... about Information Dominance et cetera, all those military theory projects and doctrines that reset heavily on the assumption that collecting, disseminating, analyzing more information will provide a decisive advantage in battle:
As anybody aware of a psychology- or neurology-rooted critique of these whole concepts?
(I am aware of one angle of critique or rather I applied some such published research insights to this military stuff, but I'm researching if there are more such fundamental problems.)
S O
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simple model:
ReplyDeleteTwo humans know how to fight with spears. Both have mastered all the techniques. One of them has spent time learning something about human psychology and body signals that show intentions, while the other just trained to perfect his techniques. Who will win in a contest?
Replace two humans with a group of humans that can focus several spear points at a time on a target. The group consists of a range of people, some of them can read body signals, others have good techniques or quick reactions. Which group will win?
In most cases the answer is the one with the best information flow.
In this case most information flow would be each one shouting and waving in order to signal intetions and observations. - information overflow is the result. The other extreme is silent observers working on their own. - let's call it information underflow.
Information underflow works best if people know their job and can rely on each other in these situations. Information overflow is a routine human behaviour of a group that is just in the opposite situation. It's not a bad idea, just a symptom of circumstances that require such measures.