Com­plex sit­u­a­tions are — by their very nature — dif­fi­cult to under­stand. Com­pound this with the fact that in any given sit­u­a­tion we’re all going to have cog­ni­tive biases that make us view sit­u­a­tions dif­fer­ently and inac­cu­rately, and you’re going to have a bit of a mess when it comes to think­ing about and analysing dif­fi­cult situations.

The CIA have released the full text of [Psy­chol­ogy of Intel­li­gence Analy­sis;] a book on the psy­chol­ogy of analysing sur­veil­lance data. While aimed at the CIA’s ana­lysts, it’s also a great gen­eral guide on how to under­stand com­plex sit­u­a­tions and avoid our nat­ural cog­ni­tive biases in reasoning.

A cen­tral focus of this book is to illu­mi­nate the role of the observer in deter­min­ing what is observed and how it is inter­preted. Peo­ple con­struct their own ver­sion of “real­ity” on the basis of infor­ma­tion pro­vided by the senses, but this sen­sory input is medi­ated by com­plex men­tal processes that deter­mine which infor­ma­tion is attended to, how it is orga­nized, and the mean­ing attrib­uted to it. What peo­ple per­ceive, how read­ily they per­ceive it, and how they process this infor­ma­tion after receiv­ing it are all strongly influ­enced by past expe­ri­ence, edu­ca­tion, cul­tural val­ues, role require­ments, and orga­ni­za­tional norms, as well as by the specifics of the infor­ma­tion received.

via Mind Hacks