Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

[Shek]

Tom,

If memory serves, R-square values are a numeric expression of the probability that a given model will predict future behavior. Perhaps the problem is social scientists are trying to predict behavior. This seems somewhat difficult to accomplish in a social system where the agents have a choice, emotions, subjective rationalities, cultural forces, etc...

M.L.

R^2 measures the amount of variance in the observational data described by the model. Thus, it describes a correlative relationship in past data.

If your model captures a causal relationship, then your R^2 will give you a sense of how well you might predict future outcomes. However, many folks commit statistical malpractice because they 1) don't understand what makes a model a good model and 2) confuse correlation with causation, and so they only interpret the model through the R^2.

As you talk to, in the end, human behavior is subject irrationality and involves a complex interdependence, and so R^2 values tend to be low in the social sciences (this may not be problematic for your model depending on what you are trying to do, but that's a tangent not needed for the thread).

[M.L.]

Thanks. Been a while since I did any research that required me to work with R-sqd.

One small thing - the term "irrationality" is something of a pet peeve of mine. It implies an objective viewpoint of "what is good for me." However, people act according to a subjective perception of rationality. Emotion and culture also influence decision making.

When other people act differently than we think they should, we (Americans and American military types especially) tend to dismiss the behavior as irrationality, or worse, stupidity.

The truth is that everyone has good reasons for acting the way they do according to their individual perceptions. Its our job to figure out why they do what they do.

[Shek]

Thanks. Been a while since I did any research that required me to work with R-sqd.

One small thing - the term "irrationality" is something of a pet peeve of mine. It implies an objective viewpoint of "what is good for me." However, people act according to a subjective perception of rationality. Emotion and culture also influence decision making.

When other people act differently than we think they should, we (Americans and American military types especially) tend to dismiss the behavior as irrationality, or worse, stupidity.

The truth is that everyone has good reasons for acting the way they do according to their individual perceptions. Its our job to figure out why they do what they do.

M.L.,

I was not referring to an ethnocentric view of rationalism, but instead was talking to how we use heuristics that are fraught with systemic biases that result in irrational choices (e.g., framing choices as lives saved vs. deaths will usually result in different choices that are mathematically (objectively) inconsistent).

You point about ethnocentric viewpoints is on the mark, and I love the example of the Iraqi Perspectives Project to point out that Saddam, who was seemingly irrational, was actually acting in a highly rational manner.

[Sparapet]

A lot of this discussion seems to boil down to education and intelligence of the officer corps and our OGA brethren. What I find odd in the whole discussion is the same thing that grates in the whole COIN discussion; we seem to believe that we are the first human power and generation to attempt occupation and reorganization of political systems, thus we are discovering something new and amazing. The initiative in Ninewa with TF Spartan.....something to be admired in 2010? Why not in 2003? Did we discover something new about how human populations and governance work?
I think the core issue here is education of the intelligent. In this lecture from the early 1930's on education in America ( http://mises.org/daily/2765 ) the lecturer explores the question of education vs training in a way that is awfully modern and hits on the difference.
Considering our culture's technologist bent and admiration of the mechanically efficient we have created procurement and preparation system for our (especially junior) officers that meets some basic technical knowledge requirements. Beyond that no knowledge and skills are encouraged, demanded, or reinforced through pre-commissioning and through careers until mid-field grade schooling. We don't have an educational standard of any sort. So those of us who are successful, who can in fact asses accurately and think critically, become a matter of chance. IMHO there is nothing to admire here. The HTTs are not a "weapon system that fits the target" but instead a plug to fix a deficit of intellectual capital within the corps. Same with PRTs and other do-dads. Think of occupation for what it is: governance. In governance you have to govern, which means bringing with you the leadership that has some working knowledge of what it takes to govern. They don't need to be agricultural experts but they need the education and intelligence to recognize when they need those experts and how to use them. Since we (military officers) are always the first, longest tenured, most empowered presidents/governors/mayors in an occupation we need to be the educated class within the government that values big words and difficult ideas. SFC Hooah will always be the expert door-breaker and food distributor. CPT Schmedlab needs to know when/why to break the door or set up a distribution point.

[Steve the Planner]

ML:

Herbert Simon: Bounded rationality---limited by what we know, what we can understand, etc...

I think it gets overly complicated, though, when we start mixing concepts of human settlements and governance--two different things.

Folks have been voting with their feet since the dawn of time, or scrambling to survive. That, and causations, are the basic drivers for population re-settlement. If everything was grand, we would all just procreate to scarcity.

But conflict zones are, by definition, never grand places to be, highly unstable, and treacherous to safe and prosperous existence..

I share the same insight from Iraq that dozens of soldiers noted before me---people are just trying to get by, and the challenges, to an extent, are complicated by US, and whatever "inspiration" was passing for wisdom inside the Beltway at a given time.

The difference between 120 and myself is that, hopefully, by being outside the command structure, you can influence it by, first, seeing things outside the internal lense, and, second, bringing forward the properly framed questions to drive more productive alternatives.

It never ceased to amaze me that, by catching up to folks ate ends of tours, they had folders of good ideas they would have liked to have implemented, but that weren't in their lanes.

Like any big bureaucracy, the challenge is to move the bureaucracy whether from above, below or within. It just ain't easy---don;t care whether it is Ford Motor Company or the Pentagon. Scale, organization, staffing, logistics create and define much of what will happen based on decisions made six or nine months in advance.

Not really a problem of sending folks out into the field to better their fishing if the bait and tackle are wrong, or there are no fish in the assigned river.

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

Sociocultural Human Intelligence Teams.

They could work with the French military's Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre and Commandos de Recherche et d'Action en Profondeur.

[M.L.]

Sociocultural Human Intelligence Teams.

They could work with the French military's Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre and Commandos de Recherche et d'Action en Profondeur.

Creative with the acronyms. You'd be a great addition to the Pentagon...

[M.L.]

There is an article in the November-December 2010 edition of Military Review entitled Controlling the Human High Ground: Identifying Cultural Opportunities for Insurgency. Needless to say, I’m disappointed we continue to dwell on this idea of “Human Terrain.” As I said when I started this thread, humans are not terrain. Humans aren’t even like terrain. Why we use the metaphor of “terrain” to describe human beings is beyond me.

Some might wonder why I am so intent to writing about this subject. How we model things is important. Here is an excerpt from a paper entitled On the Mismatch Between Systems and Their Models by Russell L. Ackoff and Jamshid Gharajedaghi:

There is a very serious mismatch between most social systems and the models of them that are in use. Barry M. Richmond, creator of the Systems Dynamics model and I-think language makes it clear that systems and the models of them in use are not the same. According to him “the way we think
is outdated.” He goes on to define thinking as:

consisting of two activities: constructing mental models, and then simulating them in order to draw conclusions and make decisions. The mental model is a “selective abstraction” of reality that we create and carry around in our head. As big as some of our heads get, we still can’t fit reality in there. Therefore all mental model are simplifications. They necessarily omit many aspects of the realities they represent.

To think about anything requires an image or a concept of it, a model. To think about something as complex as a social system we use models of similar, simpler, and/or more familiar systems. Unfortunately, as social systems become increasingly more complex, simpler mental models of them do not reflect their emerging properties.

In short, this is what is happening with human terrain. We are using a simple model (terrain) to imagine or conceptualize a much more complex system (human social/cultural groups). As a result, we draw bad conclusions about the nature of the system. This new article from Military Review is a perfect example. The model of “terrain” has erroneously led the author to believe that humans, like terrain, can be “controlled.” Humans are independent beings capable of making choices. While humans can certainly be influenced, they can never be controlled.