up:: [[@Colonel John Boyd]] >[!cite] Destruction and Creation by John R. Boyd > Boyd, John R. (1976) 'Destruction and Creation' According to [[@Colonel John Boyd|Boyd]], studies of human behaviour suggest that the basic aim of individuals, and human systems (e.g., companies), is to improve their capacity for independent action. This is a consequence of living in a world of scarce resources and having to compete for those resources (e.g., customers, skills). If one company improves its capacity for independent action it constrains the same capacity in others. Everyone faces the same strategic problem, how to remove or overcome obstacles to achieving this primary strategic objective? It's achieved through a dialectic process of destruction of existing concepts of meaning and the creation of new ones. These concepts of meaning are critically important because they shape our decisions and actions. We develop mental concepts to represent observed reality by one of two ways 1/ start with a comprehensive whole and break it down into its parts using deduction, analysis, and differentiation--what [[@Colonel John Boyd|@Boyd]] refers as "destructive deduction", or 2/ start with constituent parts and build towards a comprehensive whole using induction, synthesis, and integration--what [[@Colonel John Boyd|Boyd]] refers to as "creative induction". On the one hand we use observations to develop a mental concept, while on the other we use existing concepts to constrain our observations of reality. > [!NOTE] Side Note. > This is the feed-forward loop from orientation to observation in [[@Colonel John Boyd|Boyd's]] [[The OODA Loop|OODA Loop]], and the reason we all experience [[Inattentional Blindness]]. Once a new mental concept is developed, we check its consistency with our observed reality. This process of destruction and creation of mental concepts is repeated until we demonstrate internal consistency and match-up with reality. We've discovered a coherent pattern of ideas and interactions that can be used to describe some aspect of observed reality. We've changed our perception of reality. > [!NOTE] Side Note. > This relates to the concept of scaling in the complex domain. Breaking things down to their smallest coherent parts, and recombining them in ways that are meaningful in the given context. One size doesn't fit all. However, the repeated inward-oriented efforts to validate increasingly subtle aspects of reality means that at some point ambiguities, uncertainties, anomalies, or inconsistencies will emerge. In support of this key insight, [[@Colonel John Boyd|Boyd]] refers to three supporting concepts 1/ Gödel's incompleteness theorems, 2/ Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and 3/ the second law of thermodynamics. Together these imply that the uncertainty and disorder resulting from an inward-orientation can be offset by going outside ("[[Outside-In]]") and creating a new higher and broader, more general, conception of reality. > [!QUOTE] > According to [[@Kurt Gödel|Gödel]] we cannot--in general--determine the consistency, hence character or nature, of an abstract system from within itself. According to [[@Werner Heisenberg|Heisenberg]] and [[The Second Law of Thermodynamics]], any attempt to do so in the real world will expose uncertainty and generate disorder. Taken together, these three notions support the idea that any inward-oriented and continued effort to improve the match-up of concept with oberserved reality will only increase the degree of mismatch. The dialectic process [[@Colonel John Boyd|Boyd]] describes in this paper provides a way out. It permits the creation of decision models, needed by individuals and human systems, for determining and monitoring actions in the ongoing effort to improve the capacity for free and independent action. Paradoxically then, an [[Entropy|entropy]] increase enables both destructive deduction of a closed system and the creative induction of a new system that counteracts the inevitable march towards randomness, equilibrium, and death! It results in an ever-changing and expanding universe of mental concepts, validated against an ever-changing and expanding universe of observed reality. ###### Related left:: [[Scaling in Complex Systems]], [[The OODA Loop]] down:: [[Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems]], [[Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle]], [[The Second Law of Thermodynamics]], [[Inattentional Blindness]] ---