Okay . So Ponch and I wanted to do a quick episode and answer the number one question that we get from our listeners of No Way Out And I would bet that if you're one of the thousands of regular listeners of this show , you can guess exactly what that question is .
And the question that we get more often than any other , by far and away , is what is behind the name No Way Out ? Well , the answer is simple and I'll give you the bottom line up front . No Way Out was the working title of one of John Boyd's most important briefs , conceptual Spiral .
This is a fundamental brief in understanding Boyd And if you're talking with me and Ponch , this is a fundamental brief that we're going to talk a lot about . That's the really simple answer . How does that sound ? so far , Ponch . So far Ponch . Right on .
That's spot on . Certain features of the world that are within No Way Out brief are powerful , so I know we're going to talk about that in a second , but it is the number one question . Why No Way Out ? Keep going , yeah .
So okay , so Ponch and I are in the archives in December of 22 . And we're going through Boyd notes and it was my first time there .
Now I've been there a couple of times since , but this was my first trip there and I'm a kid in the candy store And we're going through all this stuff and Poncha's very diligently taking pictures of things and I'm just sitting there like in kind of a stupor for a little bit Once I resetter myself , i'm going through these briefs And what's amazing about John
Boyd is that every brief you've ever known that he's delivered , or every destruction and creation , everything is handwritten in multiple iterations . There's absolutely , you know of this version of No Way Out , six or seven copies of him writing out , changing words , changing ideas , changing thoughts .
But I pick it up and it's a legal pad , legal paper about six pages , and on the front it says No Way Out . And I show it to Ponch and I go Hey , have you ever heard of a brief called No Way Out ? And Ponch looks at it and goes , dude , that is the name of the podcast . Right there , yeah .
And I go , Mark , it's great because , as we've looked at all the features of the world that John Boyd put in there and I think you have a list of them and then we'll hit on them in a second But all they are is information or free energy that's outside , in the external world . Right , there's no way out .
You have to learn how to minimize that , you have to learn to adapt to it , to learn how to change it . But I mean , that's what we've learned since .
And then , going back , when we're in the candy store that you call John Boyd's archives , it was like watching a skinny fat boy you go crazy with all the candy , shove it in their mouth and really not absorbing what's going on around you . So you nailed that on the head , nailed that on the head , but go on .
Oh yeah . So to Ponch's point . I mean I'm taking selfies of myself with handwritten copies of destruction and creation of the OODA Loop , because I think this is like the best celebrity selfie I've ever gotten in my life . And anyway , Ponch says that's the name of the podcast And I go well , hold on , let's see if there's any context .
So we start going through this brief and we're reading it and we're like well , wait a minute , that sounds like conceptual spiral or strategic game . It's one or the other . So of course , we had our discourse of winning and losing up on computers . So we do a quick word search on some of the obscure words and find out , there it is .
It's in part , of conceptual spiral . So we start going to conceptual spiral And , as Ponch was stating , it lists all these features . So there's uncertainty , there's numerical imprecision , there's quantum uncertainty , there's entropy , there's erratic , irregular behavior , there's incomprehensibility , mutations , ambiguity and novelty .
And these are the things that all of us as individuals , as teams , as organizations , this is what we're dealing with all day long And what Boyd was telling us .
So on the very last page and if you've listened all the way through our episodes and you listened to the very end , the last minute , is John Boyd giving this exact talk And he says unless we can , he says there's no way out unless we can eliminate all the features just cited .
And since we don't know how to do that , we must continue the swirl of reorientation , mismatches , analysis and synthesis , over and over and over again . There's no way out of understanding this and reorienting and revising and building your models , updating them , learning .
If you're not doing that , you're going to stagnate or you're going to become static and your competitors are going to come right in and get you , and you don't want that . And not only would you be the competitors , it could be the rate of change , it could be the forces of nature .
If you're not constantly orienting and reorienting , as John Boyd tells us , there's no way out of that . That's what . That's what struck us , that's why the podcast is called no way out , and I don't know putting it , putting it bluntly Ponch . I mean , that's what we do , that's what we do We . There's no way out of doing this .
So that's what we do to help individuals and teams with this .
But well moves . I think we have John Boyd in the studio with us today . I'm gonna go ahead and push the button and see if the audio actually plays . Let's give it a shot . Here We go . The underlying message is very simple . Then there is no way out unless we can eliminate the feature just cited .
Well , I don't know , we don't know how to do this .
There you go , let's say That's it . Hey , that's pretty cool that that worked on on on Riverside here . So back to this as we're , as I'm looking at the features of our world uncertainty , entropy , mutations , ambiguity you brought him up a regular erratic behavior , novelty , what's really interesting ? We just talked about free energy , active inference .
Free energy is information , by the way . So there's this free energy in the world that we have to live with , right , we have to learn how to minimize , and that's what we're trying to do here is , how do you minimize uncertainty , how do you minimize ambiguity , how do you minimize Quantum uncertainty , novelty , all these things .
And that's what we , that's what human beings live for , all biological systems They try to reduce the variational free energy or the features of the world Around us . Basically is the point is there's no way out . This is what you have to do to survive , or you end up in equilibrium , right ? Yep , yep , pretty , pretty well .
Well , I tell you that's a very simple explanation . Our goal was to do it in less than 10 minutes . I think we got the point . Now , if you want to go and look exactly where you could find this , so if you have Grant Hammond's , this course of winning and losing , which is the collection of all of Boyd's Briefings , go to conceptual spiral .
You could also go to Chet Richard's page . He has a custody page with all of Boyd's brief . You could get it and then you'll find it . When you just type in quantum uncertainty , it'll come right up and you'll see the , the features . You can find it there .
And I will say too , on YouTube There's a phenomenal video of John Boyd delivering the entire brief conceptual spiral , and and that's the clip that punch just played It comes from that . So a lot of learning can be done with this And I think everybody can see .
You know , gi Wilson told me the most important Boyd works are destruction , creation , number one , conceptual spiral , number two . And You know we love this brief . It means a lot to us . We've read it from different angles . We , you know , we're constantly , you're learning something new from it every day .
But we want you to know that that's where the name comes from , and And and why it's important to us . And then to close , punch , and I want to say I'll let Ponch speak for himself , but we want to thank the thousands of people that are downloading no way out every week . We really appreciate the engagement . We appreciate the questions that we've got .
I think at some point we'll probably answer a lot more of them , but this was the one that , if we were gonna add up all the questions , i would say that more than 50% of them Say why no way out ? What do you got us ? What do you got for us ? punch closing out .
Oh , echo everything you say , looking forward to what's coming up next . We got a lot more on orientation , looking at trauma , looking at some different modalities on how we can Find our way through this or navigate our way through this fooqa world . So a lot more to come .
And again , thanks to our listeners , thanks to everybody , and make sure you Go ahead and give us a nice rating . Five point Always are nice and welcomed if you like it . If not , then let us know . Cheers .
Thanks a lot .