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Thinking About Thinking (1999)
- nj65537 8y agoThe style of writing makes this read like a sledgehammer. It is strangely refreshing.
- ptd 8y agoIf you liked this piece, you might also enjoy Frank J. Babetski reviewing Thinking, Fast and Slow(Kahneman). https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol.-56-no.-2/thinking-fast-and-slow.html https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
- gronne 8y agoGive a man a hammer...
- leandaman 8y ago...and you teach him how to hammer nails. Teach a man how to make hammers and ...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Inu 8y agoSo the author joined the CIA in 1951 and "spent the next 24 years working with the Directorate of Operations." [1] That means that he probably participated in some of the disastrous covert operations of that era. [2] I don't know if that makes him a trustworthy authority on intelligence analysis. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richards_Heuer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richards_Heuer [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change#1950s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
- abledon 8y agoyou could also analyze it and say he probably participated in many successful covert operations that we've never heard of!
- PavlovsCat 8y agoDid you even look at that page in the 2 minutes between that comment and yours? That there might be more of that doesn't exactly refute the point.
- sjburt 8y agoMost of the CIA records have been released over the years, and any major operations have entered the public record by now. Dulles was also very keen to brag about his successes and intent to bury his failures. The fact is that the CIA in that period was absolutely inept. It failed to build any significant intelligence networks in either the Soviet Union or China, mispredicted critical events such as China's entrance into the Korean War, and squandered thousands of lives by attempting to parachute them into Eastern Europe, China, or North Korea to meet up with fictitious resistance forces. The CIA itself and its intelligence sources were routinely comprised by the Soviets and fed false information to the President. The two "successful" operations of the era (Iran and Guatemala) replaced democratically elected leaders with brutal authoritarian regimes, and both of them barely succeeded though an embarrassing comedy of errors.
- ryacko 8y agoJust to add, the US government didn’t trust Truman about Verona.
- TomMckenny 8y ago> mispredicted critical events such as China's entrance into the Korean War That one may have been MacArthur's misunderstanding rather than the CIA.
- briandear 8y ago> any major operations have entered the public record by now. Not even close to true. There are still Tibetan, Cuban, Southeast Asian, and South American ops that are still highly classified. A considerable number of nuclear-related operations are also unknown to the public. As far as “Democratically elected leaders,” that is subject to debate given the breadth and depth of Soviet operations at the time, especially Department A of the First Chief Directorate. Even the Palestinian “situation” was primarily created with Soviet sponsorship to destabilize America’s chief ally in the region. The history of CIA goes far beyond the sophomoric understanding of many of its detractors. Definitely not angels, but it’s a far more nuanced history, much of it untold.
- hx2a 8y agoThis book is a classic. I've read the whole thing several times and found it to be thought provoking and helpful. The author gives you tools for "explicit cognitive processes" to aid analysis of complex situations.
- Myrth 8y ago"Bicameral mind" by Julian Jaynes is great too
- irascible 8y agoYeah that stuff is super fascinating. We are all passengers.
- hliyan 8y agoExcellent book. Read it when I was 17. Although the latter parts are devoted almost entirely to the historical evidence for the theory of the Bicameral Mind. I'm no longer fully convinced that language and metaphor generates consciousness though.
- alexandercrohde 8y agoI read one chapter of this, and it seems like a reasonable ambition. However I have to ask -- Do they do any research at all on whether teaching these methods actually results in greater thinking by any objective measure (be it IQ, analysis, whatever)? This must be the standard to be taken seriously. Anybody can wax on about how to avoid systemic biases, but it's my understanding that the research shows studying biases doesn't remove them.
- ptd 8y agoI was also interested in correlations between limited rationality and objective measures, and I found this study. Looks like evolutionary psychology with a dash of environmental psychology. Interesting quote from the abstract: “Intelligence is naturally defined as behavior that increases the likelihood of reproductive success, and bounds on rationality are determined by physiological and environmental constraints.” https://www.jstor.org/stable/24640396 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24640396
- joe_the_user 8y agoSerious question, Is there any alternative theory or method about how to avoid systematic bias other than being aware of systematic bias? Also comment, I think the studies of awareness bias involved very simple phenomena. That may or may not carry-over to more complex processes.
- cat199 8y ago> other than being aware of systematic bias? practicing actually avoiding it.. one can be aware but still not listen to the 'voice of objectivity' - personal preferences very often override morals/ethics/etc, and we are very good at rationalizing.
- lhuser123 8y ago> That may or may not carry-over to more complex processes. I don’t think they do. We really have very limited control over it. But I think that, just like you can become a professional athlete in just one sport (as opposed to many sports), you could also become very good at avoiding a specific type of bias.
- taspeotis 8y agoI'm surprised that the word "metacognition" [1] doesn't appear in this article at all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition
- chiefalchemist 8y agoI was thinking the same thinking. The book "Your Brain at Work" is all about metacognition. I'm sure there are plenty of others. But that's the one I've read and I recommend it often.
- codysan 8y agoLikely because that term wasn't widely known at the time that this chapter was written.
- bhhaskin 8y agoKinda random, but it is interesting how they are including a public key in a javascript file.
- magnetic 8y agoWhat do you find interesting about it? What am I missing?
