Here it is. And you thought the situation was complicated!
Awesome.
Though in what way it’s awesome, I’m still unsure.
It reminds me of those xkcd diagrams. And not in a good way.
Oh. Well, now that that’s cleared up, let’s work on breaking the speed of light barrier!
Bet someone earned big bucks for that load of crap.
I love the modern trend to “explain” everything visually. I was recently working with a consultant whose final presentation was full of diagrams that confused even him. He would have to refer to his notes whenever I questioned anything. I made him take out everything that was harder to understand than a text explanation would be.
Damn. Forgot to carry the four. Now we’re going to have to start the war over from scratch.
I didn’t see the BEGIN or END symbols. Where are my flowchart symbols?
Glad they cleared that up for me.
Heh, I sorta figured it was created by a War opponent to make the current plan look stupid, sort of like the GOP’s over-convoluted Health Reform chart to make the Health bill look impossibly complex. But the article said it was actually made by the military. I can’t imagine what they expect anyone to get out of looking at it, other then a feeling of “wow, there are 800 ways this thing can get farked up”.
Well the people who are using it are probably referring back to it, not just looking at it once so that they can voice derision on a message board.
When I saw the thread title, I knew what it was. Rachel Maddow featured it on her program.
Harry Zale would have a field day with that thing. I would love it if they could have a “shithead conference” with George W. Bush.
There’s actually a lot more to it than that, but their software ran out of curly arrows.
The truth is that any diagram of peaceful idealized small town American life would be at least as complex.
A large part of what makes the social sciences so unscientific is the complexity of what they’re trying to understand.
The value of a diagram like that is to discourage simplistic “*This *is the cause” thinking. You know, the kind you see on TV every day from talking heads who don’t have to actually work the problem.
By careful analysis, you may discover that certain linkages are more important, or more easily disrupted than others. From a military POV, those would be the ones to attack.
Just wanted to hold this up for the brilliance it is. 
Heheh. That chart reminds me of my adventures a year ago when trying to figure out all the relationships in Big Love.
That’s my point though, I have trouble picturing anyone using it for anything other then snarking on a message board. Does a Captain stationed in Afganistan, when faced with feuding tribesmen or deciding how to allocate development money or something whip that chart out, see that “Gov’t Professionalism, Policy, Quality and Fairness” is linked to “Training, Mentoring Vetting and Hiring” (which itself is linked to “Gov’t Professionalism, Policy, Quality and Fairness”, a decent number of the entries on the chart appear to just be circular linkages like that), and thus find meaningful guidence in making his decisions. I guess someone in the Pentagon must think its useful to someone, but I can’t picture who.
It seems more like a spoof of the Vietnam era “best and brightest” method of trying to win a war then something that would actually be useful to anyone.