From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,soc.culture.europe
Subject: Re: Hats off to Meggy
Date: 14 Aug 92 17:21:37 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <COVILLE.92Aug14094029@h114.desy.de> coville@h114.desy.de (Arnaud Coville) writes:

> If you are trying to stabilize a system,  control theory says that negative 
> feedback will do it. But negative feedback means feeding the opposite of 
> what the system does. It has no moral judgement in it. So the Control
> theory would rather contradict your statement. That was just a remark on 
> control theory, the problems in BH are mch more severe.
> 
> Arno
>  

It depends on what you mean by 'opposite'. In a mathematical problem
it's easy to define positive or negative.  Applying it to humans
we have to consider it to be a point in n-dimensional behaviour
space.

In a simple example, a positive feedback is when we give praise to
some action or reward it so that it continues or get magnified. IF we
cheer being 'bad' it gets worse. Negative feedback could be anything
from a mean look (to a child) to spanking or to censure, jail, etc.

For example, if your dog likes to jump up on your table and eat
your breakfast, you cannot stop it by giving more food, or rewarding
it. Wacking it on the nose with a newspaper right after the act
enough times will get the message accross that jumping up on the
table correlates with pain on the nose. Even the dumbest dog
will stop. I don't mean to imply humans are like animals but
right from the start approval & disapproval of children starts
setting the pace for this kind of process and continues through
school and then through social 'peer' pressure.

As for adults, going to jail, being humiliated in front of their
friends & family is enough to keep them from participating in
what society considers to harmful or wrong.

Having your country subjected to an economic blockade and your
cities and soldiers being bombed by the air force of a
combination of nations for weeks is pretty sure indication
of negative feedback. I don't see how this can be considered
to be positive feedback.

'Violence begets violence' is either a simplistic attitude or
is confusing a more complex phenomena (learning) with something
else. There's no more certain deterrent than the 100% guarantee
of swift punishment. Every human society has been practicing
this and as long the justice systems and the firepower behind
them in the form of police forces remain, the system proves
its validity.

A counter example ?: If X is in the process of standing by the
street corner and delivering a swift kick to Y's butt everyday
then surely sooner or later Y might decide to fight back. This
is only trivially "violence begets violence". In fact, if it's
anything it's more evidence that negative feedback will stop
X from practicing his trade :-).. It would be better if
Y called the police and had the justice system deliver the
negative feedback to X.
-- 

	mark	


   hubey@pilot.njin.net                   hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
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