Rational Choice

[montrose]

1. Purpose. Discuss Rational Choice theory and its application at LBH.

2. Background. Darkcloud pinned me in a corner on another thread. I need to explain the lenses I use to look at LBH to clarify my point of view. Since this will involve philosophy and empiricism, I am starting a new thread. You have been warned.

3. Rational Choice Theory. Theory means that any actor in a given situation will respond in a predictable manner. Makes sense, right?

a. Bad example. Jeffrey Dahmer is lonely. He invites people in his home and doesn't feel lonely. But he knows they will leave and he will feel lonely again. So he kills them. But then they don't do much. So he eats them. If you don't understand this, let's discuss it over dinner. (My grad school instructors hated me).

b. Different value systems. A key problem with Rat choice is that decision makers have different value systems. So in same circumstances, decision makers can and will make different decisions.

c. Constrained decision making. Decision makers are also constrained in their decision making by organizational, cultural and previous decisional factors. A constrained decision making process means not rational.

Not so bad analogy. Steve may be able to resolve cases faster if he could water board suspects. Water boarding causes no harm to the suspect. For an American law enforcement officer to waterboard is simply out of the question.

4. Custer. Custer made a series of decisions starting with Benteen's scout. His series of decisions cramped him after 3411. His move to Reno's right was a bad one. The terrain prevented him and Reno from doing anything mutually supporting. His move north delayed link up with Benteen and McDougall. Regiment was becoming badly scattered in time and space.

His actions after 3411 become increasingly irrational. If you look at the microdecision you can probably make a justification for Custer. But the moment you step back to situational awareness these same decisions look bad. Some of them look Little Big Man bad.

Custer seemed to just ignore Indian forces, movements, and combat power. He showed respect for Indian abilities in Washita and 1873. I personally do not understand why he did this in 1876. Haste, arrogance, inexperience?

5. Honor and integrity. There is another discussion that West Point officers have a constrained sense of Honor and Integrity. There is a long history that USMA grads do have a constrained sense of both. Constrained means none. Situational integrity means no integrity. Just sitting here I wrote out the names of 11 offivers fired or kicked out of the Special Forces course for integrity issues. 9, possibly 10, are USMA grads.

Now I am not saying USMA grads as a whole have this issue. They have a weird bell curve. The right side of that bell curve is oustanding. But the bottom 10 per cent is also outstandingly bad, and would be weeded out in ROTC and OCS. Once you get beyond 10 years of service, the knuckleheads are weeded out.

(To make it worse, 3 of these USMA men had clear mental health issues).

[Dark Cloud]

This is stuff I think important, and where the LBH can be both informative and helpful. Rational choice and honor are things that need to be discussed, yet are avoided like a live grenade.

The Prussian/German military was on this stuff early. They wanted a staff system where any graduate, presented with the same set of issues, would make the same 'correct' decision. This was good and bad both for their military, because nobody can ascertain whether all elements are the 'same' and any variation can be argued to be improved or inferior. Fitting info into a formula may not be the way to go, yet it has advantages as well right up to the point where the enemy knows syllabus and can predict the next move.

I tried a thread on Honor years back, and it got bogged down on definition, and dishonorable intent was displayed when people wouldn't own up to their own errors and mistatements. But it is important and important for the issues you raise.

Is it honorable for classmates to rat on each other? West Point thinks so. Does that sort of betrayal improve the officer corps or set up potential revenge scenarios and cliques to be played out with men's lives later? It's an issue, and there is evidence for both sides. How is this different from children ratting on parents?

Not a few military grads and others have wanted to get rid of WP because they feel it installs a military officer caste (which it has to a degree) and that this is not American, with its initial horror of a standing military. Others, including Superintendents and instructors, think the student body not the best, or sometimes even adequate, and that it teaches rote and procedure rather than the out of the box thinking real life under fire ofter requires. I don't know, of course.

But I think the assumption that the top percentile of WP is very, very good indeed is proven by two different observers. One, H. L. Mencken, was blown away by the writing ability of West Point graduates. He'd know. Good writers give good orders, and clear writing is just clear thinking plus a motor skill.

Second, private corporations who live or die on individual competencies scan all retired WP grads for powerful positions, and those in the highest reaches have done very, very well. Further, the Space program and the nuclear navy demand the very best, and the military academies have delivered. There are no Homer Simpsons on the reactor control board on boomers.

Third, unlike everyone else, the US military has a huge logistics tail because we fight around the globe with huge armies and navies. There is no Earl of Sandwich in sight. With all the opportunity for theft and profit, the US has remarkably little given the size of the thing. I'll credit Annapolis and West Point and the Air Force Academy as much as anything, because they'd be hammered first thing if mass incompetence arose.

Custer's actions are not necessarily irrational, given what he may or may not have known. He may have been misinformed by his scouts how quickly he could get to a crossing point to support Reno up north. Once stopped to observe and rethink, he may have been injured, and actions from then on are not his, nor the 7th's, but mere cerebral cortex response by an insufficiently trained unit to back away to safety. That is what I lean towards.

I can't support the Custerphile option that Custer was always on the offensive and had a great plan because he's West Point and it only failed because petty southerner Benteen and drunk Reno were petty and incompetent. Included in this are displays of tactics and maneuver that the 7th had never done and would not debut in battle. That's absurd to me.

