NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/bit/listserv/csgl/2036

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-03 | 9.3 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!lll-winken!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!paladin.american.edu!auvm!VAXF.COLORADO.EDU!POWERS_W
From: [e-mail] (William T. Powers)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Subject: Misc responses
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 3 Jan 93 18:11:08 GMT
Sender: "Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet)" <[e-mail]>
Lines: 193
Comments: Gated by [e-mail]
X-Envelope-to: [e-mail]
X-VMS-To: @CSG
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

[From Bill Powers (930103.1000)]

Dag Forssell (930103.0110) --

Your long discussion of prescriptive principles has a lot of
interesting points in it, but it makes me feel a bit the way I
did in grade school when people were always giving me
descriptions of how I should be. I was sometimes willing to
listen, but right at all the crucial points there were always
words that told me that the rules would mean anything the rule-
giver wanted them to mean. Consider:

>An effective person develops a good mental map of the world.
>An effective person develops a reasoned, legitimate set of
>wants. An effective person balances control between self and
>others.

How can I tell if my mental map of the world is a "good" one? Who
gets to decide whether it's good?

Who decides whether a set of wants is "reasoned" or "legitimate?"

How much control of me vs others is considered (and by whom?)
"balanced?" What should the balance be? 90-10? 10-90? 50-50? 45-
55?

>An effective person perceives data accurately and chooses
>perceptions with great care.

Who decides whether a perception of data is accurate or biased?
How does a person go about choosing perceptions? This implies
that there are lots of perceptions lying about, and that we sort
of look them over and decide carefully on the best one.

>An effective person is attentive and sensitive to differences
>between perceptions and corresponding wants.

Isn't this true of ineffective persons too? Does anyone work in a
different way than by being sensitive (to varying degrees) to the
difference between perceptions and wants? Is maximum error
sensitivity always what is wanted?

>An effective person chooses from a range of options to select
>one most appropriate for the situation.

What was the range of options for the wording of this sentence
from which you chose, and how did you discover that this was the
most appropriate one for the situation? What was the situation?
I think that people very seldom do this, or need to.

>An effective person uses resources to function with adequate
>effort.

How much effort is "adequate?" What are "resources?"
  >An effective person directs the action so that it has a strong
>effect on the actual variable selected for attention.

I agree with this. But does this mean that if you're directing
your actions so they have only a weak effect on the variable
selected for attention, all you have to do is notice this and
redirect your actions? And if that's all it takes, why haven't
you already done it?

>An effective person recognizes or anticipates disturbances and
>adjusts minor wants as required in time to withstand the effect
>without loss of control.

Anticipating disturbances is neither necessary nor sufficient for
effective control. In fact, control systems don't have to sense
or anticipate the causes of disturbances at all. Sometimes
anticipating perceivable disturbances can improve control. It can
never substitute for control.
-----------------------------------------------------
The basic problem I see with these prescriptions is that they
boil behavior down to a single and not very informative measure:
"effectiveness." This is similar to characterizing people in
terms of a single number called "intelligence." It also begs the
question, "Effectiveness for WHAT?" For achieving personal
satisfaction? For the achieving the goals of a manufacturing
concern? For being a psychotherapist? For winning a war? For
getting away with a bank robbery?

I spent of couple of years of my youth in pursuit of a state of
being called "clear." Being clear meant, in Dianetics, that you
were a perfect person, with no hangups, no inner conflict,
complete eidetic recall of your whole life, and knowledge of
exactly whom to blame for all your problems (other than
yourself).

It may be understandable that I draw back from positing a Perfect
Control System Hierarchy to which all good PCT advocates aspire,
and which, if they just follow all the right rules, they can
become. What follows that is a Committee which decides whether
you have met all the requirements and can be certified Perfect,
or else inform you of your remaining shortcomings and recommend
treatment for them (and perhaps require it). The members of the
Committee, naturally, have already certified each other.

And of course on the way to the shining goal, all the aspirants
will be criticising each other for not choosing adequate
perceptions, for not balancing their control properly, for
perceiving data inaccurately, for having illegitimate wants, and
so on. Somehow that sounds to me just like what is already going
on in most of the world.

Do I really have until 2030 (age 104) to live? Or is that just
when you predict that PCT will be overthrown by a better idea?
----------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Cziko (930103.0240 GMT) --
A very nice implementation of Rick's experiment. I'm sure that
demonstrating it is much simpler than explaining it in words.

Thinking about your description of what happens, and about Rick's
experiment, I first thought that the failure of the "cursor"
movement to predict the behavior must be due to the fact that
control is good enough to bring the error down to the noise level
of the system. This is the general explanation I've been
entertaining for some time, for the phenomenon of low correlation
between behavior and the variable that it controls.

There is, however, another possibility: chaos. Most of the
control systems we've investigated are modeled best by a system
that integrates the error signal to produce output. Integrals are
known for hypersensitivity to initial conditions, one brand of
chaos. When error is near zero, any slight perturbation will lead
to an output that drifts away from the optimal setting one way or
the other, which way depending on the sense of the perturbation.
The result is that the perturbations due to noise are greatly
amplified; the system disturbs itself and these disturbances
result in a continuous wandering of the controlled variable in
the vicinity of its reference level. So the wanderings are
actually much larger than one would predict from the basic
signal-to-noise level of the neural signals. They are large
enough, in fact, to be comparable to the amount of error required
to produce the output that opposes disturbances. I suspect that
this is a better explanation of the low correlation between
action and the controlled variable.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Rick Marken and Gary Cziko --

"On Purpose" is a nice title which all three of us have
independently thought of. Another, which Rick and I both thought
of, is "Controlling Man." Sexist, but nicely ambiguous.

However, I am not going to write another book. You and Rick and
others are going to write it. When I try to write another book,
it turns out to be BCP all over again. The reason is that my
background is too limited to write anything else. _On Purpose_,
if it follows the outline of [animism, anti-animism, control]
should contain lots of references to real things that people have
believed or have been thought to have believed, with citations
and quotes and all that scholarly stuff that makes an interesting
story out of a bare recitation of principles. I can't do that.
But you and Rick can.

The responsibility for this revolution, whether you like it or
not, is passing into your hands. I am content to whisper in your
ears as I continue to work out implications of what I have
already done. The peak of the wave is yet to come, and the glory
for being the ones who ride its crest will be yours. All of
yours, speaking to all CSGers and NETters who are involved in
this project. The world will come to know of PCT through you and
your generation, not through me and mine.
If I may ask, what are you waiting for?
--------------------------------------------------------------
Oded Maler (921229) --

> ... you might find some inspiration in the books of the great
>mathematician H. Weyl which are probably accessible. He was
>concerned with the relation between the world and its
>perception/representation and he conceived abstract algebra as
>playing a fundamental role in this process of
>'coordinatisation'.

Thats a job for a person who is a mathematician and also
understands PCT thoroughly. I'm not both. It will take a better
mathematician than me to link "coordinatisation" to the phenomena
of perception. Any volunteers?
--------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Silvert (930103) --

Roger on the "upload" directory. I guess I just missed seeing it.
My understanding now is that if I send something to "upload" you
will see it and put it in the proper place. And that Gary will
upload binary versions, which I seem unable to do.

And you have our continuing gratitude for your unselfish and very
valuable work on our behalf (yours too, I hope).
----------------------------------------------------------------
Best to all,


Bill P.