Schneier on Security

echo • March 6, 2024 1:08 PM

@Clive

I note you are slowly updating your model. What you are saying is partially technically correct and a touch problematic.

I find a broader multi-domain approach is better and it must anticipate none criminal behaviour.

• Male dominated institutions have resulted in medical misogyny where medical studies historically almost exclusively used men as a model because it was simpler and cheaper.
• Equality is creating a situation where more women are present in governance and the workplace and society.
• Both of these factors will evolve culture, and practice, and implementations.

Before everything went stupid when the Brexit referendum was announced governance was a key priority of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It’s known that like attracts like and this reduced diversity of boards which also had an impact on policies and practice, and broader business environment and culture. In theory it would help mitigate this:

These deficiencies are the underlying cause for the “Dark Pentad” sociopathic behaviours. Untill recently it was mistakenly believed to be “male criminal traits” only effecting around 1% of the population. That is very far from true, they are found about equally in men and women and in reality represent somewhere between 15-25% of the population.

If you want a very simplistic mathematical model look up game theory around the likes of “Hawks and Doves”.

Roughly the behaviours of authoritarians and authoritarian followers are split. Whilst the former are well studied the latter are very much less so. Importantly the behaviours of men “appear” to present differently than women. This is actually due to the fact the studies were mostly flawed as they were carried out on convicts in male prisons (which is not exactly representative of the general population).

I ran slam bang into a similar none psycho none criminal scenario yesterday in a meeting by people who on paper should know better. It was a situation I was aware of before it developed and it developed fairly predictably. I wasn’t aware of all the facts beforehand but am now. It’s almost a case study in what not to do. Still, an interesting if unpleasant exercise.

• The behaviours of men and women are different although they both sit on a similar underlying model. Outcomes can be but are not necessarily the same.

• It’s a neuro-psycho-social stack of two overlapping bellcurves with different weighting. Both bellcurves have perception blindspots. Both men and women can view the same scene and perceive different things. It’s a bit more complicated then that because the perception can effect the bias. There is also hidden data which effects the dynamic and not just that. Processing of revealed data can be effected by perception and bias.

• All of the above can be effected by a preloaded state of mind.

This was actually a background subject matter with various bodies who failed to come up to professional and published standards. Ugh that was a headache. I need to decompress and make up my mind whether I want to write up a report. I’ve got three key recommendations. It’s really annoying because the standards are there. Of course Madame is coming out smelling of roses.

Model failure points:

Aggression conceals behaviour.
None comformancy can create aggression-manipulation loops.
Multiple victims can exist.

This requires:

De-escalatory fact finding.
Clearer category definitions.
Don’t cause a dialogue process break by confusing immediate wants with outcomes.

It’s interesting see how fluffy things get at the ground level and how personalities and emotions and points of view can utterly collapse standards. I have some old data which was very predictive of behaviour. I have a suspicion its related to gang behaviour which has had a persist and worrying increase along with increased participation of young women. Of course, the Met is misogynistic from top to bottom which doesn’t help.

I don’t have any bigger conclusions but I’m giving the new paper a bit of squint. I don’t doubt the broader indication. There’s just something which doesn’t fit right with me. As I have previously indicated the precursors get my attention more. Without saying little boys are made of slugs and snails and girls are made of all things nice, which is sexist, I would be and am very careful of latching onto this paper because of it’s misogynistic undertones and convenient lack of context and history.