Fester's Place

Mental Models and Implicit Assumptions

The world is a complex, confusing, multi-variate, multi-interaction place. For this reason, people develop simplifications, assumptions, schemas and heuristics that allow us to quickly process information and fit it into a basic story that explains where an event has orginiated from, what is actually going on, and what we should do next. Mental models are shortcuts that allow us to complete multiple thoughts in far less time than refreshing the processing every time.

Models are wonderful things as they allow us the opportunity to see the essence of a problem or a solution by shedding needless information, and forcing us to put new data into context. However models, as they are a simplification of reality, are also in danger of being useless if they have unspoken and unknown assumptions, wrong relationship weights and many other flaws. The best approach to working with a model is to continously test and make explicit the assumptions that are its structural elements.

I believe that the overwhelming source of disagreement on what is going on in Iraq is based on the fact that there are several common mental models that are being used which contradict each other, differently value the same piece of information and make significantly different initial assumptions. I would like to ask my colleagues here at the UPC who are interested in following events in Iraq to make their assumptions and relationships explicit. I will attempt to do the same. I do not know if this exercise will lead to agreement, but it should lead to several unspoken assumptions to be revealed.

CORE UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS

• THIS IS A GUERILLA WAR with all of the intricacies that implies
• The US will win any straight up fight AND EVERYONE KNOWS THIS
• The insugency is operating with a deep and committed bed of support from the Sunni Arab community within Iraq.
• The Sunni Arab community believes it will receive a much better deal by outlasting the US and imposing either rent against a Shi'ite dominated government for non-violence or a military victory that is far more favorable to them then currently participating in the political process.
• Sooner or later the US will get out of Iraq in some fashion; the Sunni Arab community will stay in Iraq no matter what.
• The US is facing significant manpower sustainability concerns at the moment that will only get worse
• Public support in the US will continue to go down as the population remembers that in December, 2002 that it was strongly against a war that did not find anything new on WMDs, without UN authorization and with high costs in lives and money to have been worth going to.
• The current level of violence has created a systemic breakdown of the modern state, thus depriving the Iraqi government of revenues, political sticks and carrots and most importantly, popular legitimacy or expectation of relevance.
• The Shi'ite and Kurd dominated government does not have anything that vaguely resembles an effective AND numerically sufficient security force in place nor will it have that force in place for at least several years.
• The government is thoroughly penetrated and is an information seive.
• Iraqi nationalism is a shared common thread among the Sunni community and the Shi'ite community --- most pronounced in the Sadr movement/Mahdi Army.

Labels: iraq

posted by fester @ 07:45