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Comment by truth on March 22, 2014 at 4:12am

Thought police? DARPA wants to know how stories influence human mind, actions

By Layer 8

Created Feb 10 2011 - 9:39am

 

Since it sounds like a not-so-basic- science fiction script, you won't be surprised  that the scientific masterminds [1] at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are behind it. 

DARPA in a nutshell wants to know about how stories or narratives or whatever might like to call them influence human behavior.  To this end, DARPA is hosting a workshop called "Stories, Neuroscience and Experimental Technologies (STORyNET): Ana... [2]," on Feb. 28^th [3] to discuss the topic. 

More cool news: The weirdest, wackiest and stupidest sci/tech stories of 2010 [4] 

"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. "Ascertaining exactly what function stories enact, and by what mechanisms they do so, is a necessity if we are to effectively analyze the security phenomena shaped by stories. Doing this in a scientifically respectable manner requires a working theory of narratives, an understanding of what role narratives play in security contexts, and examination of how to best analyze stories-decomposing them and their psychological impact systematically."

According to DARPA, STORyNET has three goals:

1. To survey narrative theories. These empirically informed theories should tell us something about the nature of stories: what is a story? What are its moving parts? Is there a list of necessary and sufficient conditions it takes for a stimulus to be considered a story instead of something else? Does the structure and function of stories vary considerably across cultural contexts or is there a universal theory of story?

2. To better understand the role of narrative in security contexts. What role do stories play in influencing political violence and to what extent? What function do narratives serve in the process of political radicalization and how do they influence a person or group's choice of means (such as violence) to achieve political ends? How do stories influence bystanders' response to conflict? Is it possible to measure how attitudes salient to security issues are shaped by stories?

3. To survey the state of the art in narrative analysis and decomposition tools

Comment by Sweettina2 on February 16, 2011 at 12:45am

You arent crazy, sometimes I think I am too.  You head down one of millions of rabbit holes and it seems it never ends.  Just more corruption at every turn.

Comment by Ongarou on February 15, 2011 at 11:01pm

I dont know anything anymore. It seems that truth is never revealed, and when you think you found it, you discover something else that conflicts with it. The question then becomes what do you believe. Who is right and who is wrong? Am I just a crazy person or is the world really turning inside out.