- stevew20 8y agoGroupthink and Yellow Cake.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago> "The reaction of the Intelligence Community to many problems is to collect more information, even though analysts in many cases already have more information than they can digest. What analysts need is more truly useful information--mostly reliable HUMINT from knowledgeable insiders--to help them make good decisions. Or they need a more accurate mental model and better analytical tools to help them sort through, make sense of, and get the most out of the available ambiguous and conflicting information." I would think the key is the latter. That is, even if you get more data it does not become __useful__ information unless you're willing and able to process it. That aside, it's difficult, if not impossible for us "on the outside" to judge the value of these concept to the IC as we only get to know what the IC wants us to know. They're playing the long game. They're playing chess. Maybe it's just me but when I hear a news story (or a friend / colleague) that says "The NSA said..." or the "CIA said..." I accept those as close to meaningless. The IC is, afterall, in the misinformation business. p.s. I believe the proper term for tbinking about thinking is meta-cognition. I find it odd that the CIA would avoid using the proper term.
- derefr 8y ago> I believe the proper term for tbinking about thinking is meta-cognition. I find it odd that the CIA would avoid using the proper term. A large part of "intelligence analysis" is just using domain-specific knowledge to take primary sources and translate/summarize them, such that you remove the need for others to have domain-specific knowledge in understanding that data. As such, if you're pedantically using ten-dollar words just because they're "correct", you're not doing your job as an analyst. High-level IA is about other things, but that doesn't mean you unlearn the skills you have ground into you as a desk worker.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoCorrect me if I am wrong, but the primary role of IC analysis is to connect dots that other "lay people" / "civilians" might not normally see. To cross bounds and span silos, etc. in other to add value. That being said, if this book is afraid to venture outside its safe zone (and mention meta-congition, even in a passing reference) then this book, by defintion, has failed to do what IC analysis is supposed to do. Ironic, huh. I think it's ssafe to say history is on the side of my analysis of this analysis ;)
- mythrwy 8y agoThinking analytically is skill that can be taught, certainly, but it's turtles all the way down. Which is to say is, one part of consciousnesses can take control of another part through training, yes. But who is it that is taking control? Until we self-determine this (or accept some form of math as an arbitrator of reality where applicable) one bias or conditioning is simply replaced with another. Can't get the most accurate models like that.
- wingspar 8y agoA pdf version https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/PsychofIntelNew.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
- pasbesoin 8y agoAll I got was an HTML page, but an archive link worked: https://web.archive.org/web/20180925191008/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/PsychofIntelNew.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20180925191008/https://www.cia.g...
- abalone 8y agoHere's a fun image. I totally fell for it the first time. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/fig1.gif/image.gif https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
- mrfusion 8y agoFell for what?
- alanbernstein 8y agoThe duplicate words in all three triangles.
- wingspar 8y agoDuplicated words: end of second lines and start of third
- Ma8ee 8y agoWow, I stared long and well at the pictures without seeing it.
- javajosh 8y agoNice. Another example of selective attention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
- dang 8y agoPrevious discussion of the book this is from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14852250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14852250
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- paraschopra 8y agoI recently made a Google Spreadsheet to help think better. Designed it from the perspective of helping original thinking while reducing confirmation and availability bias. Check it out https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b9Kjw9pW5cDwGJaJl5614NMPIxB_sjflderZzC7rB1w/htmlview#gid=1447928622 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b9Kjw9pW5cDwGJaJl561... Feedback appreciated!
- jamestdsmith 8y agoThat's awesome, great work, do you use this regularly? You'd love fs.blog with that level of thinking.
- ioayman 8y agoThat is very interesting!
- rickfree 8y agofuck
- OliverJones 8y agoI read this a couple of days after watching Doug Limman's movie "Fair Game." (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0977855/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0977855/) Liman is known for playing the amoral chief of staff in House of Cards. This CIA training book is all about avoiding self-deception and getting as close as possible to the truth. Those are good aspirations for any trade. Try debugging a complex system without doing those things. You can't. But there's a whole lot more to making the truth useful. People with power must also avoid self-deception: they must listen. That didn't happen back in 2002-2003. The movie is about Bush 43 and Cheney's push to convince the world about nuclear weapons in Iraq. That administration infamously disclosed the identity of a CIA undercover person called Valerie Plame. They did so to discredit her spouse Ambassador Joe Wilson. Mr. Wilson made a fact-finding trip to the nation of Niger (north of Nigeria) to verify the administration's claim that Niger's uranium mines sold vast quantities of yellowcake uranium oxide to Iraq. Mr. Wilson's investigation proved that claim was false. Therefore, he needed to be discredited. Therefore the White House outed his spouse, wrecking her career and losing the lives of her contacts in various places. CIA people come off as the good guys--earnest purveyors of truth--both in the movie and this training book. But even they can't prevent the kind of collective self-delusion that comes when politicians' minds are made up. How many of us hackers embark on projects we know are doomed to failure? How many of us know how to validate our hunches with the right amount of information? Many of us, because that's the easy part. How many of us know how to convince people above us in the food chain? Far fewer. That's a place where training might come in handy.
- wingspar 8y agoReal question: Where were lives lost as a result of Valerie Plame being outed? Wikipedia doesn’t seem to know about it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair
- grendelt 8y agoMetacognition - think about it.
- carapace 8y ago> A basic finding of cognitive psychology is that people have no conscious experience of most of what happens in the human mind. Many functions associated with perception, memory, and information processing are conducted prior to and independently of any conscious direction. What appears spontaneously in consciousness is the result of thinking, not the process of thinking. So... who is it that has (or doesn't have) free will?
- krapp 8y agoEveryone has free will. It just happens that free will is the effect and not the cause, output rather than input. Buddhists were right about the self being an illusion.
- norswap 8y agoI'm surprised to find no mention of Rationality: From AI to Zombie (alternatively known as The LessWrong Sequences), which seems to treat the same subject matter: https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/ https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/