Puppet Mastery

Stephen Downes-Martin, PhD

stephen.downesmartin@gmail.com

+1 401-935-4808

Puppet Mastery is the science and art of manipulating decision support systems and the perceptions of the decision makers who use them to get an outcome closer to what you believe is best for National Security.

The techniques described here are applicable to any area of decision making including political voting.

Introduction

This site provides advice to anyone faced with a decision maker who insists on using bogus decision support methods when attempting to identify a best alternative, or to rank and prioritize a list of alternative solutions or courses of action. This advice applies to business, research working groups, political staffs and committees, military staffs  and anyone or any group required to prioritize alternatives. Since electoral ballots have identical mathematical structure to group decision matrices this site is also useful for understanding large political elections.

"Decision Support Systems" for the purposes of this site include but are not limited to Course of Action (COA) Comparison Matrices, Multi-Criteria Decision Matrices, Surveys, Voting Schemes, Negotiation and Contract Analysis, and Group Consensus Methods.

From the navigation panel you may access the "Book Shelf" containing references to essential reading materials on the subject, the "Calculators" page containing links to online calculators for different voting and decision making methods, and the "Notes" page containing short informational papers on Puppet Mastery topics.

Why Do You Need to Know this Stuff?

You will be, or are, on staffs required to compare, prioritize and recommend a "best" from among a set of alternative solutions or courses of action, for complicated high risk and high pay-off situations with a high cost of getting it wrong. After the study and assessment of information and data has taken place, it is often the case that the members of the staff do not agree on the interpretation of the information and thus do not come to consensus on which is the best alternative, or more generally on the best ranking of the alternatives.

This is because serious problems at the operational or strategic level depend (in part or completely) on qualitative factors best assessed by professional subjective judgement. Therefore for even a perfect Staff analysis two different, rational and competent decision makers may rationally choose different alternatives using their professional judgement, each decision maker preferring a different mix of the advantages and disadvantages that are attached to each alternative. Rarely is there an objectively "best" alternative, only what is "preferred by the decision maker", and we have to rely on the skills, experience, intelligence and ethics of that decision maker, i.e. on the decision maker's character.

What is the Problem?

Many Staffs are directed by their leadership to recommend a single alternative as a "best one" or to prioritize a list (which implies a "best one").  In addition some leaders desire "arithmetic justification" for their decision, and are tempted to use various mathematical or arithmetically based matrix methods. The first problem is that quantifying the qualitative factors simply makes those numbers subjective (not objective) and hides that fact, and the second problem is that most of the mathematical methods popular among senior leaders and their staffs are based on junk arithmetic and therefore produce completely unreliable results. The fact that an unreliable method will occasionally provide a result that satisfies the decision maker does not make using the method advisable, professional or acceptable. 

What is Your Duty?

If you are a member of Staff

For problems involving quantitative factors it is your ethical and professional duty to understand any proposed bogus numeric methods and what is wrong with them, to advise your boss and colleagues not to use them, and instead either to use text based "Advantages & Disadvantages" matrix methods or explicitly take account of the specific pathologies of the numeric approach being used. Note that the latter is time consuming. If however they refuse to take your advice and insist on using a bogus method, then it is your ethical duty to game the method they insist on using to get the solution you believe your analysis indicates is best for national security as high up the final ranking list as possible. After all, it is not your ethical duty to promote an alternative you do not believe is the best one. Later Puppet Mastery Notes will explain how to do this for various decision support methods.

If you are the Decision Maker

It is your ethical and professional duty to listen to the professional judgment of those members of your staff who are expert at numeric methods if you insist on using a numeric method. If you do not listen, your decision will be manipulated without you realizing it or it will be completely suspect.