Deniers of “The Truth”: Why an Agnostic Approach to Warfare is Key by LTC Grant M. Martin, U.S. Army in Military Review
I will never forget the day I ate lunch with a retired chaplain and his son in Leavenworth, Kansas in 2008. At one point an acquaintance of the chaplain’s walked up to him in the restaurant and shared with him his opinion of the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS).
“They are deniers of The Truth,” he proclaimed, and went on to describe the school’s sin: the instructors encouraged students to question their most fundamental beliefs. At the time I thought it curious that someone would apply a religious attitude to the study of the military arts. After my first few months at the school, however, I realized that as one questioned one’s assumptions about the nature of war it was only natural that one would also start to question other assumptions about life, God, and everything. Critical thinking was difficult to limit to just one subject.
Amazingly, there were even more officers uncomfortable with questioning their fundamental assumptions about warfare. Today I realize that SAMS could only do so much in introducing different ways to approach the subject...
Comments
Dayahun says it's obnoxious to haunt threads. He's right. That's why I'd rather comment on old threads, that way I can't screw up the flow of conversation on more current topics and chase other commenters away.
From <em>The Rice Paddy Navy - U.S. Sailors undercover in China,</em> by Linda Kush (that old CBI theater stuff again):
<blockquote> To keep Miles apprised of the changing state of affairs; naval attache Philip Talbot organized a news clip service in Mumbai. He hired several disabled, well-educated Indians to read fifty daily news papers and provide clips and summaries of the most important stories to Kay Stimpson, an American writer living in Mumbai with her British journalist husband. She created a daily digest of India news called "What The Hell," which was shared with the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence. In the spirit of Allied cooperation, ONI passed it on to British intelligence officials, who wondered how the navy could have dug up such detailed information. They were incredulous that the intelligence was simply gleaned from newspapers.</blockquote>
From my scattershot notes, hand-written on lined paper, old school and impossibly old-fashioned, exactly as scribbled:
"YouTube Gresham College lectures on British 20th century elections, Churchill said could defend Empire against anybody but not the British people.
? different classes saw ineptness of managers of empire; myths fallen?!!!!"
COIN mythology relates to ignorance of our own history, how? Beyond Vietnam and its myths, so important to the COIN story?
PS: And the MS and everything. Like we are all playing out roles from a past we don't even understand.
PPS: Gave me chills when I first read it. Years ago, on a trip to Italy, I saw an impossibly chic woman walking with a carved wooden cane, as fashionable as any object of art. "That's how I'm going to do it, if it comes to that," I remember thinking.
But you get older, see the world, realize you are blessed. Look at the refugee situation. How are we Americans so insecure when we have so much and so much to offer. Our size and control of land and resources ensures we are a player whether we wander abroad or not.
So Google is trying to diversify itself politically within Washington? I wonder how much of Senator McCain's desire to reach out to Silicon Valley has to do with his connections to Valley executives. I'm sure it's sincere and it may prove useful, but be careful. When the DOD does start handing out Silicon Valley contracts, just make sure you don't get some silly waste-of-time online educational "product". That would be great disservice to the military:
<blockquote>To head up its Washington office, Google in 2012 hired former Republican congresswoman Susan Molinari. Niki Christoff, a veteran of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, was moved to Washington last year to head up Google's communications in the capital.</blockquote>
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304856504579339031332776594
Here is the War on the Rocks article that got me thinking about the technocratic elite and how such people interact politically with DC (the push to make more military education online started this train of thought so it belongs in this thread):
5 QUESTIONS WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN ON DEFENSE ACQUISITION REFORM AND DRINKING WITH DENG
If I include the link, my comment disappears so I just have to use the title of the article.
It's perfect, isn't it, the use of websites to push out information to the public? Oh, it's no different than a press release except that it is mixed in with articles that attempt to discuss scholarship and policy so that the impression is given that that it is more than essentially a press release.
I might have been thinking of a different author or article than the Belfer Center article that I mentioned in my comment above:
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/3016/david_h_petraeus.html
I thought I read something about American Universities but I wonder if I was thinking about another article. I only read the first linked article, saw it some where else, CNN maybe?
I see references to Big Data, life sciences, manufacturing, etc. I hope the Big Data stuff is better than what I've linked previously in this thread. You know, how to quantify "grit" during special forces training, etc.
War on the Rocks (I'm always afraid to comment there because even if I were to be completely polite, the things I'd say would make people uncomfortable, like, should disclosure standards by authors parallel those of other fields? Not that disclosure has stopped big money from distorting medicine but for even the tiniest paper you have to answer certain questions. The way young people are indoctrinated into the ways of the Borg are something even Aldous Huxley couldn't have imagined.)
Senator McCain had staffers from his presidential campaign that left for Silicon Valley after the election? I wonder how that plays into his interest in using Silicon Valley to bring innovation to the DOD. Didn't Ashton Carter give a bunch of talks at Stanford or something? No, I believe people are sincere, you know how it is, a bunch of people are frustrated about some aspect of the DOD and old work acquaintances say, "hey, have you thought about....?"
<blockquote>To name a few: Jill Hazelbaker, the national communications director for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign joined Snapchat in October to head the company’s communications and policy efforts (Hazelbaker had previously been Google’s senior director of communications and government relations).</blockquote>
This post from "El Snarkistani" sort of complements the World Bank piece that I linked:
<blockquote>A trained teacher with a decent chalkboard does more good than an empty building that needs a generator to keep the lights on. </blockquote>
<em>How USAID Can Track “Ghost” Schools, Just not sure the SIGAR's going to like it</em>
Sunny in Kabul
Yes, I'm still paying attention to Afghanistan. Some of the recent reporting....very strange, very strange indeed.
