Mathematics of War

[MikeF]

I'm not sure if this is a badly timed April Fool or if we are supposed to take this seriously at all.

Seriously? What has the data he gathered go to do with the output he is showing and also how is this output insightful, useful or relevant?

How does it describe the structure of the insurgency? He states it does but I don't see the proof.

I am extremely interested in an explanation.

I posted it b/c I want to see what others felt about it. Gurley doesn't suggest any conclusions b/c he cannot. He is a physicist, not a soldier, but he did find a trend. Moreover, he's getting people across both the academic and military worlds upset, but he's getting them to think.

I think that's a good thing- too much of our past policy was based off idealogy not reason and history. He hasn't proving anything, but he's started a discussion.

He may not have found anything, but I don't think that he should be dismissed as irrelevant. The next step is to gather more data and test it. Using econometrics(statistics on crack), one can determine if his equation is useful or simply luck.

And he has a cool accent.

I'm on my Emerson kick right now. We'll see where it leads. Here's what he says,

All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious leaders dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is that it will explain all phenomena

In truth, undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?

v/r

Mike