Hi Shivan !

Quote Originally Posted by Shivan View Post
Interesting. The problems I see with simulation as described above is that we cannot replicate the social-cultural and religious norms and rituals learned natively, beginning in the crib; nor the language issues that "wm" raises above. One of my Arabic instructors replied to a question I posed, "the only way you can learn [fill in the blank] is if you have an Arab mother." Holds true for different situations, I have discovered. Further, many Arab relationships are via kinship ties, which prevent us from truly entering their domains socially, or being seeing them with their guard down, i.e., with their true souls bared.

Simulation/immersion is great, and will go a long way toward reducing mirror imaging and cultural ignorance, but it can only do so much.

Thanks all for your comments. Very helpful.
I don’t think we’ll ever get that many soldiers to ‘natively’ learn the Arabic language, cultural and religious norms. Even though I’ve lived and worked here for 12 years, speak colloquial Estonian and even recite poetry from the 13th century, I still can’t fool everybody. You’re 110% correct, you have to start from birth.

But that’s not the point of the simulation training packages today. I think Jeff's first post explained it best.

Quote Originally Posted by JeffC View Post
The first step is realizing that what we think we know about any situation is several steps removed from that situation’s authentic components, based on how the brain processes information coming from outside of itself. The solution is to consciously break down and rebuild the brain’s internal model of the environment in question (i.e., the cultural and societal influences of religious terrorists in the Middle East or Central Asia).
This will in effect allow common soldiers and analysts to not only understand the Arabs (or Africans) better, but more importantly those nuances such as social taboos. Although I’m very effective on my own, it took years to get ‘there’ and I had nothing more than 13 weeks of language training to prepare for my tour. That barely prepared me for anything Estonian.

Paul and I (we were both previously station in Africa) have observed how a typical military situation can rapidly escalate from ‘calm to a firefight’ over little more than a misunderstanding. One could simply say that 50% of the blame was the African that didn’t understand the circumstances or situation, and fair enough.

But what we’d like out of our soldiers, is to remove the other 50% and level the playing field. The other good news about simulation training is getting shot, does not result in death