{"id":457939,"date":"2010-03-22T10:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T14:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/37signals.com\/svn\/posts\/2221-when-knowledge-makes-us-hesitate"},"modified":"2010-03-22T10:42:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T14:42:00","slug":"when-knowledge-makes-us-hesitate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/457939","title":{"rendered":"When knowledge makes us hesitate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been fighting my way through Clausewitz&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/War-Carl-von-Clausewitz\/dp\/0691018545\">On War<\/a>, and came upon a passage in Book 1, Chapter 3. Boiled down to bullet points, here&#8217;s what he has to say about the effect of chance in war:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>War is the province of chance.<\/li>\n<li>Thus, situations are constantly changing beyond what you plan for.<\/li>\n<li>If situations change sufficiently, you may need to come up with an entirely new plan.<\/li>\n<li>A new plan requires new data, but you are often required to make a decision on the spot, before you have a chance to really analyze the new situation.<\/li>\n<li>Usually, though, chance events only serve to make us hesitate, and do not completely change our plans.<\/li>\n<li>Learning about some chance event has increased our knowledge of the situation.<\/li>\n<li>However, this new knowledge has increased our uncertainty, instead of decreasing it.<\/li>\n<li>Why? Because these chance events are always occurring, and make us feel constantly on the defensive.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I particularly loved the insight from those last three bullet points. How ironic, that we tend hesitate instead of move forward when presented with new information!<\/p>\n<p>He then goes on to say that the solution is to cultivate (among other things) <em>coup d&#8217;oeil<\/em>, which is the ability to grasp a situation at a glance, and <em>resolution<\/em>, which he defines as a &#8220;moral corage&#8221;, or &#8220;courage in the face of responsibility&#8221; (as contrasted with courage in the face of physical danger).<\/p>\n<p>In other words: to prevent <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Analysis_paralysis\">analysis paralysis<\/a>, just make a decision and move on. <a href=\"http:\/\/37signals.com\/rework\/\">Planning is guessing<\/a>, after all.<\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/37signals\/beMH?a=LD1DnreVwY0:DMNirBCjyhc:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/37signals\/beMH?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/37signals\/beMH?a=LD1DnreVwY0:DMNirBCjyhc:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/37signals\/beMH?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been fighting my way through Clausewitz&#8217;s On War, and came upon a passage in Book 1, Chapter 3. Boiled down to bullet points, here&#8217;s what he has to say about the effect of chance in war: War is the province of chance. Thus, situations are constantly changing beyond what you plan for. If situations [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}