Interpretation of signs in intelligence analysis

interpretation of signs in intelligence analysis- GS

Intelligence analysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_analysis‎

Wikipedia

Devlin^[14] observes that while traditional logical work does not consider socialization, work on extending logic into the real world of intelligence requires it. "The first thing to note, and this is crucial, is that the process by which an agent attaches meaning to a symbol always takes place in a context, indeed generally several contexts, and is always dependent on those contexts. An analytic study of the way that people interpret symbols comes down to an investigation of the mechanism captured by the diagram:

[agent] + [symbol] + [context] +. . . + [context] → [interpretation]

Things that are true about contexts include:

1. Contexts are pervasive
2. Contexts are primary
3. Contexts perpetuate
4. Contexts proliferate
5. Contexts are potentially pernicious

The discipline of critical discourse analysis will help organize the context. Michael Crichton,^[15] in giving examples of physicians communicating with other physicians, points out that laymen have trouble following such discourses not only because there is specialized vocabulary in use, but the discourse takes place in an extremely high context. One physician may ask a question about some diagnostic test, and the other will respond with a result from an apparently unrelated test. The shared context was that the first test looked for evidence of a specific disease, while the answer cited a test result that ruled out the disease. The disease itself was never named, but, in the trained context, perfectly obvious to the participants in the discourse.

Intelligence analysis is also extremely high context. Whether the subject is political behavior or weapons capabilities, the analysts and consumers share a great deal of context. Intelligence consumers express great frustration with generic papers that waste their time by giving them context they already have internalized.

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Some analysts speak of a Zen-like state in which they allow the data to "speak" to them. Others may meditate, or even seek insight in dreams, hoping for an insight such as that given to August Kekulé in a daydream that resolved one of the fundamental structural problems of organic chemistry.

M.N.: mendeleev periodic table dream - GS 
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Increasingly deep analysis can explain the internal dynamics of the matter being studied, and eventually to prediction, known as estimation.
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Never forget the end user

M.N.: Always "forget the end user": Independent (of anything and everything, including "peer reviews" and "tailorings" - these are "all too human" traps and probably the sources of the most common errors), individual, creative, INTUITIVE, dream-like integration-synthesis (as a dialectical mirror image and unavoidable, essential, decisive component and the essence of "analysis") is the key. 

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successful intelligence analysis-GS

examples of successful intelligence analysis - GS

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semiotics - GS

Semiotics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

M.N.: The mess of a study: Signs and their interpretations are inseparable, one and the same: sign is not a sign without an interpretation; both are context driven and context and field specific, there are signs and there are signs: medical, linguistic, agricultural, etc.,etc.; these are different cognitive universes with different and various bodies of knowledge and methods of  studies, disparate and incompatible; they are born and determined by their pragmatic applications. In this case generalization leads to confusion, not insight. 

semiotics in intelligence analysis - GS

See also:

Comments on Richards Heuer's "Psychology of Intelligence Analysis"