I've been going through the links posted in this thread to see if I could organize them into anything useful. It's pretty scatter shot but a key discussion point is on the nature of education, both institutional and personal.
Recently, I've seen a variety of articles on the many advantages the US possesses. One advantage discussed is the 'world class American university', as a category of advantage.
From the World Bank:
<blockquote>The case studies presented suggest that a faster and more effective approach to achieve world-class university status is to establish a new institution.
<strong>New universities can grow into high-quality research institutions within two or three decades when talent, resources, and governance are adequately aligned from the beginning.</strong>
Outstanding research universities do not operate in a vacuum; they evolve from a tertiary education ecosystem which affects the performance of individual institutions.</blockquote>
http://go.worldbank.org/9SJDQ5U020
I am actually worried about what I see as the "corporatization" of the university and the negative effects of the process on the very nature of scholarship. When I look at the desire to shove military education into an online template, I get the same feeling. Education is people and money and time and gimmicks are only that, gimmicks.
I've mentioned before that I grew up in a college town. The college town world I grew up in was very different from the institution-as-profit-center or "meritocratic" sorter of today. Well, those things existed but there was still the desire to support scholarship by supporting scholars.
In the world I grew up in, you could wait tables after class and on weekends, and still pay for school with very little debt at the end of it.
In the world I grew up in, you could get a tenure track position right out of you PhD program. Yes, you read that correctly, lurkers.
In the world I grew up in, scholars were recruited from all over the world, not simply a few celebrity scholars, but young newly graduated faculty and that faculty was given time to do research and the resources to do it.
The "metric" of success was publication, good publication, not necessarily in number, although numbers counted.
The overhead bureaucratic structure underscored all of this. There was very little overhead bureaucratic structure: a university President, a Dean, a Chairman/woman, and then some secretarial staff. After that, professors. Now everything is advertising, marketing, alumni, nontenured faculty scared of losing even what little they have, large classes and little time for research, with big dorms and gyms and wifi supposedly making up for all of it.
But the main point was to support the sort of people that wanted to do real and serious scholarship. The "usefulness" of it was to create the environment. The utilitarian part of it was the creation of the thing itself.
I'm sure I've created a little bit of a rosy-eyed-from-memory picture but it's still a fairly accurate picture.
Why post this here? Well, one of the articles that mentioned America's world class universities was by Gen. Petraeus (Belfer Center) and I thought, "good, bring that up but understand how that particular world is being hollowed out." Or is it being hollowed out? These things are hard to see, sometimes, and hard to understand.
Well, in a comment sure to irritate everyone reading (is anyone still reading?), might as well use his powers for good instead of evil.
The late William Pfaff was interviewed in the "Conversations with History" series (so was John Nagl. It is a great series of talks).
conversations.berkeley.edu
He was interviewed in about 1990 or so on the end of the Cold War. In it he says many interesting things, but two in particular stood out to me, and gave me great comfort as I survey the wreckage of my feelings toward my own nation, a nation that I love but whose cultural pathologies wound, and wound deeply. He said that he came to realize that there was little in American political discourse that interested him and that he had to get away to think his own thoughts.
The second is that to him, the US was kind of intellectually exhausted, suffered an exhaustion of intellect. The same ideologies and ideas and policy talk going in circles.
An agnostic. A truth seeker. A thinker.
I think many of you that enjoyed some of the other podcasts and YouTube lectures I linked around here might like that talk very, very much. It gave me a great sort of comfort. This is a small problem, not even worth mentioning given the great suffering out there in the world, and, to the credit of many around here, you mean to be in the arena because you do want to help. But if we are going to talk, let's really talk. I don't think the military is any more or less honest than the rest of American society. We are all in this together.
The Philosophize This! podcasts have a series on David Hume that fits in nicely with the various links that I've posted here, and it serves as a nice discussion point within the context of this article.
I really think this article is one of my favorites if only because it made me go looking for all sorts of different online educational tools.
It also really helps works well with some of the chapters in The Human Face of War book that was mentioned earlier.
Another little bit of confusion for me, these controversies stirred the Academy DECADES ago:
<blockquote>In May 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in the fashionable academic journal Social Text. The essay quoted hip theorists like Jacques Lacan, Donna Haraway, and Gilles Deleuze. The prose was thick with the jargon of poststructuralism. And the point the essay tried to make was counterintuitive: gravity, Sokal argued, was a fiction that society had agreed upon, and science needed to be liberated from its ideological blinders.
When Sokal revealed in the pages of Lingua Franca that he had written the article as a parody, the story hit the front page of the New York Times. It set off a national debate still raging today: Are scholars in the humanities trapped in a jargon-ridden Wonderland?</blockquote>
Maybe some people had to go off and find another area to dissect because they were so thoroughly argued down.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Sokal-Hoax-Shook-Academy/dp/0803279957
It's a far cry from studying how science actually arrives at something (versus scientists narratives) to suggesting that gravity itself doesn't exist.
Again, an old, old, old, old, old conversation for academia.
How easy it is to hoax a certain type of post modernist, or, well, human being actually. We are creatures born to be lied to....:
<blockquote>But the chorus of approval turned to laughter after a journalist from Le Nouvel Observateur pointed out that Mr Botul does not exist: he is a fictional character created in by a contemporary satirical journalist, Frédéric Pagès.
.
Alarm bells should have rung given that Mr Pagès, a journalist with Le Canard Enchaîneé, a satirical weekly, has penned one book under the Botul pseudonym entitled The Sex Life of Immanuel Kant.
.
