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[–][deleted]  (10 children) | Copy Link

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[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (6 children) | Copy Link

I'll look forward to that. I've never made any progress with that book. It all sounds like: If the enemy is like rock, a good general must be like paper. However, if the enemy is like paper, he must be like scissors.

As a teaser for your book, can you give one example of a piece of Sun-Tsu advice that you think has a practical use in modern peacetime and that's specific enough to be proven right or wrong? Something better than In war, as in porridge, you must be neither too hot nor too cold. A general, like a cook, seeks a just medium..

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (4 children) | Copy Link

My personal favorite is

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

So basically, knowledge of every factor in a fight/conflict/relationship/market situation gives you a priceless advantage over your opponent.

Also:

Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children) | Copy Link

I'm sorry, this seems to me to be so diluted it's like literary homeopathy: 99.99% water with a tiny grain of truth, presented as more than the sum of its parts.

Yes, knowing the strengths/weaknesses of yourself and your enemy makes you more likely to win. Knowledge is better than ignorance. You didn't need to read the book to know that, and you expressed the idea better than Sun-Tsu's translator, using half as many words.

And, as for the best fighter winning without fighting, that's the kind of thing that characters in martial arts movies say in between breaking people's arms. It's fridge-magnet-slogan "Eastern wisdom".

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children) | Copy Link

Each to his own I guess. I personally quite like the book, it just doesn't seem to me that you understood the quote about winning without having to fight.

When you have to take a strategic decision, you always risk your mens' lives, which are the most valuable resource in warfare (on a humane level as well as considering the energy that goes into training and equipping them).

Therefore a tactic which neither needlessly endangers your or your enemy's troops must be considered superior to plain fighting. Such a tactic may consist of destroying the infrastructure of your enemy or separating the general from his men.

In both cases, soldiers and resources cannot be distributed according to the previously developed strategy, thereby drastically minimizing the enemy's chances of winning and making them more likely to surrender.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child) | Copy Link

This is always the problem when people distil a lifetime's experience into a set of aphorisms. The aphorisms don't necessarily stand by themselves, they're more like mnemonics or Power Point slides for a lecture Sun-Tsu could give, where he tells war stories to illustrate each point, and he expands and qualifies as necessary. With Sun-Tsu not being around to give the lecture, what you can get out of the lecture slides by themselves depends on being able to fill in the military history background and make educated guesses about what the old General meant. As you did there. So it's not surprising that your mileage may vary as a reader.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children) | Copy Link

That certainly makes sense and could be why so many people reading this book consider it boring and unhelpful. For this reason, many editions of The Art of War come with comments by the editor giving examples of actual battles.

[–]SE17Creator 0 points1 point  (0 children) | Copy Link

If the enemy is like rock, a good general must be like paper. However, if the enemy is like paper, he must be like scissors.

I read that as Mr.Miyagi

[–]SE17Creator 0 points1 point  (0 children) | Copy Link

That would awesome. I'm looking forward to it

[–]blazingcopper 0 points1 point  (1 child) | Copy Link

Any idea when you'll be publishing it?

[–]jolly--roger 1 point2 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

for those who can't stand/use pdf for on reason or another, get the other formats over at Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/132

[–]SpinalArt 0 points1 point  (0 children) | Copy Link

Read this book a long time ago and feel it is very over rated and a snooze fest.

[–]jakeinmn 0 points1 point  (0 children) | Copy Link

O have this and read it twice. How do you read the book as if its a metaphor for other things since melee battles are kinda obsolete. Like defending on a hill is the best defensive position. Does that mean take the moral high road to arguments and you always have an advantage?

You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

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