The Search For Simplicity - Hick's Law

The fighter (gunman, knifeman, or whatever) of today is far more sophisticated than in years past. This is partially due to the vast availability of information on trainers, different systems, and training methods, but its also due to the lack of the exclusive “system loyalty” that existed a few decades ago. Fifteen or twenty years ago a point shooting devotee of Fairbairn would never consider training in sighted shooting with a devotee of Cooper, and its quite possible that neither would even give the study of Filipino Knife or Muay Thai more than a passing thought.

The fighters of today are very likely to have a broad exposure to a variety of martial systems both armed and unarmed. They are inclined to train in many different schools and with many instructors.

This openness is unprecedented in martial history, and in most cases, it is a welcome development. Although it is wise to learn different ways to solve tactical problems, it's important that the actual responses or techniques that you'll rely on in a real confrontation be kept simple and with as few variations as necessary. The idea of having a vast repertoire of fighting techniques is tempting disaster in a real life and death conflict.

This is where many career martial artists start throwing their popcorn at me. It’s a common practice by some instructors to overload students with dozens of techniques and variations for a particular attack. Defenses against a caveman knife attack, for example, can easily encompass thousands of techniques and countless variations.  Literally, an entire year's training curriculum! Many martial artists train this way and operate schools this way. Don't misunderstand. I'm not putting down any style or any instructor. But I'll tell you this. If you train that way, and someone actually throws a surprise caveman knife attack at you, you'll have a very difficult time trying to choose which of those hundred defenses to deploy. Multiple possible solutions to the same problem will dramatically increase reaction time. This means that you will be much s-l-o-w-e-r than if you learned a single simple technique and turned it into a reflexive action via repetitive practice.

The reasons for this are simple. Under extreme stress the human mind has trouble selecting the tactically correct solution for a given problem if there are a large number of possible choices. The more possible choices, the longer it takes to select from among them. I have seen this in real street gunfights as well as in force on force training.

Human reaction time in a fight is drastically affected by the way we train the techniques we’ve learned, as well as by the variety of potential responses that we've made available through our training. These phenomena are illustrated by Hick's Law. Hick's Law is a scientific model of human reaction time, or the time it takes the human being to respond to a particular stimulus.

Hick's Law predicts that reaction time (RT) will be a linear function of the dynamics of the number of options the human has to choose between. In other words, the more options, the more time it takes for a reaction to be selected and implemented. Hick's Law predicts the time a person will take to react to a stimulus before starting to move to the correct response.

A classic example is watching a set of displays and then hitting a button underneath a display if a light in that display comes on. It will take much longer for the person to start moving their hand the larger the number of possible alternatives there is. However, this is a logarithmic rather than linear relationship. Hick's Law predicts that reaction time will be linear with the number of bits of information in the stimulus array. In many situations and over many ranges, the theory holds. However there are several exceptions from this theory.

1. Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs. The results can change if there is a marked change in emphasis towards either speed or accuracy and away from the other. In other words, if you only try for speed, the execution may become sloppy. Conversely striving for a perfect execution may take much more time. In actual confrontations, there must be a balance between the two. Move too fast and you will miss the intended target. Move too slow, and your action will not be delivered in time to affect the outcome.

2. Familiarity with the Stimuli. In context, some alternatives might be very familiar or easy to discriminate. For example, it's easier to sort hearts and diamonds vs. clubs and spades into piles, than to sort hearts and clubs vs. diamonds and spades. In the former case the suits in each category have matching colors, thereby minimizing the number of decisions. To a trained eye, a punch looks like a punch and a kick looks like a kick, but there are a great number of variations of each. Many reality-based martial artists don't worry about what the other guy is throwing at him because there are just too many possibilities. Instead they try to discern only the angle of approach. Becoming familiar with the intended responses for each zone, and making them reflexive and easy to remember and execute will help.

3. Ability to Discriminate Between the Stimuli. If alternatives are easy to discriminate, then reaction time will decrease. If alternatives are hard to discriminate, such as small differences in huge numerals, or in the fighting realm, using weapons with different control systems, then reaction time will increase.

4. Effect of Repetition. Humans have mental expectations and they learn. If stimuli are repeated, then responses to them will become selectively faster. This is important to consider for martial students as reaction time may be decreased by establishing a connection between a given stimulus and a pre-selected response. It’s a simple matter of physical memorization.

This concept of physical memorization and subconscious programming is not new. Way back in the 1600s, the Japanese sword master Yagyu Tajima No Kami wrote: “Learning and knowledge are meant to be forgotten, and it is only when this is realized, that you feel perfectly comfortable. The body will move as if automatically, without conscious effort on the part of the swordsman himself. All of the training is there, but the mind is utterly unconscious of it.”