He has even given rise to a school of philosophical thought called Botulism – a play on words with the lethal disease – and has created a <strong>theory of "La Metaphysique du Mou" the Metaphysics of the Flabby.</strong></blockquote>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7196517/Bernard…
Metaphysics of the flabby....what a novel way to describe the Washington Consensus - intellectually speaking, of course.
OTOH, Bernard-Levy does have interesting things to say about the "narratives of South Asia," and some of those articles aren't half bad.
Most articles on this incident mention the Sokol hoax. I've mentioned that here before, oh jeez, some YEARS back. Can I really have stuck with this place and this subject for so long? I usually bail or flake out. This is unusual.
Observation, intuition and the arts:
<blockquote>U Aung Myint provided a simpler interpretation of his work by explaining that he was inspired by “looking around and seeing the many different expressions” on people’s faces, and by his desire as an artist to “show these differences”.
In other words, they are the product of <strong>keen observation of the physical world.</strong>
That’s not to say that the images can be considered purely objective. <strong>The artist said that much of his inspiration is rooted in the intuitive impulses of his own mind.</strong>
“When I paint, my hands and my mind are different. They express different things. It depends on my mood,” he said. “The painting comes out while I work. I paint without intention. Sometimes I’m surprised by what I create.”</blockquote>
http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/lifestyle/11655-facing-the-collision-b…
For instance, I observe many different things and dutifully post them here, as I obnoxiously dominate the thread. I'm glad others chimed in, to be honest.
And then, after a certain amount of plain old digging (reading, listening, <em>observing</em>) the idea about looking at observation as a broader category as one way to get at the new paradigm "pops" into my head, just like that.
So what is that in the observation versus intuition of this example? I'm sure many disciplines study just this sort of stuff. It's interesting.
Anyway, to bring the discussion back to my very first comment, and this article. Don't be so afraid of observation and don't think that it is not scientific simply because it is only at the stage of observation. Then again, observation is key in many other disciplines, including, if they'd allow it, post modernism.
In Jim Storr's book, he talks about the practice of war being neither science nor art but a thing in itself, I think. Well, I'll have to dig up that part again and post it here. Somehow, the different ways in which observation can be considered, thought about, belongs in that neither art nor science, or both art and science, paradigm.
Bill M, I think, had mentioned the medical history of Helicbacter pylori in the Council some time ago.:
<blockquote>This is a timeline of the events relating to the discovery that peptic ulcer disease is caused by H. pylori. In 2005, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery that peptic ulcer disease (PUD) was primarily caused by Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium with affinity for acidic environments, such as the stomach. As a result, PUD that is associated with H. pylori is currently treated with antibiotics used to eradicate the infection. For 30 years prior to their discovery, it was widely believed that PUD was caused by excess acid in the stomach.</blockquote>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_peptic_ulcer_disease_and_Helic…
But the part that really pertains to the larger discussion is this:
<blockquote>1940
Freedberg and Baron observe spirochetes in autopsies.[16] Freedberg abandons his research, however, after his <strong>boss advises him to move to another subject.</strong> In 2005, Marshall speculates that Freedberg would have won the Nobel Prize in 1951 had he continued his work.[17] </blockquote>
"....after his boss advises him to move to another subject."
So outside pressures cause a scientist to abandon a key observation. (Those working in the realm of policy relevant work are smiling a bitter little smile at this....). The time line that I linked is very useful to this discussion and I think it may help some of the Design proponents to see where they misunderstand the nature of the hard sciences. Well, maybe that is not correct either. But for sure, there is better scientific method and better post modernism and the "better" stuff is not so opposed, I think.
And artists have a very nice way of talking about observation and intuition, again, one that is not so rigidly opposed, so that a life time of observation creates a rich inner life upon which artistic intuition draws.
It's funny, isn't it, where others are often interested in differences I seem to want to see the connections between two supposedly different things.
This War on the Rocks piece:
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/dr-daves-hypothetical-institute-for-th…
has several reading suggestions. I ordered a copy of The Human Face of War by Jim Storr and it is almost exactly what I've been looking for; much of what I've been asked to read is somehow unsatisfying intellectually.
The book fits in perfectly with the discussion the Design authors have started here, and with the comments to those articles.
How a discipline "begins"....very nice.
Read it for yourselves, make up your own minds.
Recently, I listened to a talk by Hew Strahan on YouTube (Europe, Geopolitics and Strategy) and he makes fantastic points about the increasing divergence of geopolitics and ideology within the western foreign policy community, such as it is.
The most recent hysteria about Russia and Nemetsov underscores this tension (and he makes mention of Ukraine).
The two camps are not even speaking the same language. Such overt hysteria. Worrying. A perfect situation for introducing missiles and more nuclear weapons....(uh, extreme sarcasm), NOT a good situation).
But I didn't understand why he thought Libya or Syria so central to European security in terms of regime change? I should listen to the talk again.
Fits in nicely with this entire discussion.
For instance, I observe the violence of IS via media (or, at least, people discussing it. I won't click links of more violent material.) I infer that we Americans are being baited.
But others might make a different inference, come to a different conclusion (I am just teaching myself. I really am this dim and badly educated):
<blockquote>Significantly, then, far from being desperate or over-extended, Islamist strategic thinking reveals a rigorous design from first principles that discerns the weaknesses in Western society (beginning with the attachment to life), and the manner in which to exploit them to achieve long-term goals. The salutary fact is that these theorists have thought about how to manage the escalation process, thereby controlling the strategy of savagery: doubtlessly, and probably accurately, concluding that the West lacks the collective will to counter-escalate in any coherent way.</blockquote>
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/the-strategy-of-savagery-explaining-th…
Yet, counter-escalate can mean a million different things, just as counterinsurgency can mean a million different things. Will can be defined as the will to engage, or the will to avoid engagement? What does will and counter-escalation mean? Forget about regime change in Syria? Pretend to talk about it get people off your back while you focus on working with others in the region? And what, exactly, does "the West" mean? Especially in hard power terms?