But I can't support the supposition that a highly successful soldier is suddenly abandoned by all common sense and becomes totally stupid and incompetent, either. No cavalry officer would display his men and mounts on bad ground with no ability for effective defense nor, under fire, fight his way across worse ground to reach it.

[sfchemist]

Thank you both for presenting this discussion in a professional and dignified manner. I recently got bogged down on the other board discussing honor and respect for laws. One argument was raised about the honor of following one's own conscience instead of obeying laws. It was felt that this carried to the extreme leads to shootings like we had in Tucson---if someone doesn't like a law then just shoot the lawmakers. Then another poster changed the argument in mid-stream (his forte) by arguing about the honor of disobeying unjust laws, such as slavery. However, by that time I had left the scene as it was quickly going to lead to another fruitless argument of who said what to whom and then I'd be faced with the meaningless exercise of meandering around quotes of quotes “ad infinitum.” At times the other board leaves me with a sense of frustration with words typically twisted out of context, the context itself changed, all wrapped up and presented in a friendly, patronizing, condescending manner by one particular individual with a huge alter ego.

I obviously don't have the expertise to comment on how honor, ethics, and rational choice are taught at West Point, as my experience with military academies is non-existent. So, I'll sit back and enjoy what will probably be an interesting and educational discussion on these interesting topics.

[Dark Cloud]

There is a difference between Honor, and Dignity by Law. Where Honor rules, law does not. That said, it is still honorable to obey the law. The distinction is where and to whom the oath, implied or actual, is given.

And, in my mind, it's what we need to understand in the Middle East. I doubt anybody in Iraq has ever the nation first in his heart, because it exists as the fantasy of the British Foreign office which excelled in keeping nations at war within so all sides would pander to the Brits for support. Same in Afghanistan. Their devotion is to tribe, religious clique, family first; here, it's to the Constitution which is law. Different in England, though; their Constitution isn't law as we know it. If you saw The King's Speech, the issue of Edward VIII being able to marry Wallis Simpson was not necessarily illegal, but it was unconstitutional. That's an issue we don't have here, and freshen this for me and let's toast to that, at least.

This, of course, speaks to the difference between Honor and honor, I suppose (craftily working back to the Glossary of Terminology issue again which Fred will get to after American Idol and the 4500 piece puzzle of Justin Bieber is finished), which in turn speaks to where allegiances lie. The west strives to be a government of law with judicial systems fair to everyone, with variable success. Where Honor is reason and excuse for murder, mutilation, and forced marriage, there duels are fought and street gang ethics are in place. It's why the Mafia and various drug cartels prance under talk of 'honor' when they mean mere respect and deference based upon fear which, possibly, is all it ever meant. Honor rules in Iraq and the Middle East, and is the basis of much of the antipathy against Israel.

Ironically, this is where the PC myths collide. Then, an armed civilian population was freed from honor issues (which are forced deference by extortion) and could protect itself under the code of No Retreat, which is different than what British Common Law gives us, where we cannot strike till the back is against the wall.

Native American culture was Honor, our's was changing to law from Honor in the west. It's entirely interesting and relevant. And people ought to contribute to this.

[AZ Ranger]

William

Let me see if I am understanding the rationale choice theory. Without something like your PACE one might just focus on an immediate choice in the decision making process.

My question is that similar to tunnel vision as we use the term in Law Enforcement where you can't see anything other than your immediate focus nor how it fits into the big picture or plan?

Thanks

Steve

[montrose]

Steve,

Let me try to answer your question. I may miss your intent, though.

1. Rational Choice theory takes as a given that different actors in the same situation make similar decisions. This model was parallelled in political science by the Realism and Neo Realism schools where all significant actions in the global comunity were defined by stats, who acted in predictable manner. So ethnic groups and substate actors and NGOs were irrelevant. (That worked out real well for the USSR. They never recognized the forces that destroyed them).

My bias: Every war since WW2 has involved sub state actors. Ehnicity matters, organizations matter. So in Vietnam we imported a Catholic leadership from north Nam to rule over Buddhist peasants. We ignored the ethnic structures in large degree.

US foreign policy is full of bad decision making because we assume other states will use our decision making process.

2. Insurgency. The key to insurgencies is understanding the decision making environment of the various players. This is called constrained rationale choice theory. Understanding that you must apply different models for each player gets you back to being able to predict an organization's behavior.

Something very hard to get into military minds is to realize a G (guerrilla) is not a G. There is no typical Iraqi insurgent. The Iraqi insurgency is 100s of small groups divided by ethnicity, religion, clan, areas, etc. A friend of mine ended up running a school for every US battalion commander and CSM incoming to Iraq to explain this concept.

3. Instant decisions. As a LEO you are familiar, and have trained, in instant decision making. LEOs have to make instant decisions on man situations, not just the shoot/no shoot drill.

There is a book called Blink by Malcom Gladwell. I recommend reading it, it is likely in your local library. He examines how many of our initial instincts are correct. Gut feeling has some basis in fact. SOme people are better at this than others.

So Custer's luck involved a man quite good at feeling out a situation. This skill is great for an individual or squad leader. At higher levels of command you have to be able to make decisions in advance. Decisions must be made more than 30 seconds ahead and for situations not in your immediate area.

Am I answering your question?

William

[AZ Ranger]

Thanks William. This is good stuff to me. Does Custer rely on his quick decision making in this case without seeing the whole picture?

Steve