The 33 Strategies of War

What Hacker News says

1. muzaniNov 2024
   You can train chess moves and design patterns. There's definitely best practice books like The 33 Strategies of War, Greene. The startup world has lots of these as well - how to discover product market fit, how to run teams, when to hire COOs. Not all advice fits all situations, but having various palettes is handy.
   thread
2. muzaniNov 2024
   It's a very broad question. If you're looking into 5000 years of human history, there's the Robert Greene books - 33 Strategies of War, 48 Laws of Power, human nature, mastery, etc. The guy did classical history, then had his run of politics in Hollywood; so this sounds like what you're looking for.

   Also nobody likes this answer, but religion writes the manuals to life. All major religions have done their research and wrote books. There's a stark contrast between ancient Greek philosophy to when Christianity came in. There were unsolveable problems that the philosophers couldn't tackle, like Aristotle believed that if a great made a mistake they were done for. And then Jesus came in with the idea of repentance and flipped this on its head. The word "hamartia" changed from "missing the mark" to "sinning", and sins are recoverable.

   Then Islam based the ideal lifestyle around every behavior and action by the Prophet Muhammad, from sleeping, headaches, eating, treating guests, treating enemies, and so on. Philosophy became necessary because later there would be scenarios where there was no precedent for decision making, so they wanted analogies. Aristotelian philosophy became a tool for this. Then you had Avicennian philosophy, which developed into inductive logic... things we take for granted today like symptoms. Then al-Ghazali came in and labeled all of the philosophers as nonsense, and Greek philosophy was buried until the 19th century.

   So if you want a tldr, read al-Ghazali. His big work was Tahāfut al-Falāsifa ("Incoherence of the Philosophers"), but if you want something simpler and much more practical, try Ayyuhal Walad ("Advice to a Son/Student"). It's hard to find an English translation that properly captures the sarcastic bite in his writing though. Plenty of religious figures were funny and sarcastic too.

   Honestly, as a society, I think we've gone full circle. We're rediscovering meditation/mindfulness. Which is a fair point - approach all decisions from a fresh mind. But that works up to a point. There's just so much that it takes a while just to go over what to cover and what not to cover.

   Show morethread
3. muzaniOct 2022
   33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene
   thread
4. muzaniMar 2022
   Art of War is 25 centuries old. It's pretty basic by today's standards, similar to the Pythagorean Theorem. It's mostly popular because it covers things like intel and psychology, which were not so intuitive at the time.

   I would recommend Greene's 33 Strategies of War as a high level book. But Art of War is short, so read both.

   thread
5. silverPoodleJan 2022
   I did the same, when I couldn't improve my SCII rank beyond Master 3.

   A classic textbook about strategy is "The Art of War" by Sun Zhu. It's public domain and pretty short.

   Another great books are "The 48 Laws of Power" and "The 33 Strategies of War".

   For anything more complex, I recommend you to look into game theory.

   thread
6. muzaniJun 2021
   I feel like a lot of people in the comments have not read the book itself, only summaries and reviews.

   The book does not strike me as ruthless and manipulative. It's a history book. It gives you Pattern A, what others have done in response to Pattern A, and a reversal in which this pattern/solution may go wrong. It's probably the least pragmatic of Greene's books. If you're looking for office politics, try 33 Strategies of War.

   48 Laws of Power is more suited for highlighting reasons why people might be envious of you, and ways to look humble. It's suited for stress management and realizing things are not as out of control as you think. You'll not get this from any infographics though.

   Show morethread