3.12 Action, tactics, strategy, goal

Knowledge of pursuance will help us to define such concepts as action, tactics and strategy. They derive from the science of war and are closely related to the achievement of a goal. Today, more and more often, they are also used in sports and business. In the physics of life we will use them often, so they should be precisely defined.

There are a lot of different definitions of strategy, but they are vague and, what's more, have changed over the passage of time. Here are a few examples: by the well-known theorist of war, Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), it is the science of using battles for the purposes of war, by André Beaufre (1902-1975) it is the art of the manipulation of forces, to meet the objectives set by the policy, and according to Wikipedia it is a long-term plan aimed at achieving a particular purpose. In turn, Joel Watson, the author of "Strategy", defines it as a complete player action plan, taking into account all possible situations [29, p 25].

It's all a bit vague, isn't it? Well, we know that strategy serves to reach a goal, but do we have to reach it by using science, art or plan? Moreover, biology associates strategies with the behaviour of living objects, which the authors cited above did not even mention. In addition, the last definition raises the question whether it is feasible "to take into account all possible situations". Joel Watson has obviously never played snooker or any sport!

Let us begin with, from applied mathematics and computer science, the notion of the algorithm³³, which is a finite, ordered sequence of clearly defined instructions needed to perform a task. The definition is accurate, everything is clear, nothing more, nothing less.

"Go to the shop and buy one bar of soap." - says the mother to her son Joe. Has she used an algorithm? At first glance, yes. But after a while, Joe returned with soap and... ice cream. He followed the command of his mother, but with an addition in the form of sweets. Of course, his mother did not like this, it was not included in the tasks given to her son. Moreover, he spent more money than he should. So, the next time she said, "Go to the shop, buy one bar of soap and do not buy anything else". Joe returned three hours later, when the mother was already really concerned about his long absence. This time it turned out that he acted according to the instructions - he only bought soap, but on returning, he met a friend and they both went to play football. So, the next time his mom once more became more specific: "Go to the shop, buy one bar of soap, nothing else, and immediately return home". This time Joe, with soap in hand, came home after five minutes, to a very pleased mother. She was so happy that she did not pay attention to the sad expression on her son's face. A few days later, by chance, she learned from a neighbour that she brought her son up badly, because Joe refused to help an old woman, who asked him to buy her some butter. As you might imagine, he refused to do this explaining that his mom told him to go home as soon as possible. Every time Joe's mother tried to improve the algorithm, but it never worked as she wanted. There were always circumstances that were not included in it. Life situations made it unequivocal, because it did not provide instructions for all possible cases which may occur.

It turns out that a pure algorithm, as we defined it above, is not sufficient. Joe's mother should have used something else - a strategy. Strategy is a set of algorithms, plans, methods of calculation,   decision-making skills, manufacturing possibilities, optimization techniques³⁴, principles and rules used to work out the suit of acitivities leading to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. The strategy extends the concept of the algorithm because it takes into account the impact of unforeseen disturbances. Strategy enables the undertaking of a specific activity, even when the situation is uncertain, because - and this is very important - strategy allows random decisions. Remember this important difference, please!

The next definition is not so complicated. Action is not a suit of neck-breaking feats by James Bond, but simply an action performed at a given moment - the present action³⁵. As we noted when discussing pursuance, actions may vary depending on whether the pursuing object knows the history of behaviour of the pursued object or not. If it doesn't, it acts in a way we called the straight pursuance. However, if it does, it has the opportunity to develop a more favourable (for example, faster or cheaper) sequence of actions leading to achieving the goal. So we call this preemptive pursuance. Sun Tzu (approx. 544-496 BC), a Chinese military general and the author of the famous ancient military manual entitled "The Art of War," should have sensed pre-emptive pursuance when he linked strategy and tactics: Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. What, then, is a tactic, and why is it so important? To explain this, let's use an encyclopedia: Tactics is the theory and practice of the use of military units in order to achieve the intended purpose. Tactics is a part of military strategy [Wikipedia pol., State, 2008]. Since it can not be only confined to the military, we have to develop a more general definition. A tactic is, therefore, any factor that increases the effectiveness of the strategy. An example of tactic may be: The method based on the history of the behaviour of the pursued object used by the pursuing object to calculate the next actions, or a principle, according to which, the pursuing object acts: "Chase as soon as I can, stop if I can not maintain maximum speed".

I am passionate about judo, I love this sport. Suppose that my main goal is to spend my life in judo and still make money. Well, I have a goal, but how to realize it? And here we need a strategy - a strategy of how to live from judo. Let's try to formulate it: "I have to train from an early age, compete in tournaments and try to get as many medals as possible. As long as I am strong enough to compete with others, I have to train every day and participate in competitions regularly. Later, when I am too old to fight, I could become a coach, referee, commentator, analyst or be on the board of the governing body. My medals should help a lot in this, I think. If these plans fail, there would be an opportunity to train security staff or work as a sports journalist. This is the strategy. The tactics are the component parts: training methods, plans for competing in specific tournaments, studies, licenses and so on.

It is also worth noting that a judo fight is an excellent example of pursuance. There are a few simple rules, one being that the winner is the one who will throw their opponent on their back. "How can I throw without being thrown whilst I am throwing? If I attack in a certain way, maybe they will know how to defend themselves and counterattack? So, now that if I know which counterattacks to expect, I may use a combination: I attack, they will try to counter in a way I expect, and I, in this moment, will change my attack. So it will be my response to their counterattack provoked by my dummy attack". This type of cognition indicates that we are dealing with pre-emptive pursuance. With living objects that use this, you can say that they think. Because thinking is the process of making associations, reasoning, modelling, planning and performing actions, based on stored history of general behaviours of itself and its environment.