HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
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Date:         Tue, 5 Jan 1993 10:02:02 -0600
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From:         "Gary A. Cziko" <g-cziko@UIUC.EDU>
Subject:      Function between I and O?

[from Gary Cziko 920105.1523 GMT]

Greg Williams(>) (920103 - 2) interacting with Rick Marken (>>)


>>But will this demo convince a psychologist who is busily doing research
>>based on the assumption that o = f(i). NO WAY, JOSE. S/he can
>>always describe the results VERBALLY  -- invoking the shiboliths of
>>scientific psychology --"stimulus generalization", "response
>>generalization", etc -- and they can get back to work.

>It looks as though they might contest PCTers' claims QUANTITATIVELY,
>too. It all hinges on their claim that your i and o are straw variables.

Greg, have you gotten the Koza book on _Genetic Programming_ yet?

It seems to me that this would be a nice problem for symbolic regression
(i.e., function identification) using genetic programming.  You could
include all kinds of functions that you think could possibly relate the
output to the input and then let evolution do its stuff to find the magic
combination.  If there is anyway to express the output as a function of the
input, it seems to me that genetic programming should be able to snuff it
out.  These functions could involve time lags as well.

Indeed, it might be fun to send a set of tracking task input and output
data to Koza as a challenge to see if he can find a relationship between
them.  It should be quite baffling to him if he cannot--unless of course he
understands PCT.  If anyone has a nice set of such data (up to 2000 pairs
of data points) for a WELL-CONTROLLED tracking task, send it to me and I
could send it to Koza (he includes his e-mail address in the book--the
first time I've seen a book author do that).

As a note to others, particularly programmers interested in PCT, I am quite
impressed by John Koza's book (1992, MIT Press) and would very much like to
get others' opinions on it.  It seems to me that genetic programming could
be very useful for PCT purposes, at the least for modelling reorganization.

--Gary

P.S.  I would like to rename my "3 pencils & 4 rubber bands" demonstration
the "3 pencils" demo (shorter), although Rick's "same "stimulus" different
"response"" is more generally descriptive.
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University of Illinois           E-mail: g-cziko@uiuc.edu
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Date:         Wed, 6 Jan 1993 15:43:15 -0800
From:         Marken@COURIER4.AERO.ORG
Subject:      non-revolutionary two-step

[From Rick Marken (930106.1500)]

Bruce Nevin (Wed 93016 12:54:24) --

>It seems to me that problems and solutions are theory-dependent.

Yes.

>This leads to the non-revolutionary two-step:

>        1. Problem in other-theory terms.
>       2. Solution in PCT terms.
>       1'. Non-solution in other-theory terms.

I love it! And a one and a ...

>Perhaps another step is needed in the process:

>        1. Problem in other-theory terms.
>        2. Same problem in PCT terms.
>        3. Solution in PCT terms.
>       1'. Contrast with non-solution in other-theory terms.

?Very nice Bruce. I hope we all can pick up your beat so that
PCT can waltz past the opposition.

>It might be useful actually to show how statistical results of
>the sort typically found in the literature follow from a
>statistical treatment of models of control systems

Bill Powers has a wonderful demo of just this. It is described
in his chapter in the American Behavioral Scientist "Purposeful
Behavior" issue; a must read for those who still harbor the
hope of understanding control systems using statistical methods.

Best

Rick
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Date:         Wed, 6 Jan 1993 17:01:34 -0500
From:         psy_delprato@EMUNIX.EMICH.EDU
Subject:      Statistics

[FROM: Dennis Delprato (930106)]

Those who work with psychological and social data and
take a strict anti-statistical stance might find of
interest an article entitled "How Hard is Hard Science,
How Soft Is Soft Science?" authored by L. V. Hedges
(American Psychologist, 1987, v. 42, 443-455).

Hedges notes striking parallels between quantitative
methods used to sythesize research in the physical and
in the social sciences.  He found that the most common
method used in the physical sciences makes use of weighted
least squares, and notes that this procedure is now
used in the social sciences (and I would add bio-medical
sciences), as well.  Hedges takes as examples the Particle
Group Data reviews that examine "stable-particles" and
focuses on mass and lifetime estimates.  He argues that
the Birge ratio (the accepted index of determining "how
well the data from [a] set of studies agree (except for
sampling error)" is comparable to that obtained with
socio-behavioral research.

Hedges recognizes that he did not examine research
concerned with testing point predictions.

My point here is that anti-statistical positions such
as taken by operant psychologists and PCT experts might
appear naive from the perspective of science as a whole
unless they are qualified.