No, really, I must ask, what is this mythical "West" that is used here, there, and everywhere? In terms of hard power, I mean.
What of Turkey? Nato this, Nato that.
What of Syria and Assad?
What of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries? What of their funding? What of the funding of various private citizens in those countries toward various groups in the region?
What of the connections of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries to the US and our NATO allies?
What of Iran?
Patrick Cockburn often writes that people are willing to discuss local imams (in the British setting) and radicalism but that there is a hesitancy to mention state sources of conflict in terms of fanning sectarian flames or having other regional agendas.
Very interesting piece at WoTR. They do a good job, don't mind my comments on Ukraine, I am well, I am difficult.
For instance, one writer working for the Lugar Institute wrote a piece on NATO or Ukraine or something like that? Lugar something, anyway. EU funding of said institute, which is interesting. Nothing wrong with that necessarily but it is something to note.
Back to junior high or whatever:
<blockquote>Inferences vs. Observations Observation: You use one or more of your five senses to know or determine something.
Inference: You make an explanation for the observation.</blockquote>
https://teacher.ocps.net/tiffany.lohman/page20.html
Observation versus intuition:
<blockquote>But, as Lévy told me recently, “sometimes you are inhabited by intuitions that are not clear to you.” On February 23, the philosopher was in Cairo watching television images of Muammar Qaddafi’s retribution against the rebel towns around Benghazi, which the dictator and his sons had threatened to drown in “rivers of blood.” Lévy is most fully himself in stark humanitarian crises, when defending what he calls “the memory of the worst.” He is also the heir to a vast timber fortune, wealth that allows him a license to act on his instincts, and so he promptly found the name of rebel leader Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, arranged for a cameraman and for a private plane to fly him near the front, and within a few hours was in a hired car, driving off to war.</blockquote>
http://nymag.com/news/features/bernard-henri-levy-2012-1/
He has moved on to Ukraine, it seems:
<blockquote>Bernard-Henri Levy will perform his 'Hotel Europe' play in Kyiv's opera house on Feb. 21</blockquote> headline in Kyiv Post ( I think this link doesn't work, the comment disappears if I use it)
I bet a fair number of thought leaders, political leaders, and military leaders rely on intuition, "gut feeling", and tell themselves that is reason.
Not that intuition is necessarily wrong.
But it odd that others pick up the pieces.
On PME (and medicine is no different, again, not putting anyone down, we sometimes struggle in this too), it seems everyone understands that there needs to be greater intellectual rigor and tougher standards.
Yet, it is only the teacher that can do this. A teacher that really knows what he or she is doing, and understands the material. Really understands the material.
In large organizations, regardless the credentials or papers or books written, you sometimes find people teaching that don't really seem to have a mastery of the material. Only the teacher can introduce rigor in the class room.
I'm not sure deniers of the truth is the only way to look at it. Another way may be a refusal to search for truth, to insist that there is no search for truth or beauty, that the answers are only to be handed to you, without any work, without any effort. Effort and struggle are interesting things whether we are dealing with feelings, emotion, intuition, measurement, collecting observations, or the scientific method.
<blockquote>Yet the practice of scientific observation is not quite as simple as it might seem to us at first glance today. As the essays collected by Daston and Lunbeck show, scientific observation has been beset over the years by numerous difficulties and problems. To what degree ought an observer to rely on instruments, as opposed to the naked eye? What about the many circumstances in which different people view the same phenomena and see different things? How might one be able to observe such fleeting and seemingly invisible objects as atoms in motion, or radiation? By exploring the rich history of these kinds of dilemmas, Histories of Scientific Observation offers the reader an invitation to look at the history of this key concept—and thus the history of science itself—through a focused yet luminous lens.</blockquote>
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/thinking-about-looking
Post modern <em>observations</em> about science can strengthen scientific study and alter its social construct. Certainly not a novel or new thought. For instance, including minority groups in clinical trials or other health studies, especially where previously under-represented in the medical literature.
Post modernists make many valid--again, here is the word observation--observations about the social construct of science but where some go astray is in a certain level of scientific ignorance.
Linear and non-linear is blurred in reality. It's a strange way for post modernists to talk, because they themselves argue that knowledge doesn't accumulate in a linear fashion but moves in fits and starts.
The two strengthen each other, if done correctly. But I think a certain amount of scientific literacy is required to understand this.
Man feels and man observes that he feels. Woman feels and creates memory which is feeling plus time. Feeling, observation, memory. The artist, the scientist, the post modernists. Lines blurred. Fits and starts. There is room for this in science, in the scientific method itself. And scientific knowledge isn't frozen in time.
What else is complexity theory but a theoretical type of mathematics?
I can't help feeling that some post modernists don't want to listen, but to dictate.
Oh, I see now why I have such a problem with the "how many Clausewitz fit on the head of a pin" military theory-itizing. And some of the Design stuff. Look only in the mirror of your favorite theory and ignore the world around you:
<blockquote>The sensualist philosophy prioritizes what our senses can perceive. Locke and Condillac founded this philosophy and Cabanis applied it to medicine, arguing that clinical observation is the very essence of medicine.
Clinical diagnosis, exemplified by Laennec with auscultation, and by Alibert with the description of skin diseases, was the medical derivative of the sensualist philosophy.
