Every communication context has noise, which is an interference in the transmission of messages. Like context, it's important to recognize the kind noise you may be experiencing in threat assessment.
Physical Noise
Unless you're in an anechoic chamber, you're experiencing physical noise. From traffic to your building's HVAC system, there's noise all around you. White noise is that constant background that can lull the attentive into the same numbness as familiarity with one's physical context. Physical noise can interrupt the communicative process by making messages difficult to hear or inaudible. When your scene is filling with code 3 noise, one of your most critical channels for gathering information is compromised.
Semantic Noise
This is a noise of meaning. Esoteric terms like "esoteric" can cause semantic noise if we don't know the meaning of the term. Speaking a language other than the accepted language of the social and cultural context or using a vernacular apart from accepted meaning creates semantic noise. But so does using terms your subject does not understand, such as resisting arrest.
Psychological Noise
This is the voice or voices inside your head. It can be a noise of awareness or of emotion. It can be the noise of psychopathy and narcissism. It's here where we carry on a conversation apart from the one in which our mouths are engaged.
It's also where we at GuradianTactics are trying to make a change and teach background operating procedures. Psychological noise can work to our advantage, kind of a sub-routine of critical analysis while the rest of our senses gather data as we engage another person in conversation. It's a skill and it takes practice. The trick here is managing our psychological noise, our thought processes, in being able to assess more objectively. We can do this by recognizing certain barriers and perceptual influences that come into play while we're engaged in threat assessment.
