Why Can’t We See What Is There To Be Seen?
2009 March 22
This post basically highlights the book Psychology of Intelligence Analysis written by Richards J. Heuer (book is freely available for download from here). If your job demands data analysis and decision making, or you work with visual analytics then this book is must for you. Book not only identifies some limitations inherent in human mental processes those can affect our decion making process, but also offer analytical tradecraft for overcoming these limitations and thinking more systematically. Accodrding to HeuerThinking analytically is a skill like carpentry or driving a car. It can be taught, it can be learned, and it can improve with practice. But like many other skills, such as riding a bike, it is not learned by sitting in a classroom and being told how to do it. Analysts learn by doing.
Through out the book Heuer tries to makes three fundamental points
- The mind is poorly “wired” to deal effectively with both inherent uncertainty (the natural fog surrounding complex, indeterminate intelligence issues) and induced uncertainty (the man-made fog fabricated by denial and deception operations).
- Even increased awareness of cognitive and other “unmotivated” biases, such as the tendency to see information confirming an already-held judgment more vividly than one sees “disconfirming” information, does little by itself to help analysts deal effectively with uncertainty.
- Tools and techniques that gear the analyst’s mind to apply higher levels of critical thinking can substantially improve analysis on complex issues on which information is incomplete, ambiguous, and often deliberately distorted. Key examples of such intellectual devices include techniques for structuring information, challenging assumptions, and exploring alternative interpretations.
Overall this is an excellent book for any one who is interested to improve their analytical skills.
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Why Can’t We See What Is There To Be Seen?: This post basically highlights the book Psychology of Intelligence A.. http://tinyurl.com/ct4mr8