By giving priority to observation, as opposed to theoretical thinking, sensualist and revolutionary physicians returned back to the hippocratic tradition, which also gave first place to what the five senses of the doctor can perceive. They rejected theoretical medicine, and systematic medicine, medicine based on preconceived systems.</blockquote>
This is from the medical site I linked earlier on the epistemological changes in medicine. Studying doctrine as holy writ, or constantly discussing military theory, is like theoretical medicine, where doctors studied texts and pretty much ignored the actual patient, her anatomy, physiology, all of it, to focus on the text.
Okay, not a perfect parallel and I'm sure others have noticed this too, but it is a bit strange to constantly look at a text or doctrine instead of studying the issue at hand.
Not putting the military down since I seem to give off that vibe and it irritates people. I do this for everything, and, as you see, I do this for medicine too. Including in faculty meetings, fool that I am.
Fads and fancies, fancies and fads. A brave new world.
Oops, some of the need for online learning is the tempo at which you are working? Oh, I understand. Still, that makes it even harder to assess what is working and what isn't? Yes? No? Huh. (And on that note, time to stop resting from the good ole' MS and do something else. At least this way I learn something and it is useful as a citizen and voter. Like multitasking from some victorian fainting couch or something.)
From the above linked article:
<blockquote>On the other hand, parts of the educational domain must be more "virtual": providing online courses (MOOCs) for SOF personnel all around the world, creating a SOF professional reading list with downloadable audio books that are available for SOF personnel anywhere, and offering a common virtual place for the international SOF community to discuss new ideas, in the think tank model described earlier.</blockquote>
Just an old school teacher question for my own education (just my own education,no one is putting anyone down) but who is assessing whether the student REALLY understands the material and is not parroting the information and regurgitating it onto some online test or form? I'm curious for medicine too.
Is that what training exercises are for, to test whether the material is really learned?
Er, it's a good article I linked above. I am just being my usual skeptical self.
I remember one medical school curriculum meeting where I asked (back when I still worked in a teaching hospital) whether we had any real evidence that we were producing better doctors by changing the curriculum in this way, if all the e-teaching was making a difference? I wasn't opposed, I just wanted to understand the process. I suppose that's another money making project for the e-curricula types, eh? Change the curriculum and ask others to pay up to see if it works.
In that link above, there is the claim by Dr. Mitra that memorizing doesn't matter. This is someone that has clearly never taught medical students or fellows. Those that don't take time to memorize are slower, and become a bit flustered when faced with a new case. They somehow lack a kind of confidence. Memorization of some facts is, strangely, related to confidence.
Well, I don't know. Maybe I could get a contract to study the data on that one.
You know what? I bet I could take a good biology undergrad, have them take two years of medical school classes, and then they could sit with me at the microscope for a couple years and that would be just fine. No middle man, no big data, no layers of bureaucracy. I need to get in on this contractor stuff.
I am so smart I mentioned this in a medical school meeting where I said, "do we really need medical school in this way?" How about having them do what I suggested, cut some years of training but increase their time with a clinical instructor? Yeah, that went over well. How am I not a full professor at Stanford or Harvard? I have no bureaucratic instincts. "I'd like to put us out of business!"
Oh, good grief:
THE FUTURE OF SOF EDUCATION: A VISION FOR GLOBAL SPECIAL FORCES EDUCATION
By: COL Imre Porkoláb, Hungarian Army
<blockquote>In early March 2013, Dr. Sugata Mitra, one of the pioneers in online learning (also known as e-learning), was awarded the TED Prize, which comes with a $1 million check and the commitment of millions of TED community followers to help fulfill a wish of the winner.1 Dr. Mitra's vision forms the first step toward what is being called in the education community "Online Learning 2.0." Dr. Mitra's ideas are clearly pushing toward the day when access to education will become far easier and considerably less expensive than it is now, ideas that are very much in line with NATO's current force education efforts as well. Programs like Smart Defence and the Connected Forces Initiative (CFI) offer NATO member states innovative solutions in many areas of the defense industry, particularly in the areas of training and education.2
AN EDUCATION REVOLUTION
Whether we realize it or not, education systems as we know them are changing at lightning speed. Critics declare that the time-honored liberal arts model of a broad classical education may be an expensive anachronism, while others observe that the lives of entrepreneurial heroes such as Steve Jobs suggest that accomplished and creative high school students may be better off avoiding formal post-secondary studies altogether....</blockquote>
https://globalecco.org/the-future-of-sof-education-a-vision-for-global-…
What is it with the TED, Silicon Valley fixation of some western elites? It's as if someone makes money in one field, and then that person automatically has wisdom in all others. Does that make sense? Is that logical?
This is happening in medicine too, the push to make everything online, nd you know what? Students routinely tell me (there is good literature on this) that what they really want is a good clinical teacher, someone to interact with from time to time. They may prefer watching a lecture online to going to class, but they want to interact with a real live person at some point, someone that knows what he or she is doing.
Well, flexibility is fine but to get rid of something completely without understanding what you will replace it with is just a giant gamble, and if it doesn't work? Who picks up the pieces then?
Oh, I see. There is a whole "big data" predictive analytics on this sort of thing?
<blockquote>Track 2:
Case Study: U.S. Special Forces
Hiring and Selecting Special Forces Personnel Using Predictive Analytics
Hiring and selection of personnel in specialized work environments incurs huge direct and opportunity costs for organizations. One of the largest challenges is that the selection process is often left in the hands of those with either high experience in the domain area but little experience in selection or vice versa.
