Comparing: Relative Probabilities

Art of War 4:4.9-16

(This article is part of a series explaining the strategic secrets hidden in Sun Tzu’s classic work. See this article for the beginning of this analysis.)

This section has one of my favorite quotes from Sun Tzu, summarizing his whole system. These stanzas are at the end of Section 4 of Chapter 4. The chapter is on Positioning, but this stanza gets down to the analysis of the probability of a given position being successful when pursuing a given opportunity. In the previous article, we explained the basis of this analytical method. Here, we take those ideas further and introduce important new tools for comparison.

Strategy is a contest of probabilities. The best strategy will not always succeed. We bet on seven, but the other numbers will often come up. In life’s competitions, situations are even more difficult. We may not know much about the other players. We have limited information about situations. And everyone can create new moves that are unforeseen. This puts practical strategy well outside of traditional game theory and its mathematical proofs. In practical strategy, we make the best comparisons in order to make decisions quickly. This allows us to win more often than others.

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