OODA…
Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.
Originally coined by Air Force Colonel John Boyd, it’s a concept originally intended for military combat. Since then it has been applied in any environment where two forces are in direct competition.
Oversimplifying greatly, the idea is that you must complete your OODA loop before your competitor does. If you succeed at this, you have taken initiative. This forces your opponent to react to your actions instead of initiating his own. Options that might benefit your opponent are lost to him. You maintain control as they flail about trying to react to whatever you choose to do.
OODA is a loop. As soon as you have performed an action you try mightily to complete the next OODA loop. You always want to be first. Stay inside your opponent’s loop. Always react just a little faster than your opponent. Keep them reacting instead of initiating.
Done properly, the person with the quicker OODA loop will almost always lead the slower, confused, hapless, opponent around like a puppet on a string. If you want a practical demonstration, watch mismatched marital artists sparring. The higher skilled practitioner will know what his opponent will do almost before his opponent has the idea. The master will always complete his OODA loop first. He will benefit from that sliver of time he’s created. He can easily disrupt his opponent’s half-executed action, he has time to setup and block like a brick wall, should he wish to attack, it will be devastating, minutely targeted, and appear lighting fast. He will dominate the situation not merely through physical prowess but through mental prowess as well. A master anticipates and out maneuvers a novice like he’s got mind control (which in a way, he does).
Why do I mention this? Because there’s power in understanding the pace of events. Forget about karate masters and Boyd’s aerial combat and look around you. Have you noticed that the pace of events has accelerated?
Recall that in 2020 a pathogen appeared and became the fire that lit so many fuses. At the time, I knew nothing more than anyone else. We all started at roughly the same level.
I took immediate action. I retreated to Curmudgeon Compound and did a genuine no-bullshit self quarantine. I’ll note that this was a real quarantine, not “follow the arrows in Walmart” faffing about quarantine-theater. You can’t be half-quarantined any more than you can be half-pregnant.
Self quarantine was my choice. I was well prepared for it and I didn’t hesitate. Why would I? A week too early is better than an hour too late. Besides, it wasn’t that big of a deal. If I was wrong I could always quit quarantining.
That’s an action I can and did on my own in a way that many others did not:
I chose to initiate my own quarantine at will. Should the action be unwarranted I could cancel it. When further data showed it to be unnecessary I did cancel it. I was in charge of my own fate far more than most people in the same situation.
That’s how the OODA loop works. Those first few weeks while morons were fighting over toilet paper I was safely at home. I’d done OODA loop properly.
OODA is an iterative process. While everyone else was sitting around waiting for the CDC to interpret sheep’s entrails or whatever dumb thing it does in lieu of true research, I was already doing the next loop. The first actual non-bullshit data I found were reports of the Diamond Princess cruise ship. It had an outbreak of COVID and was quarantined at sea. Could there be a better experimental design?
Everyone had opinions to voice loudly; none of which mattered. Opinion based on no data is never a concern to me. I simply tune it out. The cruise ship data was pretty good news. Of 3,711 people on board only 712 became infected. As expected, some number of people died; either by happenstance or because of the virus. How many died? 14.
14 / 3,711 = 0.00377
Nothing uttered by anyone anywhere was more useful than that simple “experiment”. Reality is that which exists regardless of your opinion and the reality wasn’t too bad. Nearly every human on earth was in a vastly better situation than a concentrated floating Petri dish filled with people of the health, vigor, and age of cruise ship passengers. When geezers packed on a boat have a 99.6% chance of survival it’s not the end of the world.
That’s what they call… a clue.
My quarantine ended around then. Sure, various governors and CDC dipshits and store managers did whatever they did… but none of it mattered to me.
Also I’d figured out a worst case. I’m not sure the average rate of death for 3,700 people on a boat but it has to be more than zero. Any group of people will have a few that stroke out or blow an aorta. Those unfortunate souls were part of the 14 deaths. Thus, 0.00377 was the maximum danger from the pathogen. Fourteen dead isn’t a happy thing but it’s not the black plague either. Another OODA loop complete.
In another OODA loop I gradually understood that people don’t know humans are mortal. Oh sure, they know it as a statement, but they don’t know it in their heart. Any risk of death anywhere and they lose their shit. “If it just saves one life!”
They had an unreasonable expectation that nobody should die ever. So they overreacted. They also failed to weigh alternatives. Kicking everyone out of hospitals because of a COVID freak out killed off how many people from deferred medicine? Fucking with kid’s lives caused how many suicides? They didn’t care because someone dying invisibly didn’t really happen in their way of thinking.
From my point of view, whenever people calmed the fuck down and counted knowable things, they got reasonable answers. 99.6% survival isn’t Godzilla eating Tokyo. It’s four in a thousand. Part of the uncertainty that all mortal beings face. Memento mori motherfuckers! I don’t know the odds that I’ll die when I take my morning shit, but know it’s not zero. If Karen at the HOA hasn’t come to grips with that, I don’t care. That bitch can wear three masks and hide in her basement until her dozen cats eat her. I sure as hell won’t let a fool like that change my life’s decisions.
Another OODA loop taught me that people couldn’t tell the difference between 0.5 and 0.00377. Dire clickbait articles flooded the internet. “It’s a disaster! Six people died in Iowa!” Guys like me ask “how many people in Iowa die normally”. Sheep don’t ask questions like that.
