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Date:         Mon, 12 Oct 1992 10:28:41 -0600
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      control theory & behavior; control of behavior

[From Bill Powers (921012.0830)]

Oded Maler (921012) --

>You may claim that having a theory like PCT will enable more
>complex interactions in the same way that physical sciences led us
>to progress from walking to flying.

To be sure, behavior works without benefit of theory, and so do
interactions. But in a mindful organism the world is controlled to fit
cognitive theories. Theories are part of behavior, not just "about"
behavior. We perceive the world through theories, and our actions are
often aimed at making the world conform to such theories.

For example, suppose that you have developed a theory to the effect
that people with dark skins have lower intelligence than people with
white skins. This is a high-level perceptual function: when you look
at a person with a dark skin, you will perceive an unintelligent
person. That lack of intelligence will be part of what you perceive
when you look at that person. It will not seem like a deduction or an
opinion: it will be an aspect of that person.

Given that perception, it will soon turn into a reference signal. A
black person who seems to act intelligently will not match your
experience of such persons, and there will be an error. The next step,
of course, is to do something that will correct the error -- modify
the perception of the person until the expected impression of
intelligence is perceived. So lower-level perceptions will be selected
to alter the perception until it is "right" again.

Theories of human nature are intimately connected with the way we deal
with other people. If you believe that other people are simply
stimulus-response mechanisms, you will try to control their actions in
the same way you control anything else. If there are difficulties in
achieving control, it will not occur to you that the other person
might want to do something other than what you want. You will treat
this as a technical problem and look for more effective means of
producing the desired result, the way you would do if you wanted to
open a door but it was stuck shut. If four hours of food deprivation
don't get the result, you try eight, then 24. If noxious stimuli seem
required in order to elicit the behavior you want, you use them
without compunction. Compunction implies some awareness of the other
organism's desires, likes, and dislikes. Such things do not exist in
an S-R world. And that is the world that an S-R theorist perceives and
controls.

So control theory doesn't just make more "complex" interactions
possible. It creates a different perceptual world for the observer and
actor, in which the behavior of other people is seen as aimed at
satisfying their goals, not as a reaction to passing stimuli. In the
behavior of other people you see intentions much like your own. When
they resist or push back, you see not a "reaction" but a purposive
action, done for a reason, done specifically to prevent your control
of something that matters to them. Moreover, you predict that
insistence on your own control will not bring you closer to getting
what you want, but will elicit an escalation of the other's
resistance, possibly turning it into active attack. From the CT
standpoint, the violence that goes on between people is simply the
natural result of what they're trying to do to each other. It isn't
caused by aggressive impulses, territoriality, base motives, or
stupidity. It's caused by trying to control each other. If they
stopped trying to control each other, the violence would stop. If they
had a better theory of human nature, they would understand what's
causing the problem.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Williams (921012) --

I suppose that there is a scale of upsetness, and that at the lower
amounts there's simply a mild error that can be tolerated or corrected
at leisure. I think that reorganization operates on the basis of
duration times intensity of error; that's just saying that the
reorganizing system perceives on a longer time-scale than the
hierarchy does. A significant chronic error in a critical variable is
required to start reorganization. I think such errors occur fairly
often, and that they are associated with internal states that we
experience as emotions (not necessarily with negative labels). But
there's a lot of room for quantitative disagreement here, and no way
to settle it but getting data.

As to criteria for reorganization, I think the basic ones have to be
built in along with their reference levels. This doesn't rule out
others. The assumption of built-in-ness, however, is based on
evolutionary and co-evolutionary grounds. The reorganizing system has
to be operational before any control systems become organized, and
before any perceptions higher than intensities exist. Furthermore, it
has to be able to produce competent control systems in any environment
that might be experienced. Evolution can't anticipate the details,
only whatever is consistent over hundreds of thousands of years.

I think we have different notions of what constitutes critical error,
or perhaps we simply have different experiences. If I try to do
something important to me, and anticipate that it won't work, I
experience some conflict -- hestitation -- about trying it at all. I
feel emotions. I'm prepared for action but am holding myself back. I
think this state amounts to a little bit of critical error. Maybe not
a big important one, but enough to make me start thinking of some
alternative, casting around for a way that feels better. And I would
count that as a little bit of reorganization.

>If I already can control for getting my money back from a crook,
>when I learn that you're a crook, then I don't need to reorganize,
>just "actively" (try to) control for getting my money back from >YOU,
as a PARTICULAR crook -- no reorganization needed.

But how about the reorganization needed to perceive me as a crook
instead of how you were perceiving me before you got the new
information? I don't think that such a reorganization could occur
unless there was some serious kind of upset to motivate it. Of course
if you don't think it's reasonable to equate shock, dismay, a feeling
of being betrayed, and anger with a disturbance of critical variables,
then I guess you would believe that you could make this change without
reorganizing.

When I ask you for your telephone number and you give it to me, I can
do a behavior that I couldn't do before: call you up. I think that
only memory is involved here, no reorganization. So I don't dispute
that control can be "facilitated" by getting new information which is
handled by existing control systems. But I don't think that this sort
of facilitation has any deep theoretical signficance. And I don't
think you can reduce situations like being told you're in danger from
a fire to the same situation as being told a telephone number.

>>How can a person use the fact that another person is reorganizing
>>to control for a particular behavior by the other person?

>Ah, there's the rub: "particular."

My point exactly.

>What I think A can do in some (make that many) cases is arrange B's
>environment (disturb B) in ways so that B reorganizes and so that
>the outcome of B's reorganization results in actions by B which are
>in a class of actions as perceived by A which result in perceptions
>A is controlling for.

