In this month’s Smithsonian Magazine, former Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council Gregory F. Treverton writes about an interesting distinction between approaching a situation as a puzzle or a mystery. A puzzle is something that requires additional information to solve, such as how many warheads the USSR had and what were their capabilities. A mystery, on the other hand, is something in which the truth is present but obscured, often by too much information, such as the 9/11 plot. He notes that solving a crime is a puzzle, but preventing a crime is a mystery.

Approaching conflict can be viewed similarly: I see preventing a conflict from breaking out as a mystery, trying to determine what of the available information can help diffuse the rising conflict. But, much like solving a crime once it has been committed, once the fighting breaks out, it becomes more like a puzzle. This is in large part because in an active conflict, national dialog narrows: it becomes focused on the fighting (and rationalizations for it) and not the underlying issues.

To understand why there is fighting, it is necessary to look beyond the battlefield to the inter- and intra-group dynamics that caused and continue to support the underlying conflict. My first rule of conflict analysis is, “A war is never about what the two sides say it’s about.” And a successful peace strategy cannot be created without understanding what drives the conflict. That means gathering information that may not be readily available.

Making peace successfully, much like making war successfully, requires intelligence gathering.  That doesn’t mean peacemakers need to be (or hire) spies, although on-the-ground infomation gathering has been a useful tool in my work.  But it does mean that we cannot solve a conflict by relying on what the combatants and/or the media tell us.  We’ve got to do our own research, sifting information available not only from combatants and media, but from eyewitnesses and academics.  For we must create a paradigm that fully explains the underlying conflict before we can ever hope to end the fighting.

(Cross-posted at http://asymptoticlife.com/2007/06/08/analysing-conflict-puzzle-vs-mystery.aspx.)

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How corn-based ethanol can lead to starvation and environmental disaster

H/T Climate and Capitalism

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More from “Confronting the climate change crisis”

There are three major barriers against capitalism achieving the goal of reducing co2 emissions.

Changing from fossil fuels to other energy sources will require massive spending.

Such spending will not increase profits and thus will be anathema to most businesses. They will only do it when forced to by conditions or governments.

The CO2 reductions must be global.

If the reductions aren’t global, mandated, and enforceable, then little progress will be made, as companies will just move to whatever country has the most lax rules. Shutting down a few coal-burning plants in the US will have little effect if China build 500 new ones.

The change must be all-encompassing.

This is the kicker. Huge restructuring will be needed. Entire industries will vanish, to be replaced by new ones. You think the coal industry will go away quietly? Not a chance.

The problem is rooted in the very nature of capitalist society, which is made up of thousands of corporations, all competing for investment and for profits. There is no “social interest” in capitalism — only thousands of separate interests that compete with each other.

That’s the real problem. Under the predatory nature of capitalism, cooperation doesn’t exist, and cooperation on a global scale is precisely what is needed to stop global warming.

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Facebook. It’s everything MySpace wants to be but isn’t. Chris Pirillo lists good reasons why.

It’s easy to use, powerful, with an open platform. One nice feature for new users, it’ll check your online email accounts for Facebook users, then add them as friends. It makes MySpace look like the dull, kludgy, closed platform that it is. Yes, I’m late to the party on this one, had about given up on social networking sites since the software was often ponderous and dumb. But no more.

There’s a reason Facebook rejected a billion dollar offer. Maybe they saw something much bigger and more viral. As an example, music sharing service iIlike recently created an add-on to Facebook, and are now signing up signing up 300,000 new accounts a day. That’s the powerful of the open platform that Facebook provides.

Here’s my Facebook entry. Add me as a friend!

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