Another OODA loop was realizing that people can’t assess an “expert’s” track record. Fauchi, cretin that he is, relived his glory days of being wrong about the AIDS panic. If Paul Krugman ran his own checkbook and Fauchi ran his own health like the advice they give others they’d be broke and sick in a week. Governors unearthed “experts” as needed. They made speeches flanked by dweebs in lab coats.
Here’s a hint, if you’re wearing a lab coat while standing at a podium; you’re a prop and the coat is a costume. A lab coat is for when you’re in a lab.
People using words like “depopulate” and “black death” made bad decisions and tried to force it on others. Tent hospitals were erected. A Navy hospital ship was docked at New York City (it was never used). Schools were closed and kids were scrambled. If you wonder what kind of mess happens to a kid who lost 2 years of social interaction, look for the ones cutting off their dick and tits.
Everyone seemed so certain of things that simply weren’t true. I looked hard for information to verify their stupid actions; to reject my contrarian ideas. I found none. I drove around looking out of my car windshield. I didn’t see dead bodies. I saw things shut down not by illness but panic. If you turned off social media and walked around the earth you’d be hard pressed to find actual proof a pathogen existed at all. (I’m not saying it didn’t exist, I’m saying you can’t easily detect 0.00377. Hell, you can smoke Pall Malls for 20 years before you get cancer and then maybe none at all.)
OODA loops include “Act”. I quit my quarantine after a few weeks. It was unnecessary. I was confident I’d arrived at that conclusion through reason. I’m not dead; which isn’t proof I was wise but it’s a good sign. Others never came to their own conclusions and never came up for air. They shit themselves and they’ll probably never be the same.
Three years and two months later, my last post was about repealing the “state of emergency” that has been continuously in place. Last week I spoke with a nurse who experienced her first day without a mask in 38 months. She was giddy with joy.
I never wore a mask. Nor did I get the shot. My OODA loop was three years faster than society.
Remember I was talking about acceleration. The Hunter Biden laptop was unearthed in 2020. I knew it was real in late 2020. My OODA loop was short. Three years later it’s completely verified fact. A few Kool-Aid drinkers still think it’s a misinformation but they’re unteachable and therefore irrelevant. Elapsed time on that mess? Maybe 2 years. Faster than the two weeks becomes three years that was the COVID panic.
What about the spy balloon? In February, I wrote America let the Chinese Balloon drag its geopolitical nutsack across America’s face. At the time the Biden* administration said that the spy balloon had collected no spy data. What gibbering fool believes that?
My OODA loop on rejecting that spin was about eleven seconds. Now, the scuttlebutt is that by gosh by golly a giant spy balloon might have been equipped with a radio to transmit collected data. We got some real geniuses on the case! At least it only took them two months to figure it out.
See the pattern of fabrications with decreasing lifespan?
“COVID will mow us down like mice in a blender.” 3+ years.
“51 lying jackoffs assert Hunter Biden’s laptop is a Russian fabrication.” 2 years.
“The spy balloon inexplicably didn’t do any spying.” 2 months
Those who lie are facing people with a “Let’s Go Brandon” attitude. They’re trying to throw new lies so fast that old ones are forgotten before resolution. It gives the appearance of a society in collapse; because that’s what it is. So long as your OODA loop is inside theirs you are initiating rational responses. If you’re just reacting to the bullshit of the day, you’re still their puppet.
Here’s a test: what was going on while the nation spent a week freaking out about Trump’s arrest? Also who didn’t know this was coming? It’s 2023! A rational agent can’t get to 2023 and yet be shocked that Trump is again mired in lawfare emanating from a biased source. Your OODA loop should have seen that coming years ago!
Stay cool while those that would oppose us throw more and more chaos at us. They’re trying to get inside our OODA loop but they’re just too fucking dumb. The best they can cause is misery and panic. You may not be able to avoid misery but it’s inexcusable to panic. You already know their track record for lying and obfuscation. Stay frosty as society collapses; it’ll happen first slowly and then all at once. The “slowly” part is already over.
This isn’t your fault. It’s not your cross to bear. If the whole of society insists on shitting its own pants, that’s not on you. Your OODA loop should not be in service of some scumbag allocating tax dollars, it should maintain yourself and your soul. Not acting like incontinent fucking sheep is the first step to sanity and you probably already mastered that. Now repeat the loop.
As I thought about the ever accelerating rate of stupid things I remembered blipverts. The current shit hitting the fan is going to close in on that speed. Instantaneous cascades of disasters are in our future.
Back when Hollywood wasn’t entirely sub-literate gay losers with political agendas, they did creative things. One of them was Max Headroom. In 1987 an irreverent little sci-fi TV show with a glitchy talking AI wiseass had the concept of micro-fast commercials.
In keeping with the show’s dark premises, the “blipverts” made people explode. In keeping the the show’s sense of humor, only lazy, indolent, morons who watch too much TV were injured. Part of the joke was that anyone with the sense to watch only reasonable amounts of TV was fine.
Witness the glory of a blipvert!
*Biden got more votes than any other candidate in history and he’s got the political prisoners to prove it.