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US Spies Use Custom Video Games for Training
Wired reports that the US Defense Intelligence Agency has just acquired three PC-based video games which they will use to train the next wave of analysts. The games are short, but they have branching story lines that change depending on how a trainee reacts to various problems. Quoting:
"'It is clear that our new workforce is very comfortable with this approach,' says Bruce Bennett, chief of the analysis-training branch at the DIA's Joint Military Intelligence Training Center. Wired.com had an opportunity to play all three games, Rapid Onset, Vital Passage and Sudden Thrust. The titles may conjure images of blitzkrieg, but the games themselves are actually a surprisingly clever and occasionally surreal blend of education, humor and intellectual challenge, aimed at teaching the player how to think."
It gets confusing because they all pretend to be medics.
>Rapid Onset, Vital Passage and Sudden Thrust. The titles may conjure images of blitzkrieg,
>
Sounds more like pr0n.
Seriously, video games are a simulation environment. Makes sense to use them as training tools. This is news, why?
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum! (*)
* I think I think, therefore I think I am!
But seriously, I'm curious as to what part of these games is aimed at improving cognitive skills versus indoctrination? i.e. the difference between "how to THINK" versus "HOW to think."
The way we learn has changed; probably irrevocably. We are now in a post-literary world. We increasingly think more visually and spatially, and less sequentially (thus the reduction of news to 30-second bites, but in a multitude of them). We learn by seeing and doing, and not by reading and hearing. It stands to reason that our teaching methods will have to change, as well.
You wake up and the room is dark. _
For what part of human history have we ever learned by reading? Most people couldn't read for most of human history. It has always been much easier to learn something by doing it, rather than just reading a book about it. Don't get me wrong. Reading is important, and is useful for figuring certain things out. It's really good for passing on ideas and information. However, it is not the best way to learn how to do anything. Do you learn how to program by reading about it, or by doing it? Do you learn how to draw a picture by reading about it? Do you learn how to drive by reading about it? If I want to know, for instance, how to change the padding using CSS, I can read about it. If I don't actually go and do it, there's a much smaller chance that I will remember it when I need to do it again. If I go ahead and actually implement it, and type it out, I am much better able to retain the information.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
These video games ara not for spies, they are for intelligence analysts - NOT the same thing. I am an all-source military intelligence analyst and instructor by trade and I do not do any spying. Spies are collectors; they do not need training in critical thinking, analysis of competing hypotheses, logical fallacies, biases, ad infinitum. Anyone at the DIA who calls himself a spy has watched too many Bond movies and/or is just trying to impress chicks. And the authors of this article should have known better. This is why we get new analysts who are disappointed they're not going to be James Bond. Hell, they're not even going to be Jack Ryan.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
...our next national intelligence estimate will state that the #1 threat to the USA is a grue.
-Styopa