ORB Visualization
(soon)
Communication from one
of the two organizers of the
Jan 21-23 Friends of
the Intelligence Community (FOIC) meeting
at NIST, and extended
analysis.
To a future (8/27/04) discussion
on this same topic à
2/2/2004 11:00 AM
Cynthia,
You have today communicated to me the following:
<quote>
"Paul,
Kindly request you refrain from sending me more emails at this time. I have more than enough reading material.
Frankly I am appalled at how you have attributed intentions and
motivations to our FOIC meeting, which had no intentions other than to create
relationships and share information. Your summaries of the meetings, and your
interpretations of what Cognitive Engineering is, along with your published
statements on what "most" people at the conference felt, are more
than a little difficult to swallow.
Again, I respectfully request to receive no more emails from you or the
portal.
Thank you,
Cindy D"
</quote>
The problem is not so much of motivation, but outcomes.
The amount of reading materials that you have is not relevant. And the notion that some time in the future is better is also not relevant either. There are specific memetic mechanisms that are unconsciously used to “hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil”.
Part of the problem, is that no one in the defense community has time to do the science correctly. A type of common groupthink exists.
However, if you do not want to participate in this continuing discussion to the group, then do so publicly. Go on record as not being interested in talking about the issues that I, and several others, raised in the Friends of the Intelligence Community’s meeting.
Let the entire group known that there is a discussion about alternative viewpoints in regard to the Hick and Associates position paper that more hard cognitive science funding should be given, to Hicks and Associates, and then let people opt in or opt out.
You have acted to exclude me from future discussion on this. I respectfully suggest that this type of action by an officer of the Air Force is not proper in our democracy.
Do you know that Brian Moon, a Hicks and Associates sub-contractor, has removed me from his mailing list so that I would not be part of any future FOIC meetings or communications.
There is a problem that more than one of the participants at this NIST hosted Friends of the Intelligence Community conferences wants to air. More than one presentation was on this problem.
A public record that you are removing yourself from this conversation is made here in these bead threads.
I have not addressed everyone in the FOIC workshop - but at one point I may make this record known to the entire group. (As one would assume is a citizen's right.). My group is developing a poll, and this could settle the issue about what was and what was not discussed. Are you willing to send this polling instrument out to all of the participants of the FOIC conference?
I am also calling for a specific Congressional investigation in to how NIMA’s NDMD (Glass Box) program and DARPA TIA funds where expended in 2001, 2002, and 2003.
There is a notion of free speech here, as well as a search for truthful disclosures as to how the business consultants are actually distorting the assembled scientist’s opinions about the preferred R&D expenditures on cognitive engineering.
I am making the case, publicly, that the failures in intelligence are largely due to process. This case about the “systemic” causes of failure is done as a conjecture, because ultimately I do not know. The specific information that would allow someone to know is kept distance from public analysis.
The American public is in the same position as I am, in that we have no way to look as see if there is fraud and waste occurring at DARPA.
Your professional responsibilities might have something to do with understanding what others are conjecturing, not simply myself. Your presence as a host and a moderator of the FOIC meeting was as a representative of the US Armed Services. Is this not true? You are the co-author of the Hicks and Associates White Paper, is this not true?
In any case, you were a co-sponsor of the FOIC workshop and served on the business meeting panel, held during the last day. In the “business meeting”, the White Paper was discussed, and it was revealed that the purpose of the meeting was to indorse this paper. Many in the conference are those who might receive funding in the future and whose airplane tickets and lodging Hicks and Associates paid for. Brian Moon’s remarks to me was that if I expected funding that I should not bring up the fact that most of the scientists oppose hard cognitive engineering and are trying, unsuccessfully, to move the funding towards a soft cognitive engineering paradigm where evolutionary psychology rather than engineering would be more dominate.
My conversation with you has been polite. I am attempting to understand what is not understood.
1) Why is it that you do not have a background in the fields of scholarly inquiry that I, and others, cite?
2) Why some much of the software is not used after being developed.
What are you and the organizing of this conference attempting to hid the fact that the White Paper is not supported by the majority of attending scientists.
I have made my argument very clearly:
http://www.bcngroup.org/python3/fortysix.htm
and placed this as a conjecture.
How do your know that Klein Associates, Brian Moon your co-organizer of this conference, was not under specific business instruction from his primary contractors Hick & Associates to develop a requirements document based on the circulated White Paper on “cognitive engineering”?
Was this document discussed in the conference except in the ending business meeting, attended by less than 50% of the attendees? Was the White Paper used to indicate that the assembled scientists supported the extreme type of hard cognitive engineering proposals that are advocated by the cognitive systems group at DARPA?
There may become a specific documentation of this White Papers future history. I do not know. I know what I know, and I know that others know what they know.
I conjecture that there is such an instruction by Hicks and Associates to Brian Moon. In any case, the problem is not intent or motivation by specific individuals or companies. The problem is outcomes and the reinforcement of groupthink.
Scientists have a right to try to understand what is going on with the funding decisions. Our effort cannot be confused with intent to harm anyone. We have the responsibility to talk about what we experience.
I personally have been excluded from employment (by specific pressure from Hicks & Associates made on the management of the company I was senior scientist for in 2002). A second person, one of the presenters, Sara (*) has a similar experience with the same entities. Additional testimony can be given by Joe (*), an employee of Army Intelligence (INSCOM).
The BCNGroup’s principled position is that there is massive funding by government processes that are not review able. This is unreasonable when public money is being used, and when there is such great need to get the science correct. The hiding of knowledge about contracts is labeled “in the cause of National Security”.
Is this “National Security “ label a systemic fraud, by the government/contractor community against the American public? Do you and others who are part of the systems, because of the groupthink that has developed over the decades, not see this fraud? Do you get punished professionally for seeing some aspects of this fraud? When you retire from Air Force Intelligence in five months, will you go to work for Hicks and Associates?
A Congressional investigation is needed, so that “We the People” will know what is the truth and what is not the truth.
Do you not wish to see?