Predictive Analytics and statistics can play a critical role in formalizing and automating much of the selection process. This session provides an overview of the selection processes using both skills and psychological measures to quantify IQ, domain knowledge, grit, and determination. Examples will be drawn from marketing practices for U.S. Special Forces using predictive analytics teams to rank prospective candidates.</blockquote>
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/workforce/2015/agenda.php
Quantifying "grit". Well, I never.
So I went looking for examples of kinds of prospective studies involving Special Forces and found this example (for my own education, nothing more):
<blockquote>For entry into the Australian Army Special Forces (SF), applicants undergo a barrage of strenuous physical and psychological assessments. Despite this screening, subsequent attrition rates in the first weeks of initial selection courses are typically high, and entry testing results have had limited success for predicting who will complete these courses. An SF applicant's character is often thought to be a decisive factor; however, this claim has remained untested. Accordingly, SF applicants (N = 115) were asked to rank themselves on 24 character strengths at the start of the selection process. Successful applicants (n =18) assigned their top ranks to team worker (72%), integrity (67%), and persistence (50%). Applicants (n = 31) who did not include any of those three strengths in their top ranks all failed to complete the selection process. In contrast, successful versus unsuccessful applicants did not discernibly differ on physical assessments and a written test. Results are discussed with respect to their implications for enhancing the assessment of SF applicants.</blockquote>
http://publications.amsus.org/doi/abs/10.7205/MILMED-D-14-00181?journal…
In Military Medicine
These sorts of studies are only the beginning of understanding, inklings of a suggestion of a direction.
Still, you have to start somewhere and other areas of medicine aren't really different when the disease or process isn't understood.
The critique is always, well, what if you haven't studied the key variable, and correlation and causation and all that....
A lifetime of study.
You can imagine similar study design for Design as one inkling of a suggestion of a direction.
Again, because people misunderstand me. This is a good study, it's a good beginning for discussion and study. I'm just discussing and studying because this is supposed to be a JOURNAL :) and that's what a person should do when coming across a good journal article.
I imagine many nice prospective studies for the Sage course can be designed along the ideas of this paper.
Look at BillM's comment. You can even survey those that have taken the training earlier and survey their opinions on differences to today. I'm sure these things are being or have been done.
This isn't an original observation either, but some sorts of scholars and philosophers may go after the military because it is an easier 'mark' in the intellectual realm, at least, some of its intellectual precincts seem to be easier 'marks.'
Quackery and pseudointellectualism and pseudoscientifism seems to be the order of the day. Look at some of the anti-vaccine movement, or, at least, we are rearguing parts of the earlier scientific and technological revolution of centuries ago.
Useful reference:
<blockquote>The idea of a Paris School of medicine was made popular by the book by Erwin Ackerknecht, first published in 1967 ; it is also important to cite Michel Foucault, the well-known contemporary French philosopher. In "Birth of the Clinic", written in 1963, Foucault successfully explained the philosophical and epistemological importance of this period. In particular, Foucault emphasized the importance to the Paris school of "the sovereignty of the gaze". The way dermatologists started to look at the skin is one of the best examples of this new medical gaze. Alibert is indeed the first example in France of a physician
looking at the skin diseases,
describing skin diseases,
representing skin diseases in the paintings and engravings of huge, expensive atlases.</blockquote>
http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/sfhd/ecrits/jla.htm
Foucolt's essay argued that the gaze of doctors was dehumanizing because of the distance between doctors and patients, one argument among many in the essay.
But I would argue that post modernists do the same with science, the scientific method and physicians. Post modernists have their own 'sovereignty of the gaze,' and dehumanize. A physician or scientists experience is marginalized in that their arguments don't carry as much weight in the eyes of the post modernists. Society may wish to turn physicians into sages or priests or shamans, but that doesn't mean that the method of a physician is the same as a sage or priest or shaman.
But this is an old discussion and won't be solved in a comments section.
Still, I sometimes wonder if all this talk about how to think is simply just an excuse not to do the homework, or the work itself.
Post modernism doesn't have a lock on observation, anymore than other fields of endeavor or study.
I am continually told that the military is too rational and analytical. At it's highest level, I simply don't believe it. It is a very emotional, power-relational, romantic place. I think the case may be made for that and I'm sure there is a body of literature on that because very few thoughts are truly original.
The historian in the talk I linked earlier uses the term "organized skepticism." This is the basis of academic discipline. It is organized skepticism, and when the author uses the term "agnostic", it serves a similar purpose. So too with the constant teaching about how to think about assumptions that I see in military journals and on military sites.
I sometimes get the feeling--not directed at this author--that ideas are being parroted rather than deeply thought about or understood. This is the basis of the creation of a buzzword. The idea behind the buzzword may be perfectly fine (there was an article on this distinction here at SWJ) and useful but if you don't want to think about it, you can just use the term and this takes the place of showing that a concept is understood. It is a form of signaling in place of thought.
@BillM
I think this was a fine exercise and I can think of many other ideas he can pursue based on this initial research or observations. I'm sure he has thought of the studies too. Next time, prospective study on Design versus other groups in the training exercise, reworking his initial observations in a different way, encourage others to look at their own training records and writing up those experiences, etc. Once you ask a good academic question, the scholarship kind of leads itself in a million different ways.
This was a good article on personal observations about training, education and planning, how differently trained groups approach the process.
I'm just trained to read articles in a certain 'nerd' way and was trying to stimulate a discussion. Earlier on in the thread I had posted a YouTube link to a talk about intelligence, the scientific method and history. Now I see a nice article about observation in the journalism and fiction of Checkov:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chekhovs-beautiful-nonfictio…
PS: War on the Rocks has a nice article on an interdisciplinary approach to social sciences and policy questions and this is exactly the kind of work that will find its place in such a future department, I think. I'm sure the military already does this in its own way. It has too, it looks to every field it can to help.
