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DARPA Wants To Know How Stories Influence People
coondoggie writes "DARPA in a nutshell wants to know how stories or narratives influence human behavior. To this end, they are hosting a workshop called 'Stories, Neuroscience and Experimental Technologies (STORyNET): Analysis and Decomposition of Narratives in Security Contexts,' on Feb. 28th to discuss the topic. 'Stories exert a powerful influence on human thoughts and behavior. They consolidate memory, shape emotions, cue heuristics and biases in judgment, influence in-group/out-group distinctions, and may affect the fundamental contents of personal identity. It comes as no surprise that these influences make stories highly relevant to vexing security challenges such as radicalization, violent social mobilization, insurgency and terrorism, and conflict prevention and resolution. Therefore, understanding the role stories play in a security context is a matter of great import and some urgency," DARPA stated.'"
... want to tell better stories? Or study the mythology of a culture to better understand their thinking? The former is a difficult problem, as attempting to inject new tales into a group is difficult. Aesop isn't writing any new fables, so anything unfamiliar or that doesn't jive with the established culture will stand out. The latter is a worthwhile endeavor. Many of our f*ckups in dealing with various groups stem from our cultural insensitivity. If we can learn to understand them based on their folklore, we may end up not falling on our faces quite as often.
Have gnu, will travel.
Reminded me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_men_make_a_tiger
It doesn't take a DARPA grant to know that lots of people believe every film that Michael Moore and Oliver Stone make is factual and without bias. On second thought, Step 1: Take the grant money. Step 2: Spend five minutes debunking those films. Step 3: Profit.
Why are they spending tax payers money for what is already known and available through any field of story writing, be it fiction or fact or some combination?
If there is any urgency it only because the near 7 billion people on this planet are starting to wise up to the less than 1% fabricating crap that causes problems for the rest of us. Ultimately we all are not going to need or be able to afford the ongoing BS produced by politicians and control freaks of war game players Instead those wasted resources on destructive technology can be far more effective in fixing real world problems and hence greatly reducing motivations of war and terrorism and... bla bla bla destructive fabrications for the self supported dependencies of the addicted to the mental handicap of having a lack of morals and ethics. And there can be plenty left over to put them into rehab for life.
What the World Wants, but not the mentally handicapped control freaks otherwise it'd already be happening.
What we have instead is even more on defense for 2011 than shown HERE