Irrational, or Rational Dynamics?

The Heisenberg Principle of Observation

1. Every event is changed by the observation of that event.
2. The momentum of an event is changed by observation.

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Actor–observer asymmetry

Actor–observer asymmetry (also actor–observer bias) explains the errors that one makes when forming attributions about the behavior of others (Jones & Nisbett, 1971). When people judge their own behavior, and they are the actor, they are more likely to attribute their actions to the particular situation than to a generalization about their personality. Yet when an observer is explaining the behavior of another person (the actor), they are more likely to attribute this behavior to the actors’ overall disposition rather than to situational factors. This frequent error shows the bias that people hold in their evaluations of behavior (Miller & Norman, 1975). Because people are better acquainted with the situational (external) factors affecting their own decisions, they are more likely to see their own behavior as affected by the social situation they are in. However, because the situational effects of anothers' behavior are less accessible to the observer, observers see the actor's behavior as influenced more by the actor's overall personality. The actor-observer asymmetry is a component of theultimate attribution error.

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The Principles of Non Locality

• Related objects affect each other regardless of their locality and regardless of the distance between them.
• Particles influence each others' momentum (or action) even when separated by vast distance.
• One particle's momentum affects the momentum (or action) of other particles. (Once particles come into contact, they continue to affect each another, regardless of the space or time between them).

Spatial and Temporal Non Locality

Temporal non locality relates to the time factor between particles or events. Spatial non locality applies to distance. Events, particles or momentum in the past can not be changed. However, events particles or momentum in the future can be changed.

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Pareto principle

The term "Pareto principle" can also refer to Pareto efficiency.

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; Pareto developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.

It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., "80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients". Mathematically, the 80-20 rule is roughly followed by a power law distribution (also known as a Pareto distribution) for a particular set of parameters, and many natural phenomena have been shown empirically to exhibit such a distribution.

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Anti-war movement

• Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. They exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
• Psychological warfare: They used myriad "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.
• Legal harassment: They abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.
• Illegal force: They conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations. The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.

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What are the basic principles of hostage negotiation?

The foremost principle: Make the hostage taker think.

I'll pause here to provide a disclaimer - I wasn't ever directly involved in hostage negotiation and wasn't trained in it, but I had a training officer, a squad-mate and an officer I used to go to church with who were. If I have an opportunity to pull any of their ears on the subject I'll improve my answer, but at this point I'll give you my observations for now.

To begin, let's deconstruct a hostage situation to its basic elements:

• The suspect needs/desires something unattainable by legitimate means (money, influence, rhetoric).
• In order to attain this something, the suspect needs some type of leverage.
• The suspect may have convinced him/herself that the need/desire is worth risking a lengthy prison sentence or their life in order to attain.
• He/she may be convinced nobody cares about their best interests.
• The suspect may have convinced him/herself there are no legitimate options.
• If so, unlawful options are now up for consideration.
• The ideal leverage would be easily accessible, manipulable, mobile, and carry a high inherent or ascribed value to someone.
• The safety of the leverage could be exchanged for the unattainable thing.

When you look at it this way, a human being is the obvious choice in this situation. Now, nobody sits down and works this out on paper - in fact, this whole process may skip steps and happen in the space of two seconds - but these are the underlying dynamics of most any hostage situation.

The problem is that these dynamics aren't rational - they are the products of acute tunnel vision on the part of the suspect(s), who are so focused on what they're trying to attain that they disregard the long view of their own well-being (and obviously that of their hostage). The job of a hostage negotiator is to highlight, engender critical thought about, and disrupt the above bullet points in the mind of the hostage taker.

This can be extremely difficult, though, because there are more often than not exacerbating factors playing into hostage situations. Most of these are not the grand standoffs in front of the bank with marble columns you see in the movies - they most often feature suspects who are drunk, high, or have cognitive deficiencies of some kind (which tend to be a bit more nuanced than the narcissistic psychopathy you see on the big screen).

So what are some tactics used in an effort to address the above issues?