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/u-s-social-science-and-international-r…
Medicine is so different that I'm not always sure how to approach social science and I've been nasty about it here and at other blogs too. Again, wrong in my initial impressions. It's not discipline so much as quality that matters.
The other problems is money and society's attitudes toward research. We are eating our seed corn, in a way, and policy relevance can have problems if one is not careful. At any rate, societies that don't view the general nature of research and academics in a positive way have trouble. It's not so easy to see relevance and sometimes you have to have faith in the process.
MF,
Your points about risk are somewhat irrelevant to the discussion, but I see where you're coming from. SOF from many nations and throughout history have deployed small elements into harms way. Many times these teams did not have air support and were well outside the range of artillery. Worse, many of those teams have been lost throughout history. That is just the nature of SOF operations, many throughout history have been very high risk.
Obviously if you have fire support assets available, you plan for integrating them. Teams certainly did in Iraq and Afghanistan. The risk to our forces in both of these conflicts was considerably less than the risk SOF assumed in Vietnam, and the risk SOF assumed was even greater during WWII. Fortunately advances in technology (specifically aircraft, ISR, GPS. . .) have reduced, but not eliminated the risk. That means guys are still out there alone and unafraid doing their missions. If they lure in a major attack and are able to defeat it with the help of air power so much the better.
Back to the real issue, MDMP is more about determining what the problem is versus planning in my opinion. The planning comes after your restated mission statement and while not speaking for Grant the process of reducing a complex problem during MDMP to a center of gravity can foul the following planning process considerably. No one is advocating doing away with planning. The issue being debated is the thought process leading up to what you plan for. MDMP you plan for a dumbed down problem that can inhibit your ability to adjust to reality on the ground. With design thinking you are more open (in theory) to a range of possibilities, your plans should entail more flexibility, and you should be more flexible and effective when your boots hit the ground. Not the best explanation, but it will have to do for now.
SF differs considerably from the way our conventional brothers operate. Conventional Bn staffs do MDMP to fight Bns. SF Bns don't fight, they deploy up to 18 ODAs individually; therefore, the ODAs serve to a large extent as their own staffs with team members assuming the roles of S1, S2, S3, S4, medical, fire support, etc. The Bn has an important role in providing guidance, keeping an eye on the larger picture, and enabling the ODAs, but that is much different than actually maneuvering as a Bn.
The exercise Grant referred to is an unconventional warfare exercise. The ODA must to the extent possible develop understanding of the area and situation prior to going in, and then continuously update their understanding as ground truth unfolds in front in of them over time (these are extended missions where they link up and work through others to achieve desired conditions). The situation will change, so that is why some of us advocate design thinking prior to engaging in planning (if you have time). Instead of focusing on a COG that was predetermined without clear understanding, and as Grant said, instead of focusing narrowly on the adversary, you focus on the larger picture and look for opportunities to shape it in ways that moves it in a direction that benefits U.S. interests.
The transition between design and planning remains problematic for many of us, but intuitively based on muddy boots experience we know we need to break out of our reductive thinking processes for UW and FID missions. For direct action, when the task is very specific and the mission is of short duration, MDMP or some other reductive planning process is probably best. It depends, the answer isn't in a doctrine, it doesn't appear magically after going through a step by step process, it materializes when we observe and think.
I read this a while back so my recall may not be complete. I had trouble identifying the complete nature of the third planning solution, and it seemed like the Design solution only briefly was taught to the SF guys. My question at the time was why are they even using MDMP or Design which both typically involve battalion and higher planning since they have staffs? Why not Troop-Leading Procedures? If they are planning with officers and NCOs together in A-Teams, which would seem appropriate, TLP would seem to apply.
My sole exposure to SF (other than reading about ALP/VSO) is reading "Lions of Kandahar," and a book about an attack on Shok valley in Afghanistan. Both required extensive outside enabler help to rescue small units from big trouble. "Lions" required something like 70+ air sorties of a supply and attack nature which calls into question any plan that routinely pits small teams against potentially large enemy forces without available enablers nearby in country. "Outlaw Platoon" similarly made small elements (conventional) look problematic without outside enabler support. Reading many of the short vignettes of "Vanguards of Valor," an Army OEF history, also presents numerous situations where small units faced severe peril if not for outside help. Similarly, Wanat, COP Keating, Ganjgal, and Operation Strong Eagle (and its follow-ons) were further examples, with the latter two involving SF/conventional teams. The ALP/VSO seems more tactical as well whereas Army Design might apply best to Strategic problems. Yes or no?
These all were small unit actions that required coordinated availability/access to higher echelon enablers and supply support. Therefore, complete abandonment of the higher HQ plans would seem problematic. It also seems you cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater and believe you can forget doctrine and TTP for artillery and air support which have set procedures. You can argue there is excessive micromanagement from above both in terms of mission command and eyes on the AO. But look what happened in "Lone Survivor" and many other battles when communications failed and enablers did not have eyes on. "Plans are nothing but planning is everything" according to Ike. By looking at orders, graphics, and maps, <strong>when</strong> things change during execution don't you have the basis for making informed changes to the plan? If you do a METT-TC and PMESII-PT analysis for any situation leading to a subsequent plan with some contingencies, can you really go wrong? All theoretical on my part.
Admittedly the study methodology is flawed which the author readily admits, it is also biased based on what the author was looking for. Nonetheless, perhaps due to my own biases against the military's focus on process and dumbing complex problems down to a non-functional center of gravity concept, I find his observations interesting. The one compelling point I took from the article is that those who employed design thinking were more likely to learn and adapt quicker than those who just used MDMP.