I wish you wouldn't use "controlling for" in this loose way, when what
you mean is "wishes to see." You can control for something only when
your actions have a systematic effect on it and maintain it near your
reference level. B can arrange A's environment in a way that B thinks
will have some chance of producing a behavior that B wants to see. If
A produces that behavior, B will be gratified, but will not have any
control; A could do something else, and B would have no way of
altering that. The best that B could do would be to predict that over
many occasions and with many A's, arranging the environment in a
particular way will produce some percentage of outcomes of
reorganization that will fit B's desires. To get any better results
than this, B would have to have extensive control over A and A's
environment, as in a Skinner box. There's just no innocuous way to
accomplish what you're describing.

>If B is ALREADY reorganizing (not due -- in part -- to A's
>disturbances), I think that at least sometimes A's disturbances
>during B's reorganization can result in B's post-reorganization
>actions resulting in perceptions A is controlling for.

But I thought we were talking about control, purposeful influence, not
statistical effects. If you loosen the concept of control to include
poor, chancy, unreliable control, in which you can never be sure what
the effect of your action really was, then everything becomes
possible. The con man can be sure of fooling the mark if he can try
his pitch on as many people as he likes and count only the successes.
The advertiser can claim to control buying behavior if out of
20,000,000 people who see the ad, 2000 of them buy the car (and only
1500 of them would have bought it anyway).

>>How can a person want another person to control his actions and at
>>the same time want the consequence that those actions are already
>>controlling?

I don't understand the first question here. Please expand on it.

You referred to WANTING another person to control your action. Actions
are produced only to control something other than the action. If you
want someone else to control your action, this means that you have a
preferred state for your action, at which you want the other to
control it. But that action has to be freely variable in order to
combat unpredictable disturbances; you can't have a preferred state
for an action at the same time you're using it to control something
else. It doesn't matter whether you want to control the action
yourself or to have someone else control it; controlling the action
will destroy your ability to control the variable it was being used to
control.

The only way the other person can control your action is to disturb
the controlled variable, acting in parallel with your action. This
can't improve your ability to control the variable. Whether it aids
your effort or opposes it, your effort will change so as to oppose the
other person's contribution to the controlled variable's state. If the
other's effort is aiding, you will relax. You couldn't help relaxing
unless you reorganized your control system. Disturbances are always
opposed, whether they're meant to be helpful or not. Controlling your
action in this way depends totally on the degree of control you
already have over the variable being controlled. There's no way
another person can help you control a variable by pushing on it -- not
without eliciting opposition.

Of course that opposition might be OK with the helper. The helper
might not mind if you relax and leave some of the load for the helper
to support. Of course then what the helper is teaching the helpee is
not how to control better, but how to control worse.

Hook one end of the rubber-bands over a stationary object, then pull
the knot to a target position. Have someone else, with a third rubber
band attached to the knot, help you pull. See what happens to your end
of your rubber band.

>>If A is partly determined by B, then to predict A from knowing B
>>you must also know the state of C and all other influences on A,
>>known and unknown, present and future.

>Yes, to predict EXACTLY. How often in your daily life do you need >to
predict ANYTHING exactly to see what you want? Never.

I agree that we (almost) never need to predict exactly, or at all, in
order to see what we want. We just control, which doesn't require any
prediction.  But when you do predict, I think you want to get closer
than you could do by estimating A from B when all the other variables
that affect A are unpredictable.

I'm objecting to your method because it's basically the same method
used in standard psychology. The errors of prediction achievable
through sophisticated application of advanced statistical methods,
using many trials and many subjects, are in the hundreds of percent,
if not thousands, in any specific instance. If you think that kind of
predictability is good enough for ordinary behavior, why would we need
control systems? I freely admit that people DO use this sort of
prediction, and that they DO think it's good enough. That's a
delusion, but a popular one.

>You can't [predict] if all those other variables are making A
>fluctuate chaotically. But if they DON'T (often the case -- and YOU
>define the "a lot"), then you can predict future states of A
>ADEQUATELY FOR YOUR PURPOSES. Trust me, I was trained as a
>mechanical engineer. How many bridges have you been over which
>DIDN'T collapse under you?

If we're talking about the inanimate environment, prediction works
fine. Trivial internal structure, no goals, no levels, no
reorganization. Science hasn't had much trouble with prediction in
that context. I trust you as a mechanical engineer. But if you're
going to apply the same approach to people, I think you're in for a
disapppointment.

>>How can you determine that an apparent relationship is real?

>With control, you don't need to know the causes of disturbances. >You
only need the connection between your actions and your >perceptions to
be somewhat non-chaotic.

True.

>For reorganization, the setting of a problem with a particular >CLASS
of solutions (i.e., ANY WAY you press that bar gets you food) >is what
makes it sufficiently non-chaotic.

But you have to make sure that the rat doesn't escape and has no other
source of food and is hungry. You can get a reorganizing system to
solve YOUR problem only when you already have control over the
organism in most other important ways. You can't just walk up to a
stranger and set a problem and expect it to be solved: "You are one of
two prisoners accused of a crime. If you confess and the other
doesn't, you will get a stiff sentence..."

Most of the methods you propose for controlling other people, or even
predicting their behavior, simply won't work in the wild. Most of them
depend on establishing background conditions that could reliably be
established only by brute force: solve this problem or I will shoot
you. I believe that such methods of control do exist and are applied
successfully. But no method of control applied to a subject with, as
it were, a gun to the head has much theoretical or practical
signficance when the gun is removed. The gun makes all techniques
work. Try some examples in which there is no gun, explicit or
implicit, and you will see the true locus of control.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Best to all,


Bill P.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU