CWOT,

Excellent post and I highly recommend the video link to a much wider audience than the intelligence community. I think it reinforces my view (my pre-conceived pattern) of why psychology should be a mandatory part of professional military education. I can see the pre-conceived patterns (an old concept) in numerous discussions throughout SWJ. We have some dogmatic individuals who embrace the anti-COIN arguments, the pro-COIN argument, and the government is always at fault. It is clear when they look at a picture with no pattern they'll find one that fits their assumption.

I think there are two take aways from this. First is need to be much more self critical of ourselves (recognize we all suffer from the shortfall of being human), and encourage ideas that rub against the accepted grain. Second, in my view this justifies the pursuit for ever greater analytical/knowledge based technology that can analyze MBs of data to identify potential patterns without the bias that an analyst would bring. The human will always make the ultimate decision (at least for the forseeable future), but this type of technology will help the analyst avoid getting stuck in ruts. An analyst when sort through tons of data has no choice but to form a hypothesis and then search for data that confirms or supports it. He or she can't randomly sort through volumes and volumes of data and randomly create links.