Lex Fridman: uncertainty

Transcript context

…You want to follow them. You want to run after them. You want to follow them. You can’t help it. I don’t know what that is. That’s maybe the animalistic, but take that with the ability at high speeds for the Mongols to encircle and attack the flanks. Which there has been many great military historians who have written about the great military forces throughout history, and one of the things you write about and in general is the Mongols don’t get written about almost at all, and don’t get credit for the military tactics and the military genius exhibited through the different strategies. This kind of idea of the feigned retreat and then attacking the flanks that’s been, if not invented and perfected by Genghis. He really was a military genius. But there were other things too. They didn’t like roads. They just didn’t like roads. So they would often be coming from some direction that nobody ever came from, and the people would be unprepared for that. The most famous example is probably in Bukhara. This is a beautiful, wonderful old city, a great place in the world to this day. And they came across the desert. Well, nobody had ever attacked across the desert, so people see dust coming. They think, well, caravan. They don’t even know what’s going on. But it was the direction that was a surprise element in that particular case. So he was able to think in ways that the other people were not thinking yet, and to be able to surprise them.…

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