Aug 23, 2009
Synthesizing “Honest Signals,” the work of Jonathan Boyd and martial arts movies
Currently watching a lot of Shaw Brothers and reading two fascinating books. As happens when I do several things at once my brain wants to make associations and synthesize everything into some sort of unified field plan.
One of the books is about non-linguistic communication. Like body language. But tied to a research device that detects all the parts of conversation that aren’t the linguistic/word content. For example, physical distance between speakers, body posture, tone changes in the voice etc.
The book then categoizes these data points into different human social display types like influence, mimicry, activity and consistency. The influence display includes having a greater share of conversation time as well as triggering responses that are sort of old-brain stuff. One of the examples of an influence display is someone peppering another person with questions at a rate faster than a response can be given.
The other book I’m reading is about the theories of the “strategic colonel” Jonathan Boyd. He pretty much invented continuous improvement processes via the OODA loop I’m so fond of talking about.
One of the ways to overcome an adversary, according to Boyd, is to “get inside” the opfor’s OODA loop. Boyd honed this strategic method while training fighter pilots. Consider manned air to air combat a form of non-linguistic communication involving the influence display pattern.
Third, my netflix queue is jammed with Gordon Liu movies. Martial arts movies have a lot of non-linguistic communication centered on influence displays.