• Establishment of Communication. The sophistication here can vary from IRC all the way down to yelling through a wall. Ideally, though, since you're likely in a barricade situation with no eye contact or body language to work with, you'll want to use a phone. That way little is lost in translation, you don't have the ambiguity of text to work with, and you can engage in:
• Analysis of Auditory Clues. In addition to constructing the message (which I'll get to in a moment), the negotiator needs to be taking notes about what he or she is hearing and making inferences based on those sounds. A faint whimper in the background may mean the hostage is gagged (but that they're alive). A collective outburst from multiple hostages may mean a hostage taker is brandishing a weapon or harming a hostage. A crack in the hostage taker's voice or a muffled sniffle may mean they're cracking under the pressure and looking for a way out.
• Establishment of Rapport. It's extremely likely that the hostage taker feels that nobody ever listens to them or takes them seriously - it's the negotiator's job to be that person. A negotiator needs to be able to summon seeming empathy for even the most outlandish complaints and lend apparent credence to even the most preposterous manifestos. This may require:
• Taking the Role of an Arbitrator. The negotiator needs to give the hostage taker the impression that they're just a communication facilitator between them and the police massed outside. This can often be achieved by creative use of the second person: "Listen, I know where you're coming from here - but all they know is that you're holding people against their will. I need to be able to convince them you're not an unreasonable person, so why don't you…" This verbal sidling up to the suspect obscures the fact that the negotiator is not only not on their side, but is actually prepared to talk the suspect into a position to be killed if it becomes necessary.
• Introducing More Options Into the Situation. Like I discussed above, it's likely that the suspect thinks this is the only option - that they're painted into a corner and have no other recourse. A negotiator must begin to dismantle this idea and remind the hostage taker of the bevy of options available to them, and to explain in turn why they're all better than prolonging the standoff or harming anyone involved. Related to this is:
• Downplaying the Consequences of this Event. The negotiator needs to begin laying the foundation for the argument that the situation can only truly be resolved if the hostages are freed and discussions can resume in a situation with lower stakes. The negotiator may wax optimistic about legal options, circumstances being taken into consideration, preference being shown for not harming hostages, and so on. These are likely misdirections at best, if not outright lies - the negotiator doesn't actually care about the suspect's motives and wouldn't use pull with the prosecutor even if he had it; the prosecutor doesn't soften charges for relative good behavior during a felony - there just aren't any additional charges added. And the suspect is very likely going to prison for quite some time - no using the Shaggy Defense here. The negotiator must obscure all of this, though, by suggesting an outcome of everybody amicably sitting around a table and coming to a grand meeting of the minds where the suspect is finally understood and allowed to go his or her merry way.
• Managing Quid Pro Quo Effectively. Throughout the incident, the hostage taker will be looking to exert his or her leverage most effectively. A negotiator needs to devise ways of getting the hostage takers to spend this currency in ways that seemingly benefit them but are actually of little consequence. For instance, a hostage taker may demand that "the police back off." A negotiator will likely remind the hostage taker that they can't just leave with innocent people inside, but that if he or she will release a hostage they will do something; that something will be unique to the situation, but it won't be anything that diminishes response readiness - it will be inconsequential window dressing that is painted by the negotiator as an advantage to the hostage taker.
• Patiently Keeping Emotional Equilibrium. Hostage situations can end peacefully or violently; if a suspect's emotions get out of control, they can get very violent very quickly, sometimes just in an effort to be taken seriously. The longer a negotiator can keep a suspect relatively calm, the more likely a suspect's needs (food, bathroom, sleep) are to hasten an end to the standoff. Multiple suspects obviously complicate this equation, but in my experience these are crimes of opportunity and emotional passion, not coordinated events between multiple people.
• Maintaining Emotional Distance. In the act of (seemingly) empathizing, a negotiator needs to keep the mission front and center - as I alluded to earlier... This is a known dynamic going in - in fact, one of the interview questions for the negotiator position in my department dealt with whether the candidate had a moral objection... - but it takes a degree of detachment that is very uncommon.

Again, these are my thoughts on the matter viewing it from the second degree, mainly from the standpoint of the actual negotiator; there are obviously other considerations that the SWAT team and perimeter officers have to make, which I won't delve into for reasons of maintaining tactical superiority.

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Hostage Negotiations

A hostage negotiation happens when a criminal or deranged person uses innocent people as bargaining chips.

About hostage situations

This can happen in a range of circumstances, including:

• A desperate mother who barricades herself in with her own child.
• A bank robber who is disturbed on the job.
• Terrorists who take foreign nationals.

