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Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (1999)

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Re: Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (1999)

#13

This is from 1999. Meanwhile, IARPA now conducts studies where intelligence analysts look at various *INT layers of data stacked on top of eachother and cognitive modelers try to recreate the biases they demonstrate in the lab. See: The Neural Basis of Decision-Making During Sensemaking: Implications for Human-System Interaction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278679336_The_Neura...

For anyone else stuck in a captcha redirect loop:

https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO.2015.7118968

Re: Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (1999)

#15
>An event for which the timing is unpredictable may "at this time" have only a 5-percent probability of occurring during the coming month, but a 60-percent probability if the time frame is extended to one year (5 percent per month for 12 months).

If the time frame were extended to two years, would the probability be 120%?

The correct probability is:

1 - (1-.05)^12 ~= 0.46

Hard to credit a text about cognitive biases that makes elementary mistakes in probability.

Re: Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (1999)

#17

>An event for which the timing is unpredictable may "at this time" have only a 5-percent probability of occurring during the coming month, but a 60-percent probability if the time frame is extended to one year (5 percent per month for 12 months). If the time frame were extended to two years, would the probability be 120%? The correct probability is: 1 - (1-.05)^12 ~= 0.46 Hard to credit a text about cognitive biases…

You may have knowledge that the probability falls to zero after that. This is messy intelligence not math. Assuming this is a math book is a cognitive bias you are bringing into the reading.

Re: Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (1999)

#18
Stumbled upon this subject as I was studying computer vision at a Japanese lab (under a professor who had studied Bayes' Theorem for his entire career –– yes, he had it framed behind his desk)

I do share his fascination of Bayes' and believe that it is one of the most powerful theorems out there. It keeps popping up in applications everywhere (ML, crypto, intelligence, pharma dev etc etc) since published about 200 years ago. Taught to thousands of undergrads every year in every country, I sometimes get the impression its simplicity does not successfully convey the true real-world capacity.

To think it was not so long ago assumed inferior to sampling and frequency statistics.. :)

Re: Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (1999)

#19
post #17

>An event for which the timing is unpredictable may "at this time" have only a 5-percent probability of occurring during the coming month, but a 60-percent probability if the time frame is extended to one year (5 percent per month for 12 months). If the time frame were extended to two years, would the probability be 120%? The correct probability is: 1 - (1-.05)^12 ~= 0.46 Hard to credit a text about cognitive biases…

You may have knowledge that the probability falls to zero after that. This is messy intelligence not math. Assuming this is a math book is a cognitive bias you are bringing into the reading.

The quoted text specifically refers to this being the result of a 5% monthly chance recurring over 12-months, i.e. it was a pretty unambiguous appeal to mathematics.

Whether or not it is reasonable to compound such a messy probability is a whole other question, but the fact the training material could not do so correctly (on apparently its own terms) does not speak with great confidence for the practitioners trained upon it.

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