we avoid expensive failure.