Thus:

• There may be one or more hostages of any age
• The situation may be planned or ad hoc.
• There may be one or more hostage-takers, who are usually armed.

In the more extreme hostage situation, the hostage-taker has several choices:

1. Kill hostages or release them.
2. Kill themselves by their own hand or in a shoot-out.
3. Negotiate a way out (often desired, seldom possible).
4. Give themselves up.

Fortunately for most of us, we never meet these situations. Fortunately for those who become hostages, there are professionals whose job it is to get them safely released.

 

First arrival

Police will on a hostage scene before a negotiator and may be trained to use the ICER concept.

Isolate

Isolate the hostage zone, creating an outer perimeter and keeping keep onlookers beyond the police safety line.

Contain

Limit the mobility of the hostage taker to the smallest area possible (the inner perimeter) and prevent them from observing police activity.

Evaluate

Evaluate the original information provided, which may be from the hostage taker or a representative, or perhaps a member of the public.

Without causing any escalation, gather as much additional information as possible, including the number of hostage takers and hostages, their appearance, weapons and so on.

Assess the threat and estimate the resources that may be needed to handle the situation.

Report

Report all available information gathered, including on the hostage takers and hostages, events, weapons, zones, routes and so on, informing other officers and the chain of command.

Assessing the situation

Preventing early harm

The first job of the hostage negotiator is to assure safety. When they arrive on the scene, there may be armed police, high emotion and general confusion in which hostages may get hurt.

Their immediate task is to get a swift briefing from the officer in charge and to ensure that any actions by the police do not lead to hostages being harmed. The police (or whatever authority is in charge) may have a high interest in capturing the hostage-taker, whilst the negotiator is only interested in the safety of the hostages.

Getting organized

The next step is to organize communications with the hostage-takers. Hostage-takers usually want this, to make their demands known. If the negotiation looks like it could take some time (which may be days or more), then a permanent position must be found.

There may also be covert monitoring, for example with window lasers and hidden cameras. Everything that provides information is used, including relatives, friends and other sources.

Finding information

The negotiator will want to find as much information about the situation as possible, including: 

• The numbers and names of the hostage-takers.
• What they are demanding and what they really want.
• Their emotional state and how close they are to harming hostages.
• The numbers and general health of hostages.

Some of this information may be available from the authorities. Other will be gained from the hostage-takers. In the early conversation with them, which is very much about listening, the negotiators may find out much of this. Some other information may take a while to extract.

The hostage-takers will want to make their demands known, but may be very cagey with other information as they fear deception and attack.

The police will also want all information, including the location of everyone in the situation, in case an armed assault is required.

Getting close

A critical process used in many hostage negotiations is to get close to them, to build bonds and gain their trust.

Creating normality

Whilst there may be chaos and panic on all sides, the negotiator first seeks to create calm. They talk in a calm voice and do a great deal of listening. In particular, they seek to establish a sense of normality amongst the emotion, a space in which the hostage-takers can talk with the negotiator as reasonable people, much as you would talk with any normal person on the phone.

The negotiator is always there and always ready to talk. They will listen to everything and will create an even keel on which reasonable negotiation can be conducted.

Creating humanity

Within the normality, the negotiator listens uncritically to the hostage-taker, accepting them as they are and creating a sense of humanity. From that humanity, they then can extend to discussing the hostages, how they are bearing up and whether they are unwell.

Developing authority

The negotiator may also seek to position them self as an authority figure. This can start by being authoritative on behalf of the hostage-taker, for example in getting them communications and food. This may later turn to being authoritative with the hostage-taker, which can be a tricky and dangerous activity as the hostage-taker wants to be in charge. Authoritative work may thus be done in particular circumstances. If the negotiators can establish this relationship, they may be able to direct the hostage-taker's actions more effectively.

Developing the scene

Once a relationship is established, the negotiator can seek to move the situation forward.

Small steps

Progress may be in small steps, as trust and relationships continue to be built. Food and medicine may be given. Conversation with a hostage may be requested. Everyday chat creates normality.

Depending on the urgency of the situation, the negotiator may seek to speed up or slow down the talking. If hostages are hurt, then speed may be needed. If the hostage-takers are requiring transport or other things that would lead to more problems, then it may be more prudent to insert delays, such as saying you are 'looking into it'.