The article seemed to present a slight bias towards NCOs, which in my view reflects the gradual conventionalization of SF. I view the type of thinking that assumes a person's function (and/or rank) defines his or her potential to contribute to solving the problem as a legacy of industrial era thinking. Civilian corporations increasingly focus on collaboration and bringing all the talent available to work on a problem, versus three or four managers, or officers, huddled in a corner producing PowerPoint charts for a brief. A brief that should be more of discussion than a brief to begin with, but that is another topic.
In many respects the exercise sounds much better than when I went through it, so a hat tip to those who have over the years continuously improved the exercise. Room for continuous improvement still exists, and I think Grant is focused on a very important topic, and that is our planning and thinking process. If nothing else I hope the study generates a discussion beyond SWJ.
The military, among others, suffers from information overload :) Isn't that just the way of it?
One way to deal with it, I suppose, is to pick one area of study and focus on it. That's why I should probably go back to focusing on my blog comment"area", South Asian narratives of a certain period within certain American groups :)
Systematization isn't always terrible. Have to have some way of processing the world.
Part of the confusion stems from how the author conceives of this study. It is a bit of a retrospective observational study, a type of study with its own weakness and strengths.
The author looks at his own descriptions of different groups, including a roughly 'control' group, that he commanded.
Based on his own observations, he is attempting to mine and organize the data in a retrospective fashion.
A little discussion on the nature of study design might help but time is limited and I won't go into it (and it's not my best area, to be honest). I'd actually prefer if someone else dug into it, lazy creature that I am....
sophil-
My "questioning" view is that we should not just take what we're given in the military in terms of how we should think about war and planning for war as "the truth" and not question it. But we largely do- we learn MDMP and JOPP and follow it without question- not knowing where it came from and its pros and cons. When I point that out to fellow officers they often attack me as if we're in Sunday School and I'm questioning the deity of Jesus. So- not only do I see our institutional reaction as similar to a religious belief, I also saw people in SAMS literally refuse to read post modernist philosophy due to their inability to separate moral relativity from relativity in general. It would be the same in my mind as quantum physicists refusing to accept quantum theory because they were too scared that relativity at the quanta level somehow means that there are no moral absolutes.
If instructors encouraging students to think critically is counterintuitive in your mind- I really have to respectfully disagree. But- in that vein, it is interesting that you bring up morality and ethics, since recently a research paper was published arguing we in the military are liars. So- all of that "great deal of time educating prospective officers on the sources of ethical and moral behavior"- doesn't seem to be going all that well for us...
On your point about questioning the nature of war leading to questioning more fundamental topics- I guess from what I saw- questioning the fundamental assumptions about war and how humans learn and make sense of the world for purposes of warfare quite naturally carried over to other topics- as war isn't the only thing we have to learn about, make assumptions about, and make sense of... So not sure why one would limit that type of philosophical inquiry to just one subject...
I don't think this "agnostic" view stands up to scrutiny. If by "questioning", the author means that it is important for leaders to understand the basis of moral authority, I agree. The Naval ROTC program includes a course on leadership and ethics, and it spends a great deal of time educating prospective officers on the sources of morality and ethics. However, that doesn't seem to be what the author is suggesting. We rely upon our leaders (both commissioned and non-commissioned officers) to manage violence and enforce ethical and moral behavior on the battlefield, and actively undermining those ethical and moral beliefs (<I>“They are deniers of The Truth,” he proclaimed, and went on to describe the school’s sin: the instructors encouraged students to question their most fundamental beliefs</I>) seems counterintuitive.
I also disagree that questioning the nature of war - which, as we've discussed previously, the Army in particular does not have a particularly effective recent track record of teaching in the first place - naturally leads to the questioning of more fundamental topics. Questioning of various aspects of the military, perhaps, or acknowledgment that like the military, religious institutions are human endeavours built to respond to human challenges, and subject to human errors and excesses; but that's a much more limited concept than what the author seems to suggest.
Mad-
I'm by no means saying I am the be-all, end-all of all of this- so just taking a stab at some of your excellent questions:
1- I'd say systematic observation is... observation under the influence of some system. Not that that is bad- but one should IMO remain conscious of the pros and cons of any one system...
2- Design, in my mind (although I'd argue today the term has been corrupted beyond recognition- so not sure if it is even useful in the military today...), is literally designing one's approach (to observe, etc.) for one's situation and being conscious about one's frameworks, systems, processes, etc.- the pros and cons of each- and the willingness to break away from those choices based on the situation.
3- I'd say design writ large is a larger topic than observation. I think it encompasses observation, analysis, framing both, learning, etc.
- Grant
The speaker mentions the Oxford dictionary definition (?) of the scientific method:
"A method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."
What, then, is systematic observation? How does Design differ in terms of observation? It's a form of observation, under its own idea of non-systemized systemization?
Anyway, point of discussion. I don't know. I never know. I just like to ask questions. The beginning of any discipline of study :) ....
From the article: "My observations, admittedly very subjective and unscientific, follow."
This article pairs nicely with the following talk, especially the beginning in which the speaker talks about different kinds of knowledge, scientific, historical, and the "science" of intelligence:
<strong>Spies, secrets and science: reflections from the history of MI6</strong>:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CtI5xzqnD8
The scientific method begins with observation, in fact, observation is a common theme across multiple disciplines. I know the fashion is to talk about 'linear' and 'non-linear' knowledge but I'm not so sure that helps. I don't think even the 'linear' disciplines view themselves as so linear, given the nature of observation and variability in observation.
Anyway, an agnostic point of discussion :)