Yagyu was, of course, writing about swordsmanship, but the concept is just as valid for modern combat. Incidentally, I'll bet Yagyu didn't practice more than a few well proven cuts with his katana.

5. Stimulus-Response Compatibility Effects. If the martial artist has to overcome a natural but wrong response in order to respond, then reaction time will increase. The two main points in this is illustrating the importance of situational awareness. If startled by an aggressor, a perfectly natural reaction, reaction time will increase due to the need to overcome that startle reaction prior to implementing the chosen response. If that chosen response goes against our natural inclinations, it will take more time to execute it. Moreover, intended reactions must be made as natural as possible in order to take advantage of our reflexes.

6. Practice. Extensive practice decreases reaction time. In certain cases, the response time curve becomes effectively flat. This is the realm of the master's performance where the response is actually triggered by the attack, and executed without any deliberate thought. The more association there is between the stimulus and the response of choice, the less time it takes to implement that response.

There are a number of lessons here for martial students. One of them is to determine what the various stimuli are likely to be. These can vary from a Target Stimulus (Terrorist with a Gun Pointed at You) to Defense Stimulus (A Hand Grabbing your Neck ). There are many other possibilities of course, but these examples illustrate some.

A serious martial artist will select, develop and program simple responses to these stimuli. These are learned, perfected through practice under the watchful eye of a qualified instructor, and then hard-wired via extensive repetitions. Some examples of these responses may be: Terrorist with a Gun Pointed At You – Move Laterally, Grab His Weapon - Simultaneously Finger Jab to the Eyes, and Disarm Him. Another example - Hand Grabbing Your Neck – Secure the hand, and strike the offender in a vital area. If your objective is winning a real confrontation, avoid technical complexity like the plague! Your techniques should be a simple and violent actions that take advantage of our stress physiology.

If these responses are properly internalized by conscious pre-association with the stimulus and hard-wired by thousands of repetitions, they will occur when the stimulus is presented almost without conscious thought, automatically. 

In an environment where the winners and the dead are separated by tenths and quarters of seconds, the lessons taught by Hick’s Law may have serious and far reaching ramifications to the way we train and the way we practice our fighting responses

I will add...you cannot untrain nature. If anyone can I'd like to see it because at this point in my life I doubt it can be done. You will still flinch when surprised, as one example, no matter how many times you drill to not do it. You can certainly train emotional connections, but movement responses? I doubt that very much.

Examples -

1). In my old Kyokushin days we did what was called "spirit training". It meant basically just the development of an aggressive spirit. You'd be doing a kata blind folded and no gi top. The sensei would at some point whack you across the back, chest or sides hard with a shinai. It hurt like a m*****f*****. Immediate normal reaction would be to cringe and cower in pain, but we trained to respond with ferocity, anger and hate toward the source of the attack. It kept going until they got the desired results. To this day...when I get hurt I smile and the fierce angry hatred simmers under the surface. That training can overcome natural emotional reactions to stimuli.

2). On the other hand...modern martial arts are about complexity. I have seen truly ancient and unmodified sword forms and they are stupid simple. Draw the sword...cut the enemy...replace the sword. Today's distracted mind will not allow that sort of training...one technique executed 2,000,000 times. Today the commercial school (and they all are) requires a system to capture and retain the attention of the payer/practitioner...thus the proliferation of complicated and numerous techniques that often go against natural reactions.

I learned probably over 100 different Katas in my traditional martial arts training. Yet when I fought real people in real fights on the street as a cop, I used maybe three kicks, three punches and a choke or two. Stuff you can learn in a seminar and then perfect on your own.

I believe within reason, Hick's Law is valid and something we must consider in our combat organization. Keep things as simple as possible. Notice the methods we teach are simple to execute. Yes, they require some physicality, but that is what it is. Until recent times, gunfight training has been the purview of extremely un-physical men whose sole objective was firing accurate groups.  It doesn't take much to shoot a piece of paper from a weaver stance.  Today, because of the vast flow of information and the ability to actually replicate gunfights in training, we have a realization that if one is to prevail in a reactive fight, much more is needed than only marksmanship ability.  Today all of it is within the reach of those who will do the work.

But some things - especially if they seek to replace simplicity with complexity, or natural reactions with clever solutions - should be looked at askance and questioned.

From Suarez International:
http://blog.suarezinternational.com/2014/09/the-search-for-simplicity-hicks-law.html