Managing stress

Stress and tension will continue throughout the negotiation in some way. The negotiator may deliberately manage this, reducing stress to create hostage safety, but also possibly increasing stress to wear down the hostage-taker.

Exploring solutions

Talks will eventually get around to what can be done to resolve the situation. The negotiator may ask the hostage-taker for their thoughts and may offer possibilities themselves. Of course the safe release of the hostages is always an important element.

The goal of the hostage taker may be simply to escape and may be for publicity or other gain. If this is not acceptable to the authorities, for example release of a captured terrorist leader, then other alternatives must be found.

Releasing the hostages

Wearing them down

Sometimes, just talk, talk, talk is enough to wear down the hostage-takers and for them to give themselves up. High emotions do not last for ever and are followed by exhaustion. The ideal negotiation ends with the hostage-taker agreeing to let everyone go.

Releasing the weak

Depending on the number of people taken hostage, a release of children, old people and those with medical conditions may be negotiated. It allows the hostage-takers to show that they are not 'bad' people after all and also rids them of the problems of illness and wailing children.

Concessions for people

People may also be exchanged for various concessions, from food to publicity. When something is given to the hostage-takers, especially if it is on their list of demands, then a concession may be requested in return, with the ultimate concession of hostage release.

The final assault

It is a very delicate balance for the negotiator when no clear exchange can be found. Whilst they are seeking to create exchange, the negotiator must also find the point to minimize total harm.

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Colombian Hostage Release: Former Valle del Cauca Politician Sigifredo Lopez

cooperation

co·op·er·a·tion [koh-op-uh-rey-shuh n]

noun

1. an act or instance of working or acting together for a commonpurpose or benefit; joint action.
2. more or less active assistance from a person, organization, etc.:We sought the cooperation of various civic leaders.
3. willingness to cooperate: to indicate cooperation.
4. Economics. the combination of persons for purposes ofproduction, purchase, or distribution for their joint benefit:producers' cooperation; consumers' cooperation.
5. Sociology. activity shared for mutual benefit.

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Robert Wright: The logic of non-zero-sum progress

 

An issue's definition can only be expressed within a specific language framework. The variety of the chosen language framework defines the size and the content of the population of solutions able to be expressed, comprehended and applied for resolving that issue.

If we measure the effectiveness of the various language frameworks in terms of their ability to resolve issues while retaining peace, friendship and prosperity, then, the most effective language framework seems to be that language framework ofανθρωπιά and θεοσέβεια.

History teaches us that, when societies are being governed within a low variety language framework, then, men, families and nations may become hostages or quasi hostages.

Coupling a low variety language framework with decision sub-systems may be a combination for catastrophe.

Combining a high variety language framework with a large network of humane relationships may be a combination for gaining non-violently, freedom, peace, friendship and prosperity.

Greek soil may have a rather peculiar property. If and when it is irrigated by the thin and delightful air of freedom, this soil may, somehow, lead the footsteps of any respectful guest towards mastering the ministry of resolving the language's undecidability. By this way, the soil which has been nurturing civilization for more that 2.500 years, is the one which may provide the necessary means, for anyone to become as ανθρωπινός as he wishes him to be; for anyone to become as θεοσεβής as he wishes him to be.

If and when, men, families and nations decide that they wish to live peacefully, friendly and prosperously, without having to rely on exercising violence upon innocent and defenseless human beings, then, they may choose the rational dynamics of ανθρωπιά and θεοσέβεια.

I Am One Greece #onegreece

P.S.:

1. I dedicate this article on my disguise for violence and hostage taking, despite their direct or quasi, form and their distinct or collective scale. By globally adopting rational dynamics for resolving the various issues of our civilization we may be able to eliminate both violence as well as the act of making human beings, direct or quasi, hostages.

2. The market, a holy temple, a school, a museum, a monastery, a parliament etc, all those different places are manifesting the variety of our material surrounding. And they are all quasi signs of our corresponding duties; quasi signs of our most suitable and appropriate behavior and attitude. All of them are creative opportunities for our kindness and for our wisdom, to dictate the content of the spatial and the temporal non locality, of our fellow human beings.

Note: photos taken from here, here and here.