Dennis Delprato
Dept. of Psychology
Eastern Mich. Univ.
Ypsilanti, MI 48197
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Date:         Sun, 10 Jan 1993 12:12:32 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      bizzi et. al.

[Avery Andrews 930111.1200]

 Has anyone tried to publish a refutation of the major conclusion of
Bizzi et al. 1976, `mechanisms underlying acheivement of final head
position', J. Neurophysiol 39:435-444?

They claim, if I read them aright, to have shown that kinesthetic
feedback is not involved in attaining the final head position when
monkeys move their heads to orient towards flashing lights, but the
behavior they report looks perfectly consistent with what you would
get with a fairly low gain kinesthetic control system, & straight
kinesthetic control would presumably be a lot simpler than what they
suggest, which is that kinesthesis is invoved in constraining that
path, but not its endpoint.

It also looks like a good subject for a modelling exercise, presumably
simple if you consider just rotation around the neck, or elevation
at the neck.

Avery.Anddrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Thu, 7 Jan 1993 19:41:36 EST
From:         Eileen Prince <eprince@LYNX.DAC.NORTHEASTERN.EDU>
Subject:      non-paying opportunity to publicize PCT

I am involved (with one other person) in setting up a half-day
pre-conference symposium for the TESOL conference to be held in Atlanta
in mid-April.  We are looking for two non-ESL types (preferably) to
present briefly on the following and then to be available for questions
afterwards.  There may also be a publication coming out of this.  The
topics are:

Evaluation and Retention of Personnel

Organizational Behavior

The speakers would have to assume little knowledge but great interest on
the part of the audience (program administrators or those seeking to be
such), and would have to begin with general nitty-gritty stuff.
However, then a move could be made to PCT theories of the topic.

Is there anyone in the Atlanta area who might be interested?  The
symposium will be on Tuesday April 12th (?) (no calendar in front of me
right now) from 8 to 1.  Naturally, this being related to ESL teaching,
it pays a maximum of $33.33 and there is no funding for housing or
transportation.  But, for someone in the area it might provide a good
opportunity to let others know about PCT.

Please let me know if you have any interest.

Eileen

eprince@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu
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Date:         Wed, 6 Jan 1993 13:41:52 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      other people's problems

[Avery Andrews 930106.1341]

Re Greg & Rick on solving other people's problems -- a possibly
useful distinction that I've been mulling over is that between
`macro-phenomena' and `micro-phenomena'.  `Macro-phenomena' are
the big, noticeable things that people start out wanting to understand.
Such as our ability to use language to give and receive directions about
how to go places, or to use our hands so as to get our breakfasts
into our faces rather than on them.  `Micro-phenomena' are the fiddly
little details that experiments are directed at, which aren't
intrinsically interesting to anybody, at least at first, but which
tend to turn out crucial to getting real insight into the
macro-phenomena.

It seems to me that demonstrating utility for explaining macro-phenomena
is an area where PCT can and should address `other people's problems'
(and in fact does, in the Arm and Gatherings demos).

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Thu, 7 Jan 1993 13:12:00 -0500
From:         Len.Lansky@UC.EDU
Subject:      getting a paper

 (len lansky [920107.1311])
Is there any way to get a copy of the paper by Richard Robertson
et al (1987) "Testing the self as a control system."  Runkel
describes it in some detail in his book, but i would like to get
the entire paper.

THanks in advance.

Len Lansky
Leonard M. Lansky                  e-mail: lansky@ucbeh
Department of Psychology (376)     internet: len.lansky@uc.edu
University of Cincinnati           fax: 513-556-1904
Cincinnati, OH 45221               phone: 513-556-5549 (o)
                                   phone: 513-751-0392 (h)
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Date:         Sat, 9 Jan 1993 17:36:00 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      muscle math question

[Avery Andrews 930110.1700]

Can anyone tell me a quick story about what a stiffness tensor is (or at
least the kind of book title to find it described in).  I know a bit of
linear algebra, & think I understand the formal definition of a tensor,
but don't actually know how to do anything useful with them.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Tue, 12 Jan 1993 19:16:23 MET
From:         Maler <maler@IMAG.FR>
Subject:      Re: Koza, Genetic Programming, & LISP
              & LISP" (Jan 12, 10:55)

[From Oded Maler 930112]

 [Gary Cziko 930112.1620  and before and others]

The last thing I want is to cool down the enthusiasm of the first
encounter with machine learning, inductive inference and automatic
programming. But.

