OK, I’m beginning to develop more detailed thoughts now as I get into Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”. I’d like to explore one aspect now. Firstly thanks to those engaging with me on a couple of linked-in forums on this. Secondly I want to steal an idea my friend Andy Gibson told me about and merge it with something I’m getting from Kahneman. It is an analogy to “types” of EOD activity and the skills sets needed, which I think match the System 1/System 2.
The analogy is this. There are two sorts of EOD response as there are two sorts of medical response. In the medical world a hugely important role is played by paramedics and nurses. They either go to scenes of accidents and have to make rapid decisions usually based on SOPs, or they are applying straightforward diagnostic skills routinely to patients. Then there are the doctors, surgeons and diagnosticians who play a different medical role. They diagnose treat and operate when the level of “judgment” allows and requires a different skill set. At an accident the challenge is keeping the accident victim alive “now” for the next few minutes and huge skill is needed to do that. But a patient suffering an exotic unknown tropical; illness or a complex brain tumour needs different skill sets applied to the problem in a different time frame. So. I’m wondering are these examples of System 1 (the nurse/paramedic) and System 2, the surgeon/diagnostician?
And in EOD I think the System 1 Nurse/paramedic style operation exists. This might be assault IED in high tempo operations, or routine predictable SOP controlled mine clearance. And the System 2 operation exists for the EOD equivalent of the surgeon/diagnostician. Here the IED may need exotic techniques to render safe, or the nature of the IED may demand a significant diagnostic process, and there is time to undertake that. The implications are that we need to recognise the boundaries and sometimes that’s really difficult. There is also an important question this raises – should we have different people to conduct System 1 and System 2 tasks or do we train people to cross the boundaries.
A quick aside. One of the diagnostic tool sets for System 2 EOD is a thing called “Tactical Design Analysis” or TDA. It’s also a skill set used in incident investigation by WIT teams and the like. I am a huge proponent of TDA, but you know what, I’ve never seen it taught systematically on any EOD training course, ever in the world, and one of my few claims is that I’ve knocked around the EOD training world quite extensively.
I’d also like to make a little clearer that these concepts of System 1 and System 2 are not new – indeed I discussed them on this blog a couple of years ago. But what Kahneman is saying is that sometimes we fool ourselves that we are using System 2 when we are in fact relying on System 1. It’s that error, or bias that I think is dangerous for bomb techs.
I think (but I’m not yet sure and I need to think some more) that there are distinctive patterns when this fault occurs, and I hope to be able to understand those patterns better and develop some suggested strategies for dealing with it. I don’t want to big this up into the biggest question facing EOD operators – it’s not. But looking back at my experience of EOD – as a student, as an operator, as a commander and as a trainer, and most importantly as a developer of technical and operational procedures I’ve always had a concern and difficulty myself at this System 1/ System 2 interface, and I think that it would benefit from some hard thought.