Few days ago I realized that the subject of my first (but fortunately
not the last) Ph.D. proposal was in fact about (pseudo-) mind reading.
It was intended to use machine learning techniques for "student
modeling".  That is, given that a student has a wrong "program" to do
arithmetical subtraction, I give him some excercises and from his
answers I try to infer which program he is using. All this was in the
cognitive framework (funny, but people in my (computer) age learned
about cognitivism before behaviorism). Anyway when I realized that the
gap between theory and reality in this case is too big, I moved to the
more theoretical aspects of inductive inference and what I can tell
you from my visit there is:

1) There are many methods besides GA for trying to build expressions/
functions/programs which are compatible with a given sample.

2) The dark side of any such methods might be that they require an
enormous amount of data or generate a huge program (in the worst case
you might get the look-up table containing all the sample points).

3) GA is a kind of combination of a random/heuristic search which seems
to work in some cases (witness Koza's successes). On the other hand
this field (like many others) includes some anti-scientific jumps
between the fact (a computer program that searches among syntactic
objects) and the metaphor (evolution, mutation, cross-over) and other
stuff that gives a theoretical computer scientist the same feeling
as Rick gets when he hears "reinforcement".

4) In your intended application of GA you should distinguish between
the scientific inductive inference you want to perform "from above",
e.g., to find some (god forbid) S-R regularity in tracking data, and
between modeling learning of an individual (re-organization). For the
former you don't need to care whether it is done by GA, non-parametric
estimation, search in a space of decision lists, perceptron, backprop
and any other method. It is just a tool for trying to find regularity
in some data. For the latter, GA might have some advantage because
it seems consistent with the postulates or reorganization, but so will
any procedure that will work on random perturbation on the control
network.

5) All this does not come to undetermine the impressive HACKING
results achieved by Koza and others.

--Oded


--
===============================================================
Oded Maler, LGI-IMAG (Campus), B.P. 53x, 38041 Grenoble, France
Phone:  76635846  Fax: 76446675   e-mail: maler@vercors.imag.fr
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Date:         Sun, 10 Jan 1993 23:45:24 EST
From:         "CHARLES W. TUCKER" <N050024@UNIVSCVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Comments on 3 pencils and 4 rubberbands

 ***********                 CHUCK TUCKER 930108          ************

RE: Gary 930103.0240 GMT

Your demo has the advantage of a record trace of the "knot"; my demo
does have a record of the movements of both participants but not
the "knot".  I would like to make a few suggestions that anyone might
try.  First, I use very large art paper for my demos and it works
quite well - there is much more room for making a record. Second, I
see no good reason to have the subject hold the band at 90 degrees;
putting a vertical line in the middle of the paper will serve the
same purpose (if I am understanding your demo).  Third, I would
suggest some variations that make the demo more "social" but to
do so I will have to draw some diagrams here.  This is the
SIDE VIEW of Gary's design:   :------:------: (I don't have the
                              :      :      :  key for a vertical
                              :------:------:  on this keyboard)
                              E      K      S

Now looking at this from a TOP VIEW I see E------K------S which makes
the following variations possible to see:
               /S1                   /S1    S1, S2, S3 will have figure
             /                     /        out how to cooperate to
 E-------K /         OR   E------K -----S2  keep K over the line but
                                          each does not disturb the
                                     S3   other but that could be
                S2                         by doing this:
            /S1
          /  :     What is also interesting about these diagrams in
E-------K----S2    they are quite similar to those used by the
            :     folks who think they are interested in "networks"
            S3    but only have a slight understanding of what that
                   means in terms of action

And, of course, you could do multiple person "sets" on both sides of K;
you could have two triads attempting to control for the position of K
while they have to deal with the disturbances of each other AND the
disturbance of three others who have to also deal with the disturbances
of each other and control for the position of K.  Now we are beginning
to see the implications of what it means to be "social" in PCT terms.
Always remember that the variable being controlled might be quite simple
but the principle that one can make out of it could be very important.

I will try these demos this semester and bring some traces with me to
the meeting this summer as well as let y'all know how they came out
after I do them.

Regards,
              Chuck
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Date:         Tue, 12 Jan 1993 11:56:02 -0600
From:         "CZIKO Gary A." <g-cziko@UIUC.EDU>
Subject:      Letter from Von Glasersfeld

[from Gary Cziko 930123.1745 GMT] (when will I ever get any work done today?)

Just received an interesting letter I want to share with CSGnet and
especially with Bill Powers:

===========================================================
The University of Massachusetts
Scientific Reasoning Research Institute
Hasbrouck Laboratory
Amherst, MA 01203 USA

January 6th , 1993

Dear Dr. Cziko,

A friend gave me xerox copies of your article in _Educational Researcher_
(December, 1992), the Amundson/Serlin/Lehrer critique, and your reaction.
I was encouraged by your exposition and depressed by the bigotry of the
psychological establishment that still refusese to acknowledge the value of
Bill Powers' work.  They seem to be at the second stage of the standard
development that was described recently by Heinrich Bauersfeld at a meeting
in Germany:  First they said it was wrong.  Then they said itwas right but
unimportant.  Now they say it's very important and they knew it all along.
Maybe there is an advance.

Twenty years ago, having read Bill's article in _Science_, vol. 179 (which
came out beore his book), we invited him for a seminar to Georgia and
included a piece of his in a report we published a few months later.  I
take the liberty of sending you parts of that report and a much later paper
of mine to reassure you that PCT is not so entirely alone.

Best wishes for the continuation of your good work!

Ernst von Glasersfeld
(Emeritus Prof. of Psychology)
================================================================

Bill, can you give us little background on von Glasersfeld and his
relationship to PCT?

The article of his he sent is from the Proceedings of the International
Congress on Applied Systems Research and Cybernetics.  Does this
organization still exists?  What is its relationship to PCT?
--Gary
------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary A. Cziko                    Telephone: 217-333-8527
Educational Psychology           FAX: 217-244-7620
University of Illinois           E-mail: g-cziko@uiuc.edu
1310 S. Sixth Street             Radio: N9MJZ
210 Education Building
Champaign, Illinois 61820-6990
USA
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Date:         Wed, 6 Jan 1993 00:11:00 GMT
From:         Hortideas Publishing <0004972767@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Why adopt a different theory?

From Greg Williams (920105 - 2)

>Rick Marken (920105.0800)

>I completely agree. Greg's "devil's advocacy" shows that if people don't
>want to believe in control, they don't have to.

Which begs the question: why might they want to? I think they would want to if
PCT allowed them to solve problems which they already want to solve but cannot
solve without PCT. Note that this involves BOTH (1) what nonPCTers want (over
which PCTers have NO control, only influence -- sez PCT) AND (2) what kinds of
problems PCT is capable of solving (over which PCTers DO have control, within
limits). To date, I've seen more emphasis on trying to influence nonPCTers to
change their notions about what problems are important than on trying to use
PCT to solve the problems nonPCTers are having problems with.

>No amount of evidence can "demolish" someone's world view; people who wanted
>to view the earth as a fixed sphere at the center of the universe had no
>trouble dealing with evidence suggesting that it was not...

And today, most people (including me, most of the time) could care less about
this -- until they need to solve certain kinds of problems. Then, the fixed
central earth idea fails miserably as an aid. So (to return once more to the
Sixties resonance), I suggest that PCTers ask not what nonPCTers should do for
PCT, ask what PCT should do for nonPCTers. More succinctly, but definitely not
very Sixties-ish, at least as I recall the Sixties: don't waste time arguing,
beat 'em at THEIR OWN game. Beating them at YOUR game is guaranteed to merit a
"so what?"

As ever,

Greg
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Date:         Mon, 11 Jan 1993 06:45:10 -0700
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      oughts on explanation

[From Bill Powers (930110.1900)]

Quick note to Gary Cziko and Avery Andrews (930110 or some such)

Explaining how a music box works could go like this:

1. Turn the key until it won't turn any more.

2. Open the lid; this causes the music to play.

3. To stop the music, close the lid.

4. If the music stops by itself, return to step 1.

5. The above explains how the music box makes music.

Or like this:

The key on the music box winds a spring. When the lid is opened,
a catch is released and the spring turns a drum with little pins
sticking out of it. The pins bend and release flat springs, each
spring making a different sound. This explains what causes the
music to play.

Explaining why some one hates policemen could go like this:

1. When John was a teenager, he was arrested for a crime he
didn't commit.

2. The arresting officer was brutal to John.

3. John was found guilty on the testimony of the officer and had
to pay a large fine.

4. This explains why John hates policemen.

Or like this:

1. John believes that policemen arrest people for things they
didn't do.

2. John expects policemen to be brutal.

3. This explains why John hates policemen.

In each case, the second set of explanations is couched in terms
of the way a system is currently organized, while the first is
couched in terms of antecedent events. The first type of
explanation is descriptive; the second generative.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Best,

Bill P.
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